printing help

[echoyjeff222]

Hi all,

Is there a simple guide somewhere for printing?

I'm trying to resize my image to print on an 8.5x11 paper. I already put .5 inch borders on the photo in photoshop. Also, on export from lightroom, I accidentally changed the file to a TIFF with 240 pixels/inch. I know normally it's supposed to be 300 pixels/inch, but I wasn't sure whether or not to touch that button when I resized.

Thanks for any help!!

 

[The_Traveler]

What size in pixels is your picture now?

 

[john.margetts]

Pixels/inch do not matter - you can safely ignore them altogether. Set the image size to the size you are going to print at and your computer will divide the total pixels in the picture by the print size to give you the pixels/inch you are going to end up with. If you have 200 or more pixels/inch you will be fine. If you end up with less than 200 pixels/inch resizing to a higher pixel/inch will just give you a smaller picture.

 

[The_Traveler]

Pixels/inch don't matter but aspect ratio does.

 

[KmH]

If your photo is un-cropped and was made with a camera having a APS-C size image sensor the photo has an aspect ratio of 3:2.
3 / 2 = 1.5 so the long side of your photo is 1.5x longer than the short side.
11 / 8.5 = 1.29, not 1.5.

Consequently you can't just re-size your photo.
To get your photo with border to fit on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper you're going to have to crop away part of the long side of your photo before you add a .5" border all around it.

You don't say if your photo will print in landscape or portrait orientation. If you don't want to crop, put an uneven border around your photo that is wider on whichever side is needed to fit the un-cropped photo onto the 11.5 x 8 paper to make up for the aspect ratio discrepancy.

That prints have to be 300 pixels/inch is likely the biggest canard (1. An unfounded or false, deliberately misleading story.) on the Internet about printing digital images.

 

[table1349]

This should provide you most everything you need to know. It's a long read but quite complete.
Making fine prints in your digital darkroom: Getting started