Printing and Emailing Photos

At some point you’ll want to prepare your photos to use on the web, email or print. The key to doing this right is making sure you have enough resolution for the job. It’s important to understand that computer monitors are low-resolution display devices, and printers are higher-resolution. With that in mind you’ll know that when you send someone a photo, you have to know how they want to use it in order to send it to them the proper size. Let’s start with how to prepare images for web and email.

Life was simpler back when Windows systems were set for 96 PPI (Pixels Per Inch) and Mac for 72 PPI. Now however, we’ve seen the introduction of higher-resolution monitors and systems that support varying resolutions. That’s moved us away from resampling for computers by simply setting inches wide by inches deep by PPI. In my opinion, the simplest way to re-size an image for computer display is to just set a maximum width or depth in pixels, and leave it at that. Assuming that most people have monitors of a decent size, I’ve standardized on 800-pixels as my maximum dimension. Here’s how to do that:

• Find the "Image Size" or "Resize" menu in your editing software.

• That will show you the current size of the image, both in megabytes as well as width and depth and PPI.

• Make sure "Resample Image" is turned on, then go to the Pixel Dimensions box and change the higher number to 800.

• Now when you click OK the image will be resampled to a maximum dimension of 800 pixels.

• The last step is to save the image, with a different name (remember, we never want to save over an original file). You can get pretty aggressive with your JPEG compression on an image for web or email. In Photoshop's scale of 1-12 (12 being highest-quality, least compression) I usually set for 5. That generally makes for an image under 100K, easy to send.

There are, however, easier ways to prep photos for web and email. Many browsers have an "Email" button that will automate the re-sizing process and even attach the finished file to a message. There are also browsers that will create an HTML gallery for you, after you select the photos you want to use. If either of these methods works well for you, they can save you some time and trouble.

Lastly, if you want to add a little "pop" to your photos, add a little sharpening to them before sending. I try to keep it simple, and just use the "Sharpen" command under the Filter menu.

To prepare an image for printing requires a few different steps. First, you have to know what PPI you need to have your images printed at. There’s a lot of disagreement about this. The number you use will depend on one of two things. If you’re prepping an image for someone else to print (whether a lab or to deliver to a client), you need to ask them what PPI they want. If you’re printing the image yourself, you need to experiment and find out what PPI you prefer to use. Remember, the lower PPI you’re comfortable with, the larger you can print an image without having to re-size it. With the four Epson printers I use, from the 2200 to the 825, I’ve found that 160 looks great. I’ve tested it against numbers from 200 to 300, and see little it any difference. Your opinion may differ, which is why I recommend doing your own testing.

Once you've settled on a PPI number, then your first step before trying to print an image is to see if it has enough pixels for the size you want to print. Again, you'll make a trip to the "Image Size" menu. Here are the steps you'll take to do that:

• Go to Image - Image Size (or Resize, whatever your editor calls it).

• This time, turn off "Resample Image." You do that because you don't want to add or take away pixels yet, you just want to see what you've got.

• With resample turned off, change the PPI to your chosen number (160 for me). The width and depth will change to show the image size at that resolution.

• If the width or depth are larger than what you need, you've got plenty of resolution and just need to resample the image down.

• Turn "Resample" back on and now change the width or depth to the size you want to print.

• If you want to print a specific size (width and depth), the easiest way to do that is through the crop options toolbar. With Adobe's editors, you'll see that at the top of the window when you have the crop tool chosen. Simply plug in your width and depth (8 inches by 10 inches, for example) and your PPI (160 for me). Now when you crop the image, Photoshop will constrain the crop to those proportions and resample the image at the same time. Very simple and easy.

If you don’t have enough pixels – in other words, when you turn off resample and change the resolution, and the width and depth are smaller than what you want – then you need to look into resampling the image up. The problem with resampling up is that while any editing program can add pixels, how it does that can vary. There’s also the fact that while you can add pixels, you can’t add detail. That means that when you resample up the image will soften. You can counter that to some extent with proper use of sharpening, but there are limits. Photoshop’s bicubic sampling is considered fairly good at this, and Photoshop CS adds a new twist with “Bicubic Smoother “ and “Bicubic Sharper.” Some people swear by Genuine Fractals (http://www.lizardtech.com/). Other people are convinced that upsampling in increments (such as 110% at a time) works well. And Extensis (www.extensis.com) has recently released Pxl SmartScale. If you need to upsample on a regular basis, you should try some of the different products and methods and see which one gives results you like. Further down in this article I detail how I make large prints using pxl SmartScale.

Regardless of how you get there, the final step before printing should be to sharpen the image. Even if you have a sharp photo to start with, you’ll probably find you like the printed version better if you applying some sharpening before printing. Once again, there are a number of ways to do this. There are the simple “Sharpen” and “Sharpen More” commands. The casual user may be very happy with just the “Sharpen More” for their prints. More advanced printers will want to dive into Unsharp Mask. Good luck. It’s fairly complicated, and the numbers need to be varied according to the amount of detail and how large a print is being made. Because of these factors, I’m a big fan of a plugin called nik Sharpener (www.nikmultimedia.com). It automates the sharpening process, and has options for everything from offset printing to inkjet to laserwriter to web. In the automatic mode, it also gives you a choice of three levels of sharpening. I prefer the lowest, called “Anna,” which gives me very nice results in my printing.

If you start doing much printing, then you’ll need to understand some of the terminology. For most people, inkjet printers are the easiest high-quality choice, so that’s what I’ll focus on. Some of the key terms are:

• DPI
Dots per Inch are very different from PPI (Pixels per Inch) which we’ve used until this point. Pixels per Inch relate to how many pixels you have pre square inch in your image. That’s a factor of how many megapixels your camera is capable of capturing, or your scanner is capable of capturing. Dots per Inch, on the other hand, refer to how many dots of ink a printer is capable of placing inside a one-square-inch area. They’re two very different terms, and often used incorrectly. While you may have an image you send to the printer at 160 PPI, it will be reproduced with ink on paper at anywhere from 720 DPI or higher. Many of those tiny ink droplets will be used to recreate the pixels that are in the photo. Photo Quality for most inkjet papers is 720 DPI. Some paper surfaces require 1440 DPI. Some inkjet printers can now print up to 5760 DPI or even beyond. Why would you need that? Most of the time you don’t. If you’re having problems with printing fine detail, or aren’t getting smooth tonal gradations from light to dark areas, you may want to have your printer use a finer resolution, which you can choose in the print dialog boxes. Personally, I’ve tried printing at the various resolutions, and almost never go above 1440. Again, you’ll need to do your own tests to find what works for you.

• Drop Size
Measured in picoliters, ink droplets are going as low a 1 picoliter at this time. What is a picoliter? It’s a millionth of a millionth of a liter. Sound small? Think less than a third the diameter of a human hair. Small drop sizes are good, but don’t think you have to buy a printer that’s capable of the tiniest drop size. Variable drop sizes are probably more important, where the printer can use a variety of sized drops to do a better job of printing an image.

• Print speed
I don’t put a lot of stock in print speed tests. They’re generally done at lower quality settings than I prefer. If I’m making a print to sell or display, I’d rather it come out of the printer good than fast.

• Ink
This is a pretty big one. Most consumer-level printers use dye inks. Any inks are sensitive to light and air. Therefore taking care in how you display your prints is important. Early inkjet printers suffered from short print life. The good news is that new ink and paper formulations are giving prints a much greater lifespan. If you want to learn about image permanence, you should check out www.wilhelm-research.com, which does testing and publishes the results. Also, look at your printer manufacturer’s web site for charts showing expected lifespans of images. You’ll see that the ink and paper combination are very important, and have a great impact on the life of the print. For longest permanence, you’d want to consider pigment-based inks. Their color and saturation haven’t matched dye-based inks, and printers that use them are much more expensive. Epson’s looking to change those complaints with their ultrachrome ink-based printers, which give nearly the color and saturation of dye-based inks but with a much longer life.

• Paper
There are a lot of choices in papers for inkjet printers, some good and some bad. Again, keep in mind that paper type plays a large role in how long a print will last. Also, if you choose a third-party paper, expect to spend some time in the print dialog boxes finding the right setting to make a good print.

The last step in printing is to understand and use the print dialog boxes properly. There are two big choices you'll have to make. One is to tell the software what kind of color management you're using. The other is to tell the printer what paper you're using. Both of these are very important. Here's how you use them:

• If you're not running any color management, then there are three ways to send color information to your printer through the printer dialogs.

• 1 - Make sure you select the correct printer, and tell it what paper you’ve loaded. You do this through the manufacturer’s printer driver, which is the dialog boxes you have once you choose “Print” from the menu. Leave the rest of the choices in their default positions. If you use third-party paper and/or ink, then you’ll just have to experiment to find a setting you like.

• 2 - If you're not happy with the results doing that, then choose the ICM option (Windows) or the ColorSync option (Mac).

• 3 - If you're still not happy with the results, then you'll need to use the Color Controls (Epson's term, others may vary) available through the printer driver to change things like brightness, contrast and color.

• If you're using color management (using a hardware and software package to calibrate and profile your monitor), then life should be a bit simpler for your:

• 1 - Choose Print with Preview from the File menu of Photoshop.

• 2 - Click the "Show More Options" box at the lower left and select Color Management.

• 3 - Choose the proper print space profile for where you're sending your image. In other words, select the correct printer profile for your printer and paper you're using.

• 4 - In Advanced Settings, choose ICM and No Color Adjustment (Windows) or just Color Management - No Color Adjustment in Mac. This is assuming that the profile you have or created was made with No Color Adjustment turned on.

Photoshop’s Proof Setup
Most people will be happy to stop at this point. However, if you’ve gone to the trouble to properly calibrate and profile your system (and we like the products made by GretagMacbeth (www.gretagmacbeth.com) and Monaco (www.monacosystems.com), then you may as well go one step further and take advantage of Photoshop’s Proof Setup feature. This is a tool that tries to simulate how the image will look after being printed. Since you’re about to take your masterpiece from a beautiful backlit RGB display to CMYK ink on paper, you may as well see what you’re about to get into. Photoshop’s Proof Setup attempts to do that for you. Here’s how:

• Go to View – Proof Setup – Custom in Photoshop’s menus.

• From the Profile list, choose the printer profile you’re going to use.

• Leave “Use Black Point Compensation” turned on, and look at the different Intent choices. “Relative Colorimetric” is the most common one I use, but sometimes I choose “Perceptual,” and may even look at the other two, thanks to the Preview button.

• The last step is to turn on “Paper White,” which tries to simulate the brightness (or actually lack thereof) of the paper stock you’re going to use. Now click OK.

At this point, if all your color management ducks are lined up properly, you’ll have a fairly accurate view of what the print will actually look like coming out of the printer. The nice thing about this is that at this point, you can make some adjustments in the toning of the image if there’s a shift you don’t like. You can toggle the effect on and off with View – Proof Colors, and even set up common ones to always be available in the menu by using the save button in the Proof Setup dialog box.

To Print Big (or REALLY big)

The challenge in making big prints is mostly in having enough good quality information (pixels) to have the big print look good. As you make larger and larger prints, you’ll eventually run out of pixels. There are various ways to work around this, as mentioned earlier, using either Photoshop’s resampling tools or third-party ones. I’ve tried all the ones I’ve mentioned, but the one I have the most experience with, and like, is pxl SmartScale by Extensis (www.extensis.com). I’ll take you through the steps I use, below. First, though, I want to point out a few things that make a big difference when you go above 11 by 14 inches in print size.

Printer. You're going to need a wide-format printer if you want to print big. I'm a huge fan of Epson's Ultrachome inks for print longevity and brilliant colors. The Epson 2200 has been a mainstay in my office since it first came out, and I love its quality and 13-inch-wide carriage. In the fall of 2004 I added an Epson 7600 to my stable of printers, and quickly fell in love with its ease of use and amazingly high quality. Nothing like 100-ft rolls of paper and big ink cartridges! The 7600 prints up to 24-inches wide, and that covers my needs.

Quality matters. In fact, it matters a lot. I’ve printed images from six-megapixel digital SLRs up to 32” by 22,” but it takes a certain kind of photo to enlarge nicely that big. Remember, when you upsize a photo you’re growing everything there, the good with the bad. Here’s what I look for when considering an image for a big print:

• Sharpness. The photo has to be tack sharp, with no camera movement. I’m not a big fan of lugging tripods around, but I sure appreciate it when a photographer uses one and then wants me to make a big print.

• ISO. It better be low (the camera’s base ISO is best). As ISO goes up, so does noise, which will hurt the look of the image when printed large. Even with images shot at base ISO, I like to use Noise Ninja (www.picturecode.com), since every digital image will have some noise.

• Image Type. Images with lots of fine detail are harder to enlarge big than those made up of larger elements. In other words, if important detail in your image is only composed of a few pixels, then it will take more fake pixels to create that detail large.

Okay, enough of the preaching. Here are the steps I go through to make a big print on the Epson 7600:

• 1. Start with the original camera image. That means the file that came from the camera. The more pristine the image is to start with, the better your odds of success. If I’m printing for another photographer, I ask them to send me the original file along with the one they’ve toned the way they want. That way, if they’ve made any mistakes, or I want to treat the noise, I can start fresh.

• 2. While I’ve made large prints (up to 32-inches wide) from “best-quality” JPEG files, I prefer if I can start with a RAW file or TIFF. That lets me avoid any issues that may arise from the compression in-camera that happens with a JPEG file.

• 3. My first step is often to run Noise Ninja to knock down any noise that may exist in the image. Be sure and use the noise profiles that can be downloaded from the site, or get really geeky and create your own (the instructions are there).

• 4. I try to do a minimal amount of toning, and always work in Adjustment Layers to preserve as much information as possible. Remember that all editing is subtractive, removing information. Less is more.

• 5. Once the image is toned and cropped for impact (not resampled yet), I save the file as a layered TIFF (or a Photoshop PSD file, if that’s your preference). That way I can always go back to the starting point, and save any toning work I’ve done. It also lets me grab that file to size any way I want at a later point, and sharpen accordingly.

• 6. Now’s the time to resample. As I said above, I like using pxl SmartScale. It installs into the menu bar in Photoshop, and can be used to scale the active image. It has a number of controls, but I generally leave them at their default settings. Just type in the maximum width or height you want to print at, and then set the resolution. After that, it’s a simple matter of clicking “Apply.”

• 7. Speaking of resolution… If you’ve read this far, you know that I’m a fan of 160 PPI when printing on today’s inkjet printers. That’s true for prints up to 11 by 14 inches. Above that, though, I sing a different tune. My experience in making large prints leads me to recommend 360 PPI in those cases. Why? Well, it usually looks better. Again, you can do some testing yourself to find out what works best for you.

• 8.Once it’s been upsized to the proper dimensions, there’s just one step left before printing – sharpening. I could go into a long-winded explanation of the Unsharp Mask Tool, but there’s already been reams written on it. I’m a big fan of tools that simplify and automate, so I use a plugin called nik Sharpener (www.nikmultimedia.com). In fact, I’m so lazy I even use the Autoscan feature of Sharpener, letting it choose the proper amount of sharpening based on image size, quality and printer being used. To me, there are two key things you need to pay attention to in the dialog box. First, the Printer setting, which is asking what DPI resolution you’ll be using to print with. Again, my experience with big prints has been that the 1440 X 720 setting works well. Second is the Personal Profile, which gives you three levels of sharpening. The mildest, “Anna,” is what I use for my normal printing. What can I say, I like it and think it’s right. The only time I regularly stray from “Anna” (I’m pretty faithful, you know) is when making big prints. I don’t know if it’s due to the large size or the increase to 360 PPI, but for whatever reason, I find that the “John” setting looks best for large prints.

That’s it. After all that, I follow the usual steps of making the right choices in the printer dialog boxes, then move on to another project while the printer hums away in the background.