How to print specific size prints?

PrinceDraven said:

Sorry for what is probably a really dumb question, but..
I have had my iMac for only a few months, and have been getting into the photography side of things.
I recently started printing out my favorite pictures to put into photoframes.
I have a lot of frames that do not take standard size photo's, some 10cm by 10cm, some smaller etc.
I have a HP 717 photo printer which prints really nice quality pictures.

My question is, how can I select the photo i like and then print it in the size i want? (say 10cm x 10cm)

I have iPhoto, PSE, Photoshop CS.

Would like to do it from iPhoto if possible, but any help on any of the systems would be appreciated.


Thanks,

Click to expand...

All printers are a little different, so test the settings out before printing, perhaps on a regular sheet of paper.

Anyways, it's pretty easy to print whatever size photo you want using iPhoto (BTW, which version of iPhoto do you have? Apple keeps changing the print dialog boxes). I can't comment on the other apps since I dont' use them.

Anyway, the first thing you can do is to crop the photo to the specific shape you're looking for. iPhoto allows you to constrain the ratio to the typical ratios (i.e. 4x6, 5x7, 8x10, etc) or a custom shape (e.g. square, etc).

Next, choose print and go through the settings for paper and such. If you don't crop your photos, you can constrain the print size to be whatever you want, but it has to be within the boundaries of the paper. For example, you can't print a 5x7 photo if you're printing to 4x6 paper.

The advantage of cropping prior to printing is that you can set the photo to crop out whatever you want. This way, every time you print that photo, it's going to be the same.

If you don't crop it and choose the size from the Print Window, you still get a chance to 'move' the photo around within the print border, but the crop points aren't saved, so if you want to print that exact photo again, you're SOL. The advantage is that the photo isn't edited, so if you use that photo in some other project, say a slide show or photo book, then those projects aren't affected.

Anyways, getting back to your original question, I would play around with the different settings in iPhoto and just have fun.

ft

PrinceDraven said:

Thanks for such a swift reply, I have tried cropping prior to printing, but the picture still formats itself for the 6x4 of the paper.
I am using the latest iPhoto (08?)
I think i can amend the settings for size of paper, but not sure how i adjust size of the printout on the paper. Does that make sense??

Click to expand...

I'm going on memory here, so I could have some of the details confused. So here goes.

If you crop your photos to a specific ratio (in this example, let's say you crop it as a square) prior to printing, it should go like this.

1. Choose your photo.

2. Select Print

3. In the dialog box that appears, there should be a box for "Customize". Select it.

4. In this new window, you should see several drop-down menus in the bottom right corner. First choose the correct paper size. Next, select the print size you want ... in this case, you'll be presented with: borderless, 3x5, 2x3, custom, etc. Choose custom.

5. A new window will come up to allow you to choose the exact size you want. Let's say you want 4x4. Just type in 4 for both the height and width.

That should get you what you want.

One thing to keep in mind ... I'm assuming that you're using a borderless printer. At least with my HP, when I select borderless, the crop you see on screen isn't exactly what will print. There's some overprinting to get the borderless setting correct.

Anyways, maybe someone else who has their Mac in front of them can correct any mistakes above.

ft

Print a specific sized photo.

This seems like such a fundamental task that it would be close to automatic. Yet it appears to be impossible to take a photo and print it with a constrained width or length, either in Windows or on an Apple. I've used several programs to try this and they're impossibly convoluted, and simply don't do the task. Are programmers idiots? Why would it be so difficult to print out a specific sized photo?

freewheeling said:

This seems like such a fundamental task that it would be close to automatic. Yet it appears to be impossible to take a photo and print it with a constrained width or length, either in Windows or on an Apple. I've used several programs to try this and they're impossibly convoluted, and simply don't do the task. Are programmers idiots? Why would it be so difficult to print out a specific sized photo?

Click to expand...

I'm assuming the fault lies with the printers. There's probably not enough of a standard that you can get an exact size out of every printer, so there's not much use in trying.

Print size

I'd settle for approximate. The problem is, the software just insists on printing it to whatever size it chooses, and there's just no way to make any adjustments. It just tries "approximate" the size of the paper. It's sort of amazing to me that after about five decades of software evolution things are still so non-intuitive.

freewheeling said:

Are programmers idiots? Why would it be so difficult to print out a specific sized photo?

Click to expand...

Before questioning the abilities of computer software programmers, has it ever occurred to you that you may be at fault?

It is simple to crop any image to whatever size and then print it on paper to match that dimension. I often do it because not all photographs exactly fit "standard" paper sizes.

As you say, the procedure is pretty logical and automatic. From memory, it goes like this:-

1) Crop the image - noting the size of the new cropped image.
2) Go to print > page set up.
3) On this page, apart from the standard "A" sizes there will be facilities for setting a "custom size". Click on this and enter the dimensions of your newly cropped image. Save it - give it a name if you wish. It appears you haven't been doing this - remember, you have to "tell" the computer what size image to send to the printer!
4) Go back to "Print" and make sure your new measurements are correctly quoted under "Print size".
5) With paper in your printer - trimmed to the correct size! - click on "Print" and away you go!

All pretty logical really - good luck!

PrinceDraven said:

Thanks for such a swift reply, I have tried cropping prior to printing, but the picture still formats itself for the 6x4 of the paper.
I am using the latest iPhoto (08?)
I think i can amend the settings for size of paper, but not sure how i adjust size of the printout on the paper. Does that make sense??

Click to expand...

Do you use PSE6 at all? With PSE6 you can print photos of standard sizes (2.12 x 2.1, 3 x 5, etc.), or you can change change the print size if you like. Best of all, you can edit the photo, and then print it.

AlaskaMoose said:

Do you use PSE6 at all? With PSE6 you can print photos of standard sizes (2.12 x 2.1, 3 x 5, etc.), or you can change change the print size if you like. Best of all, you can edit the photo, and then print it.

Click to expand...

This applies to all graphic software.

John T said:

This applies to all graphic software.

Click to expand...

That's true, but between iPhoto and PSE6 I prefer the latter.

John T said:

Before questioning the abilities of computer software programmers, has it ever occurred to you that you may be at fault?

It is simple to crop any image to whatever size and then print it on paper to match that dimension. I often do it because not all photographs exactly fit "standard" paper sizes.

As you say, the procedure is pretty logical and automatic. From memory, it goes like this:-

1) Crop the image - noting the size of the new cropped image.
2) Go to print > page set up.
3) On this page, apart from the standard "A" sizes there will be facilities for setting a "custom size". Click on this and enter the dimensions of your newly cropped image. Save it - give it a name if you wish. It appears you haven't been doing this - remember, you have to "tell" the computer what size image to send to the printer!
4) Go back to "Print" and make sure your new measurements are correctly quoted under "Print size".
5) With paper in your printer - trimmed to the correct size! - click on "Print" and away you go!

All pretty logical really - good luck!

Click to expand...

You do realize that what you are saying does NOTHING to actually deal with the problem.
The problem is --- for whatever reasons I may have, I want to print an image to take up, say, 1.5in x 2.0in on a page. Maybe, for example, I want to print a single passport photo, or a contact sheet of visa photos?
There appears to be no way, within the software he is describing, of stating "I want the PRINTED version of this photo occupy so much space on the page".

Telling him he can easily scale a photo to some random paper size is NOT answering the question.

easy solution is use Image Capture. Everything is in there to resize your photos.

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Isn't this tied to both photo and printer resolution ? I think printers have vastly different resolutions.

Let's say your printer is 300dpi, and you want a 10 inch wide square print, you have to set up your photo into a 3000 pixel wide document, at least that's how I understand it.