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The biggest printing myth
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Essential Printing Basics Photoshop Tutorial Learn how to print images with Photoshop and avoid the biggest printing myth. In this Photoshop tutorial, you will learn the basic print tool workflow and understand how to avoid one of the most common printing mistake.

Print tool workflow

  1. To print, choose File > Print. The Print tool will appear with many settings.
    image
  2. Choose a printer. Select the printer that you want to use to print the image. If you don't see your printer in the list, make sure that you have your printer drivers installed. Refer to your printer's manual or support for more information about this.
    image
  3. Click the Page Setup button and adjust your printer settings. This is where you choose the paper size, number of copies, quality, and other printer settings. image
  4. Specify the number of copies to print in the copies field.
  5. Choose the paper orientation. You can choose between portrait or landscape mode. Choose landscape mode if you are printing an image where the width is greater than the height. The paper orientation settings are located below the preview image.
    image
  6. Adjust the position and scale of the image. If your image appears too large, check the Scale to Fit Media option to let Photoshop automatically scale the image so that it fits on the paper. If you look near the bottom of the Scale Print Size settings, you can see the Print Resolution. Photoshop will scale the image without any image interpolation to preserve the image quality. As a general rule of thumb, the higher the print resolution, the more detail and better quality your print will be. Every printer have an optimal print resolution (usually the highest print resolution that the printer can print) that should be used to create the best print results. With most printers, as long as your image print resolution is equal or greater than the printer optimal print resolution, your printer will automatically scale the image and print at the optimal print resolution set in the printing preferences.image
  7. Optional: Set the Output and Color Management options from the drop down menu.
    The output settings should be left alone. For large print jobs, printing press will adjust the output according to their printer. For general home printing, there is no need to adjust the output settings.
    The color management options allow you to print with color management. This is to ensure that the printout looks the same as what is displayed on your monitor. We won't go into details here because color management is a large topic that needs to be discussed in a separate tutorial. For general home printing, the default color management settings are usually fine.
    image
  8. Preview the image on the left to ensure that it is what you want. Click the print button to print. If you don't want to print yet, click done and the printing settings will be saved for the next time you use the print tool.

The biggest printing myth

Myth: Convert your image to CMYK mode before you print for best results.
Truth: Desktop printers are compatible with RGB files and are precisely configured to convert RGB data to CMYK with the best results.

If your image is already in RGB mode, do not convert it to CMYK before printing. On almost all desktop printers, if you convert to CMYK before printing, you will get less accurate color results. Desktop printers have a unique algorithm to convert RGB images into CMYK. Even if the image is already CMYK, your printer will convert it to CMYK again for unpredictable results.

image

You should always leave your image at RGB color and let your printer convert it to CMYK. Your printer does this without letting you know.

image 

Previewing print colors

One reason people convert their image to CMYK mode before printing, other than believing that that it will produce better results, is to preview how the colors will appear when it is printed. That is an incorrect way of previewing print colors. Photoshop lets you preview print colors without having to convert the image color mode.

To preview print colors, choose View > Proof Colors. Now you can see what your image will look like when printed without having to convert the image color mode. Don't forget to disable it back when you're done previewing the print colors.

Comments
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Very Helpful
thePow 2008-04-13 12:16:53

Nice Work.
Simple and Helpul
keep up the good work.
Great article...but
bionvortex 2008-04-25 12:45:05

A lot of people don't have large or production color...so they take it to
stinkos or same....and then CMYK does make a difference....also I would expand
on the proper color reference....because it has a very dramatic
difference....and also you can pront multi-up with different settings to see
what you personally like saving paper and ink.

Scott
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3.20 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

 

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