Printing Problems

[geordie graham]

Because I don`t print many of my photo`s plus can`t afford a decent printer I tend to take my photo`s to a local supermarket and print them there once I have edited in Elements 5.What I normaly did was to sat the print size to 6x4 and was very pleased with the results.After purchasing a Photoshop for Photographers book and read that it is best to set the DPI to 300 I did this and decided to print to 7x5.I downloaded onto a disc and set off to said supermarket and when I put the disc in the machine it said it was unable to recognise any data.I went to another shop with similar printing facilities and it said the same.Thinking that possibly the disc was faulty I then transfered to a memory stick and the same thing happened.I am still farly new to the editing part so can anyone tell me what i am doing wrong.Thanks.

Graham

[Geoff F]

My first thought is what format did you use for saving the photos and burning to disc? If you edited them using Elements and simply saved them afterwards they were probably saved in the native Photoshop format which may not be acceptable to printing shops.

They would need to be 'exported' as one of the universal formats such as a JPEG or TIFF. Images straight from a camera are usually JPEG (except when using RAW)

Look at the images and see what format was used. You will probably see this easiest by clicking image Properties. Then come back here for more suggestions.

[ron1863]

There are decent printers for around the £50 mark, but it's the price of ink that's a killer

[geordie graham]

Originally Posted by Geoff F

My first thought is what format did you use for saving the photos and burning to disc? If you edited them using Elements and simply saved them afterwards they were probably saved in the native Photoshop format which may not be acceptable to printing shops.

They would need to be 'exported' as one of the universal formats such as a JPEG or TIFF. Images straight from a camera are usually JPEG (except when using RAW)

Look at the images and see what format was used. You will probably see this easiest by clicking image Properties. Then come back here for more suggestions.

H i Geoff I have checked the images and they are all JPEG.I am wondering if it has anything to do with the fact that I changed the DPI to 300 as previously I haven`t changed the DPI.

Graham

[Geoff F]

At the moment, I'm as confused as you are.

Can you put the CD in your computer and open the images on your screen? If so; how do they look and what does the image size say? When you saved as a JPEG what level of compression did you use? I'm wondering if they have been over compressed.

The only other suggestion, at the moment, is going to get a bit technical. How many pixels did you have in your original image. Say 3000 x 2000 at 72 pixels per inch. And how many pixels in the CD photos? Probably not a problem but I'm just wondering if you started off with too few pixels which means that you can't print at 7 x 5 x 300 ppi because you don't have enough pixels. You need 2100 x 1500 pixels at 300 ppi.

But, if your original was around 3000 x 2000 it shouldn't be a problem if you have set the resizing tool correctly. More likely to be a fault with the transfer to CD etc. Did you previously transfer to CD in the same way, and that worked OK?

[geordie graham]

I have since re-transfered the images to the disc and also whilst resizing I have read that the resample box in the Image Size Dialog Box should be unticked and it seems to have worked.Thanks very much for your help Geoff.

Graham

[Geoff F]

Resizing while retaining best quality can be a bit tricky to understand. Not really difficult but hard to imagine. There are a few online tutorials which cover the subject in depth.

When I first switched to digital. In my mind, I substituted pixels for pixies. You have a block of pixies with different coloured hats and changing their hats to blue, green or red creates the image. If you add or remove the number of pixies the image size increases or decreases. If they stand further apart the image looks less dense, but better when they are squeezed closely together. ie increasing resolution to 300 ppi. So in that case the overall image size reduces unless you add more pixies to fill the space. In which case they have to look at their neighbours to work out what colour hats they should be wearing.

It's silly, but it worked for me!

[geordie graham]

I have to say Geoff putting it like that it makes a whole lot more sense.Thanks

Graham