If you prefer to print photos at home, Elements has you covered. It’s quite easy to print from Elements, but this is one of the areas where your operating system makes a little bit of a difference. In Windows, you can print from either the Editor or the Organizer, and the process is pretty much the same from either, although you can only print groups of photos on a single page from the Organizer. On a Mac, all printing takes place from the Editor, no matter where you start.
Before you print, it’s really important to be sure the resolution (ppi) of your photo is what you want (see Resizing for Printing for more about resolution). It’s also a good idea to do any cropping (Cropping Pictures) before you call up the Print window. You can start from either the Editor or the Organizer, and once you’re in the Print window, you can choose to create individual prints, a contact sheet of small thumbnails of all your photos, or a picture package of several sizes of prints. The following sections explain all your options.
The basic process of printing from Elements is the same no matter where you start or what you’re printing. You’ll see a few differences between PCs and Macs if you’re printing contact sheets or picture packages, which are covered later in this chapter, and there are a couple of minor ones, noted here, between how Windows and OS X handle all printing projects.
This section is about printing one photo per page from the Editor, since that method offers the most options. (To learn about the minor differences between printing from the Editor and from the Windows Organizer, see the box on Printing from the Windows Organizer.) Once you understand how to make single prints from the Editor, you won’t have any trouble with other kinds of printing. Both Windows and OS X require pretty much the same steps, but the order is slightly different.
Choose the photo(s) you want to print.
In the Project bin, select the photos you want to print. If you don’t select any, Elements prints all your open photos. (You can add or remove photos once you’re in the Print window, too—if the photos are already in the Organizer, as explained in Figure 16-3.)
Go to File→Print.
The Print window appears. It’s divided into three main sections: On the left is a filmstrip-like view where you can add or remove photo you want to print (Figure 16-3). In the middle is a preview area where you see the image(s) you’re going to print and some controls for rotating and adjusting the image(s) (there’s a blue outline around the area that’s going to print). And on the right is a group of numbered settings, listed in the order you need to adjust them.
Figure 16-3. On the left side of the Print window (shown here), you can add more photos to print, but only if they’re already in the Organizer. Click the green + button, and a window opens that lets you browse through all your Organizer photos to choose ones to add. If you want to print photos that aren’t in the Organizer, open them in Elements and then select them in the Project bin before you start the print process. If you decide not to print one of the photos in the Print window, click its thumbnail, and then click the red – button (which is grayed out here, because no photos are selected).
Choose the printer you want to use.
Select it from the drop-down menu on the right side of the window (Step 1 listed there).
Choose your printer settings.
On the right side of the Print window under Step 2 (Printer Settings), check to see what Elements proposes for the type of paper and the print quality. If you don’t like its choices, click Change Settings. In the Change Settings window that appears, adjust the settings to your liking. The window includes a setting to change the print size, but you don’t need to use it—you’ll choose a size in the main Print window in the next step. Depending on your printer, you may have additional options here, like which paper tray you want the printer to use. If your printer can make borderless prints, you see a checkbox for that, too. Turn it on, and you’ll only see borderless choices in the next step. When everything looks good, click OK.
Select a paper size.
Click the Select Paper Size menu (Step 3 in Elements’ Print window) for a list of the sizes available for your printer. What’s listed is determined by the printer you chose in Step 1, and by whether you turned on the Borderless checkbox in the Change Settings window. If you want to change the page’s orientation, click the button showing the orientation you want.
Choose what kind of prints you want to make.
In the Print window’s Step 4, choose whether to make individual prints, a contact sheet, or a picture package. In this example, you’re making individual prints (one photo per page), so choose that. (If you want to make a contact sheet or picture package, flip to Printing Multiple Images (Windows).)
Select a print size.
Use the aptly named Select Print Size drop-down menu (Step 5). If you don’t want any of the preset sizes, choose Actual Size or Custom. If you choose Custom, the More Options dialog box appears showing the Custom Print Size settings, which are explained on Print window settings. Enter your choices and then click OK.
If you turn off the “Crop to Fit” checkbox in the Print window, Elements prints your whole image as large as it can be within the print size you chose, even if that means leaving empty space at some of the edges. If you want to make the image fill the available space, leave “Crop to Fit” turned on and Elements trims the image to fit the print size you chose. Figure 16-4 shows the difference this setting makes.
Figure 16-4. Left: Here’s how this photo will print with “Crop to Fit” turned off. Notice the white space at the top and bottom of the blue bounding box. Right: Leave “Crop to Fit” turned on, and Elements enlarges the photo enough to fill all the space before cropping off the excess (here, it cropped the right and left edges).
Choose how many copies of each page you want to print.
If you want to make more than one copy of each print, enter a number in the box below the “Crop to Fit” checkbox. (Keep in mind that Elements prints this many copies of every print in this batch—you can’t make three copies of one photo and two of another, for example.)
Click Print and Elements prints the photos. If you change your mind, click Cancel or close the Print dialog box.
Choose the photo(s) you want to print.
In the Project bin, select the photos you want to print. (If you don’t select any, Elements prints all your open photos.) Just as in Windows, you can add photos once you’re in the Print window, as explained in Figure 16-3, but they have to be in Organizer.
Go to File→Print.
The Print window appears. It’s divided into three main sections: On the left is a filmstrip-like view where you can add or remove photos you want to print (Figure 16-3). In the middle is a preview area where you see the image(s) you’re going to print and some controls for rotating and adjusting the image(s) (there’s a blue outline around the area that’s going to print). And on the right is a group of numbered settings, listed in the order you need to adjust them.
Choose the printer you want to use.
Select it from the pull-down menu on the right side of the window (it’s labeled “Step 1”).
Select a paper size.
In Step 2 in Elements’ Print window, click the Select Paper Size menu for a list of the sizes available for your printer. What’s listed is determined by the printer you chose in Step 1. If you want to change the page’s orientation, click the button showing the orientation you want.
Select a print size.
Use the aptly named Select Print Size drop-down menu (Step 3). If you don’t want any of the preset print sizes, choose Actual Size or Custom. If you choose Custom, the More Options dialog box appears showing the Custom Print Size options, which are explained on Print window settings. Enter your choices and then click OK.
If you turn off the “Crop to Fit” checkbox, Elements prints your whole image as large as it can be within the print size you chose, even if that means leaving empty space at some of the edges. If you want to make your image fill the available space, leave “Crop to Fit” turned on and Elements trims the image to fit the print size you chose. Turn back to Figure 16-4 to see the difference this setting makes.
Choose how many copies of each page you want to print.
If you want to make more than one copy of each print, enter a number in the box below the “Crop to Fit” checkbox. (Keep in mind that Elements prints this many copies of every image in this batch—you can’t make three copies of one photo and two of another, for example.)
After you adjust Elements’ Print window’s settings and click the Print button, you see OS X’s Print dialog box, where you make your final print setting choices—like paper profile and color management. Figure 16-5 explains how it works.
First, choose the printer you want to use from the top pull-down menu. Next, click Show Details (if you’re using Mac OS X 10.7 [Lion]) or the blue down-arrow button to the right of the printer’s name (if you’re using Mac OS X 10.6 [Snow Leopard] or earlier) to expand the dialog box, and then choose paper and color options from the pull-down menu that starts out set to Layout.
Your paper and color options vary depending on the kind of printer you have. Selecting a paper profile may sound complicated, but it’s usually as simple as selecting the kind of paper you plan to use (Photo Paper Plus Glossy, say) from a list of choices. Setting color options can be as easy as choosing “high-quality photo” from a list of quality settings, and usually you’ll have someplace to specify Printer Color Management, although probably not in the same menu item.
When everything is set, click Print and Elements prints your photo(s).
That’s the basic process for printing from Elements. If you’re in a hurry or not fussy, you can use it to get a handful of prints in short order. But odds are that you’re using Elements precisely because you are fussy about your photos, and you may want to tweak several other settings. The next sections cover all the ways you can customize things like how the photo sits on the page, its color management, and so forth.
Note
Elements’ Print window isn’t color managed (Calibrating Your Monitor), which means that what you see in the window isn’t necessarily the same as the colors you’ll get when you print; the preview is just meant to show you where on the page the photo is going to print (which is the subject of the next section).
Figure 16-5. Use the OS X Print dialog box to choose paper and print-quality settings. Top: In OS X 10.7 (Lion), click the Show Details button circled here to expand the window so you can see all your options. Middle: In older versions of OS X, click the arrow (circled) to do the same thing. Bottom: In any version of OS X, you then use this pull-down menu in the middle of the dialog box to make your choices.
In both the Windows and Mac versions of Elements, there are two main ways to adjust the relationship between an image and the paper you print it on. Elements’ Print window has some controls for rotating and sizing the image, which are normally all you’ll need. You can even scoot the photo around within the preview area to determine which part of it is going to print if you don’t want to print the entire image. And if you like, you can also call up the Page Setup dialog box, which is the same for all programs on your computer. The following sections explain your options. (Quick reminder: In Windows, Elements only lets you position your image if you start from the Editor; if you print from the Organizer, Elements decides where to put the image.)
When you open Elements’ Print window, you see your photo in a white preview area surrounded by a blue outline (called a bounding box). The white area represents the paper, and the blue box shows the printing boundaries of the photo. (The blue outline doesn’t get printed. Incidentally, Adobe’s official name for the area surrounded by the blue outline is the Print Well, in case you run into it in any tutorials.) Your first impulse may be to grab the photo and try to adjust its placement on the page. But if you do this, rather than moving the blue box, you just move your image within the box. You need to pay attention to your cursor to see just what you’re going to move, as Figure 16-6 explains.
Figure 16-6. It’s easy to move a photo around on the paper, but you have to be a little careful. Left: If you grab the photo itself, you get the hand cursor (circled) and you’ll simply move the image within the print outline and change what part of the image will print. Right: To move the photo to another spot on the page, turn off the Center Image checkbox below the preview, and then move the cursor close to the edge of the photo till it turns into the crossed arrows shown here (circled). These arrows indicate that you can drag the photo to wherever you want it.
To reposition a photo on the page (to print a small photo on the upper-left corner of a large piece of paper, for example), just turn off the Center Image checkbox and then drag the bounding box wherever you want it, or enter the amount of distance from the top and left edges of the page in inches, centimeters, millimeters, points, or picas.
In addition to moving the bounding box itself, there are several ways to change how your image appears within it. You can:
Rotate the photo. Below the preview area are the same rotation icons you see elsewhere in Elements. Click one to rotate your photo within the bounding box. (If you want to rotate the box on the page, use the buttons under Select Paper Size.) If you turn on the Image Only checkbox to the right of the rotation icons, then the bounding box stays put and your image rotates within it.
Resize the photo. If you don’t want to print the whole image, you can zoom in on part of it by using the slider below the preview to control which part of it appears in the box. Be careful with this feature: You can easily enlarge your image beyond a reasonable pixel density. (When you click Print, Elements will warn you if the image is going to print at less than 220 ppi, but as a general rule it’s best to take care of any resizing before you open the Print window.)
Reposition the photo in the box. As mentioned above, you can drag the image around in the preview area to determine which part of it will print. (You can also accidentally drag the image almost out of view. If that happens, just choose a different print size in the right part of the window, and then switch back to the original size. Elements recenters your image in the bounding box each time you change this setting.)
Tip
If you turn on the “Crop to Fit” checkbox on the right side of the Print window, Elements crops based on the original position of your image; it doesn’t take into account any dragging that you do. In other words, you can’t control the part of your photo that gets printed if you use “Crop to Fit.”
Make the image and print size the same. If you decide to make a 4" ×6" print of an image that’s the right aspect ratio (shape) for a 5" ×7" print, you’ll end up with some empty space on the edges because the print size and the aspect ratio aren’t equivalent. There are two ways around this. You can turn on “Crop to Fit,” and Elements will chop off the edges of the photo. Or, if you’ve already cropped your image to a photo-paper size, head to the Select Paper Size drop-down menu and choose Actual Size. You can also use a Custom size, as explained next.
Pick a custom print size. Either choose Custom from the Print window’s Select Print Size menu, or click the More Options button and then click Custom Print Size; either way, you see the More Options dialog box’s Custom Print Size options. There, you can type in the exact height and width you want to print in inches, centimeters, millimeters, points, or picas.
Make the image fill the paper. If you click the Print Window’s More Options button and then click Custom Print Size, you can turn on the “Scale to Fit Media” checkbox, and Elements makes your image larger or smaller so that all of it fits into your desired page size. (You may need to use your operating system’s Page Setup dialog box—described next—to change the page orientation after choosing this option.)
In the lower-left corner of Elements’ Print window, there’s a Page Setup button. Click it to bring up your operating system’s Page Setup dialog box. Normally, you don’t need to use this dialog box at all in Elements—choosing your printer in the Print window’s Step 1 area takes care of things. But once you’ve got everything set up in Elements’ Print window, you can use Page Setup to override Elements’ settings. You can also select a printer here, but normally choosing a printer in Elements’ Print window changes the Page Setup dialog box to match.
Elements includes a number of other useful ways to tweak a photo, like putting a border around it, printing crop marks as guides for trimming the printed photo, or even flipping it for printing as an iron-on transfer. You’ll find these by clicking the Print window’s More Options button and then, on the left side of the dialog box that appears, clicking Printing Choices:
Photo Details. You can print the image’s shot or creation date, filename, and/or caption on the page with the photo by turning on the relevant checkbox(es) here. (When you click Apply, the Print Window’s image preview area changes to show where the text will get printed, so if the More Options dialog box is in the way, move it over so you can see what happens as you check these boxes.) Caption text is what you entered in the Organizer, or you can go to File→Info in the Editor to add a caption in the relevant field.
Border. If you want to add a border to the photo, turn on the Thickness checkbox, and then enter a size for your border (in inches, millimeters, or points). Elements shrinks the photo to accommodate the border, even if there’s plenty of empty space around the picture, so you may need to enlarge the photo a bit before printing to get the size you originally chose. Click the white square that appears to bring up the Color Picker so you can choose a border color. If the page has empty space you want to fill with a background color, then turn on the Background checkbox and click its color square to bring up the Color Picker.
Iron-on Transfer. Turn on the Flip Image checkbox to reverse your image horizontally. You’d use this when printing transfers for projects like t-shirts.
Trim Guidelines. The Print Crop Marks checkbox lets you print guidelines in the margins of the photo to make it easier to trim exactly. These marks are useful mainly for trimming bordered photos so that the borders are exactly even.
When you print from the Editor, Elements gives you several advanced color-related settings if you click the Print window’s More Options button and then click Color Management on the left side of the dialog box that appears. If you’re content with the way your prints look without adjusting these settings, just be happy and ignore them. But if you don’t like the color you’re getting from Elements, then use these advanced controls to make adjustments.
Tip
Color management is a dauntingly complicated subject. The advice in the following pages should be enough to get you started, but if you’re determined to learn more, a good place to start is Real World Color Management by Bruce Fraser, Chris Murphy, and Fred Bunting (Peachpit Press). It’s geared towards Photoshop, but it’s the standard reference on the subject and much of it applies to Elements as well.
You may remember from Chapter 7 that Elements is a color-managed program, which means it tries to coordinate the color settings used by various devices and programs: your image file (which may retain color settings applied by your camera), your monitor, Elements, and your printer. Sometimes you need to step in and help Elements decide which settings are best, since different devices and programs can have different interpretations of what certain colors look like.
Color management may sound intimidating, but you already did some when you chose a paper type and print quality. Now your most important decision is whether you want Elements or your printer to manage the photo’s color settings. (You can let Elements and your printer have a say in color management, but that almost always mucks things up.) The good news is that Elements does its best to keep you from double-managing color, and it tries to make managing the color in your prints as painless as possible.
You have four main color-management choices to make in the More Options dialog box:
Color Handling. Here’s where you decide who’s going to be in charge: your printer (Printer Manages Colors), Elements (Photoshop Elements Manages Colors), or nobody (No Color Management). The choice you make here determines your options in the rest of these settings. Elements also gives you some hints about your printer settings, as you can see in Figure 16-7.
Figure 16-7. Elements thoughtfully reminds you to turn your printer’s color-management feature off when you choose Photoshop Elements Manages Colors or No Color Management. In Windows, click the Printer Preferences button shown here to adjust your printer’s settings. (Macs don’t have the Printer Preferences button, since you change these settings in the OS X Print window, as described on page 534, although the text in the Elements Print window also refers to “Printer Preferences” for Macs.)
Image Space. This setting shows you which, if any, color space your file is tagged with (for example, sRGB or Adobe RGB). You don’t actually choose anything here—this line is purely informative. (See Choosing a Color Space for more about color spaces.)
Printer Profile. This setting is grayed out unless you chose Photoshop Elements Manages Color in the Color Handling menu. If Elements is managing the color, then you can choose the profile you want from the list here, which shows all the profiles Elements can find on your computer.
Rendering Intent. Use this setting to tell Elements what to do if your photo contains colors that fall outside the range of the print space you’re using; your choices are explained in the box on What’s Your Intent?. (This setting is grayed out if you choose No Color Management for your Color Handling setting.)
The easiest way to set up color management, and a good way to start, is to choose Printer Manages Color. This means that Elements hands the photo over to your printer and lets the printer take care of the color-management duties. Then all you need to do is select the proper paper profile and settings for your printer. Selecting a paper profile may sound kind of technical, but actually, you’ve probably already done it.
In Windows, you picked a paper profile back in Printer Settings→Change Settings (step 4 on Printing in Windows). It’s usually as simple as choosing, say, Photo Paper Plus Glossy from the list of options there. If you already chose a paper type and print quality in Elements’ Print window, your printer preferences should have changed to reflect them. However, your printer may offer some additional choices that are worth exploring. In the More Options dialog box’s Color Management section, just click the Printer Preferences button to get to these settings, or, in Elements’ Change Settings dialog box (Printing in Windows), click the Advanced Settings button. The exact wording in the dialog box that appears differs depending on what kind of printer you have, but Figure 16-8 shows a typical printer’s settings.
Figure 16-8. If you’re not sure how to set up color management in your printer’s settings, it’s easy. Here, just leaving this particular HP printer’s menu set to ColorSmart/sRGB is all it takes. If you plan to let Elements manage color, you’d choose “Application Managed Colors” instead. Different brands of printers have different names for their color-management systems, so you’ll have to hunt around in the window a bit, but it’s usually pretty simple to figure out which option you want.
On a Mac, you make your paper profile choices in the OS X Print window, as explained back on Printing in OS X. Your options are similar to the ones in Windows, you just get to them in a different place.
Tip
If your camera takes photos in sRGB, and you’ve been editing them using Elements’ No Color Management or “Always Optimize Colors for Computer Screens” setting, then don’t choose Adobe RGB for the printer profile, as your colors may shift drastically. If for some reason you want to change the color space for the printer, first go to Image→Convert Color Profile, and then apply the Adobe RGB profile to the photo. If you aren’t absolutely sure that your printer understands Adobe RGB (many inkjets don’t) and you don’t have a compelling reason for changing this setting, then it’s best to leave things alone.
You can configure Elements’ color settings in a zillion different ways, and you may need to experiment a bit to find what works best. (See the box below for advice on how to cheaply test out a bunch of different print settings.) If you go looking around for more info, you’ll find that this subject is very controversial—everyone has a different approach that’s the “right” one. But in fact, you have many options that can lead to good results.