5 Tips to Better Printed Photos

How to Print Your Photography The Right Way

Even if you have never tried to print your photography before but you want to try it, you will benefit from knowing the tricks and what mistakes to avoid.

You might want or need to print your photography for a number of reasons. Such as for a gallery showing, to sell in a coffee shop, to hang in our home, or to frame and gift to someone. 

In this video tutorial, Evan Ranft shares his tried and tested tips for printing your photos professionally looking and beautiful.

Top 5 Tips to Print Your Photography

Printed photos make for amazing pieces of artwork.

You can sell them, gift them, or hang them in your own space and enjoy your photography in a physical format.

But is there a right and wrong way to print your photos? These 5 tips will help you get it right!

Photo Printing Tip #1: Choose the Right Medium

There are so many mediums for printing your photography these days. 

You can print in regular gloss or matte paper, on canvas, metal, and even wood! And on top of that, you have many different frame colours and styles, or mounting options to choose from.

It’s important that you consider the medium options and choose the best one for each individual photo you want to print.

This will ensure that the photo is enhanced by the printing medium, not boring or taking away from the photo.

Evan shows this with the below photo, where he printed this photo with an ornate gold frame which adds to the elegance of the image:

Photo Printing Tip #2: Avoiding Retouching Errors 

Printing companies do not give refunds if you make a mistake with the photo you have chosen to print.

So it’s important that you choose the photo to print carefully, going over it on the computer close-up to make sure that you haven’t made any retouching errors.

No matter how small, when you blow that image up to print size it will show up.

Evan’s mistake when he was retouching a photo is barely noticeable but he had to throw out the whole stack of prints because he didn’t double-check for errors.

Print Your Photography Tip #3: Avoid Dust

The same for retouching errors applies to dust specs on your lens or sensor when taking the photo. You want to be really careful to clean your lens and sensor so that the camera doesn’t pick up on those small specs. 

It might be impossible to see on the computer screen, but you don’t want to have gone through the work of printing the photo only to discover a big dust particle somewhere!

You can also remove dust specs or particles when retouching and that will help your print look better.

Photo Printing Tip #4: Export & Transfer The Files Correctly

The default export settings in Lightroom or other editing software are not usually set to the highest quality. 

In Lightroom, when you are exporting or printing, you want to make sure the resolution is set to 300. Also, make sure the photo is not set to resize for anything. 

You want the photo to be full-size and full-resolution. 

Set the quality of the export to 100. Lastly, uncheck the Limit File Size when printing because this will make sure the photo is full quality.

After you have exported the full-quality file, you want to make sure that the file doesn’t lose quality when you move it from the computer to the printer.

This can happen easily if you are texting or emailing the image file, make sure that the file is not being reduced and is keeping the full resolution and size.

Print Your Photography Tip #5: Editing the Photo on the Same Color Backdrop

If you will be framing your photo with a white mat, it doesn’t make sense to edit the photo with a black backdrop.

In order to create a consistent look and feel with whatever colour your printed backdrop will be, make sure the background in your editing software matches.

Images look different and the contrast changes depending on the color it is next to. So keep that in mind when editing and printing.

Think about each image and tailor your editing, printing and framing to that photo.

Each photo is different and unique. You will avoid many printing errors by following the tips above and making sure to choose the right medium, fix errors in editing, and get the file right.

Which of these tips to print your photography will you use THIS WEEK?

Comment below!