Expert: Scott Valentine - 10/15/2007

Question
Hi there,

I'm working on some images for my friend's catalog and we're running into printing problems.  The images look great on screen, seem to have a high actual pixel size, (roughly 1500x 2300) and a professional resolution (300 pixel/inch) but the actual print size seems really small, and my friend says they print fuzzy. I'm stumped- he's printing on standard 8.5x11 sheets and these files range in size from about 500KB to 1MB.  Can they really be too small?  How can we fix this?

I'm working off of PScs2 version 9.0, (I'm unsure which version he's working off of,) and these jpegs are going through email before he gets them.

Thanks for any help,

Erin

Answer
Printing can be a tricky beast, Erin. You can check in Photoshop's help files about actual print size versus scaling to fit a page. And you've already discovered that screen does not equal print =)

There is a distinction between dots per inch (dpi) and pixels per inch (ppi). dpi refers to the actual printer resolution, and has to do with how many physical dots the printer lays down per inch. Some change the actual dot size, spacing, or both. ppi refers to screen resolution.

If you go into Image > Image Size in CS2, you will see a dialog box that has both pixel dimensions and document size. At the bottom should be three checkboxes, including one labeled "Resample Image". If you unselect that box, you can then change the Document Size *or* resolution manually. Setting one will automatically change the other, but keep the pixel dimensions the same. You can safely print down to about 150ppi or lower for plain paper, but try to keep your resolution around 240ppi. For a 1500x2300 image, that should result in a physical print of about 6 x 9.5 inches.

Your printer will have some selectable settings for quality, and these will be listed as dpi. Choose photo (720, 1440 or higher quality).

Hopefully this will help. However, be aware that there is somewhat of an art to printing. If this doesn't work right away, try searching online for some help forums that can engage in more of a dialog with you about your specific printer and images. Keep in mind that JPGs are typically compressed, so may show some artifacting when printed.

Let me know if you have further questions!

-Scott