Getting Better Prints from Digital Photos

One of the disadvantages to digital photography (if you can call it that) is that you don't get prints as often. Photos tend to sit on disk or on your computer's hard drive and never get shared. The photo album is sadly becoming extinct.

If you would like to start printing out some of those digital photos, here are some pointers.

Install Picasa:

We talk about it a lot, but not often enough. Picasa will make selecting, organizing and printing your digital photos easy. In fact, there is little or no need for any other software for most people.

Invest in monitor calibration:

The Huey is a very easy to use hardware/software package that has everything you need to keep your monitor calibrated to the proper colors so that what you see on the screen resembles what comes out of the printer or from the lab.

Do all of your cropping in advance:

Don't let the photo lab crop your prints. Digital prints are not proportional to 3x5, 4x6, 5x7 or 8x10. Any of these standard sizes will leave your images cropped. This can lead to chopped heads or similar problems as most labs simply crop the center or sides evenly.

When ordering multiple sized prints, provide multiple disks to the lab:

Many labs charge a fee for "opening" the CD to print the photos. This especially applies if the lab has to sort through the photos on the disk to get the ones you want. The more complex the job is, the more likely they will misunderstand and reprints will need to be ordered.

Provide one disk for each size that you want printed with instructions to print everything on the disk in the given size. Don't put any photos on any of the disks that you don't want pictures of.

How to make a CD of your photos in Picasa:

In order to make a CD of just the photos that you want from various folders, you will need to use the "Starred Photos" feature in Picasa.

1. Browse through your photos in Picasa until you find a photo that you want to put on the disk.

2. Click on the photo one time.

3. Click on the little star icon below the thumbnails. This will place a little yellow star in the bottom left corner of the picture.

4. Continue doing this until you have selected all of the photos that you want on the disk.

5. Scroll up to the top of the folder list in the left pane of Picasa.

6. Click on Starred Photos.

7. You will see all of the photos that you selected.

8. Click the "Gift CD" button at the top.

9. Type in a name for the disk and click the "Burn Disk" button.

10. Insert a CD and let it burn.

Ordering prints directly from Picasa:

You can order prints of your starred photos directly from Picasa by clicking on the "Order Prints" button at the bottom.

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