How adjust printer settings?

[Elements4fun]

Hello,

This is my first post on the Elements Village. I just got a new computer and, when my old Elements 2 would not work on it, I purchased Elements 8. Boy, is there a big difference between the two!

Obviously I have a lot of learning to do, and I will start by reading the posts for beginners. However, I would really like to print out some high quality photos right away and am having difficulty doing it. The printing comes out at a very low dpi and I cannot find how to make them print at a high dpi. I used to be able to access my printer settings (in Elements 2) and control how things were printed (high quality, draft, etc.) but I have not been able to find that same capability in Elements 8.

I have tried two things without success. The Printer settings > Change settings > Print quality has only one choice: 360, so I can't do anything there. On that same screen, Advanced settings > Update to latest version gives me the message that Epson Driver Update Service is not available in my country/area (USA!).

Can someone please tell me how to print at high quality settings with Elements 8 and an Epson Artisan 800 printer using Windows 7 professional version?

Also, since I see that there is a LOT for me to learn, can anyone suggest a really good manual for Elements 8?

Thanks for any help you can offer!

[Codebreaker]

It isn't your printer settings or Elements that determines the quality in terms of DPI or rather PPI if that's what you really mean.

The resolution - which is what we mean by PPI is determined by the Pixel Dimensions of your image and the physical size you want to print at. The relationship between these is always:-

Physical Size = Pixel Dimensions / Resolution(PPI).

The key starting point is Pixel Dimensions. You need enough to be able to get the Physical Size you want at a decent resolution e.g. 360PPI for the Epson.

As a practical example a 6Mpixel image which is arrange as 3000 x 2000 pixels will give a Physical Size at 300PPI as follows:-

3000/300 x 2000/300 = 10" x 6.67"

So this is the starting point. If you don't have enough pixels you have to considering either resampling or changing the resolution.

If this doesn't help come back with more questions.

Colin

[Elements4fun]

Thank you for your response, Colin. I appreciate your help. Unfortunately, I am a complete novice at all of this, so I still do not understand what the problem is.

When I bring the image I want to print into PSE8 it says that the pixel dimension is 12.0M with a width of 2492 pixels and a height of 1679 pixels. Resolution is 180 pixels/inch. I want to print the image on an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper, so I resize it to a smaller size with the width being 10 inches and the height being 6.738 inches. Resizing it does not change the pixel dimension but does change the resolution to 249.2 pixels/inch.

When I go to print the resulting image I get the message: "The following images will be rendered at less than 220 dpi at the requested print size."

Taking what you said in your reply ("As a practical example a 6Mpixel image which is arrange as 3000 x 2000 pixels will give a Physical Size at 300PPI as follows: 3000/300 x 2000/300 = 10" x 6.67") and applying it to the image I want to use, I get: 12Mpixel image arranged as 2492 x 1679 pixels will give a physical size at 300PPI as: 2492/300 x 1679/300 = 8.3 x 5.6. So I went back into PSE8 and resized the image to 8.3 x 5.6, tried to print it, and got the exact same message as before ("The following images will be rendered at less than 220 dpi at the requested print size"). Shouldn't I have been able to print the 8.3 x 5.6 image at 300 dpi?

I must be misunderstanding something somewhere! Thanks for any more assistance you can offer to help me understand what I am doing wrong and why things don't work.

p.s. Can you recommend a good book for a beginner like me to understand these types of things and to apply/use them in PSE8?

[RonOly]

Does this link help?
Image Resolution And Print Quality
http://www.photoshopessentials.com/e...image-quality/

The books:
Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 Classroom in a book
ISBN: 9780321660329 / 0321660323

The Photoshop Elements 8 Book for Digital Photographers
ISBN: 9780321660336 / 0321660331

Photoshop Elements 8 for Windows: The Missing Manual
ISBN: 9780596803476 / 0596803478

Disclaimer 1: I don't have any of those books myself but imo the above are good ones, they each cost around €36 here and I think they are all worth it. May be a nice Christmas gift? (I'm asking these books myself for my birthday and Christmas, the third one I'll buy myself. LOL!)
Disclaimer 2: The ISBN numbers I gave are valid in Europe, I don't know if these are also valid outside of Europe.

HTH

[Joe_Kostoss]

By any chance, when you go to print on an 8.5 X 11 sheet, is there a check box that tells the printer to expand the image to fill the entire sheet rather than print at 100% size (10 X 6.67)? Example, if the print is expanded to fit the 8.5 width of the paper rather than the 6.67" at 100%, 1679 pixels / 8.5 = 197 ppi; hence the message.

[Codebreaker]

Elements4Fun.....

In the earlier versions of Elements there was a bug that it would spit out the message you report - i.e less than 220ppi - even though the resolution was above this. Whether or not this bug was fixed in later revisions I can't say.

However, its possible, as Joe suggests, that maybe you are trying to fit the image to the paper size at the Print stage and this is where you may not have enough pixels to give you the resolution you need. It's best to get the actual image size correct in the Edit stage and not do any scalling during the print stage.

Resolution is a little subjective anyway. The often quoted figure of 300PPI is really based on viewing a 10 x 8 print at a reasonable distance and its a good guideline. But you can get acceptable results with less resolution. What tends to happen is that the print becomes less sharp, but if you view this at a distance you probably can't tell anyway.

So larger prints can often get away with less resolution because you tend to view them at a larger distance.

I have a little information on my web site which may help a little more, perhaps.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/colin_w/pixels_and_ppi.htm

Colin

[Elements4fun]

Hurray!! Got it to work thanks to Joe's and Colin's suggestion. There was a box on the print screen called "Crop to fit" and it was selected; I deselected it and was then able to print the image on an 8 1/2 x 10 piece of paper at a higher dpi. Thank you!

Ron, thanks for the book suggestions. I looked the titles up on Amazon and, unfortunately, no one has reviewed them yet. Previous versions of all the books got customer reviews from 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 stars (top rating is 5 stars), so that might indicate that they all would be helpful books. If you purchase or receive any of the titles I would appreciate getting your opinions of them.

Thanks again for everyone's help. I am slowly plugging my way through some tutorials, but am sure I will be back with more questions....