Printing color photos

[Cheetah8799]

I have a HP DeskJet 5150 printer with standard color and black cartridges and some Kodak Premium Picture Paper.

I just printed two tonight (after a long time of meaning to try it but not actually doing it), and they actually came out well. I found that using Paint Shop Pro lets me tweak the pic pretty well before printing, then I set the printer to "Best", not the uber awesome setting, but next in line above Normal. I also set the pics to 6" x 5.25", that way I can get 2 per sheet of paper.

Like I said, they came out fine, but not the same as using a regular film camera.

One big problem is that my digital camera isn't that great. Actually, it sucks... 2.1megapixel, but is a cheapo. I chose some of my better pics to print though, so that helped.


I'm curious how some of you get the best quality printouts possible on your printers. Any common things you do to your pics in Photoshop or something before actual printing to get them to be a tad bit better?

 

[Mermaidman]

One thing I found out was how to resize photos: Instead of resizing the dimensions, I had to change the resolution. For some reason, if I reduced the dimensions, the printed version becomes pixelated, but if I increased the resolution (to shrink the size), the output is perfect.

This was using uLead PhotoImpact, which is somewhat cranky. Dunno about PSP.

 

[LED]

Cheetah8799..The beauty of Canon Printers is the software they include allows the pictures to be manipulated various ways that you have done...sometimes I use Adolbe Photoshop Album but in most Cases it's not necessary. With 2.1 MP 6" x 5.25 is about it's limits to come out top notch esp if any cropping is done.

 

[LTC8K6]

You could put the photo cartridge in instead of the black. That will give you more colors.