Ok, I'm having a major DUH! moment here....

Can someone please give a primer on "going to print" with images in Photoshop CS?

I have up till now confined my artistic experiments to the digital realm, and am now ready to take some projects to print, hopefully doing some Photo Transfer, paper to paper, cards. I have a series of "paintings", ( old postcards that have been attacked with the Art History brush) that I'd like to print. Here's where the quandry emerges....

The effects I've applied look sufficiently vivid when viewed under "actual pixels" settings, but disappear when viewed under "View Print Size" ( image shrinks dramatically) What am I not getting? I understand that I may need to re-scale my effects so they are discernable in what will eventually be the printed proportions, I just don't know which one to use as a proper viewing reference.

I have never gone to print before, so I may need a full-tilt remedial crash course here, for which I apologise. I have spent the last week or so digging thru all my old Photoshop texts and bibles for the answer; juggling resolution, re-size wizard adjustements, print screen settings, the whole gamut (pardon the pun)....but still feel like I'm not getting something.

The books all say, "viewing as actual pixels is approx. what your printed image will look like"....ok, then what does "view at print size" mean? What parameters do I use to be able to set my images to a WYSIWYG working canvas, so I can scale brush & texture sizes accordingly?

I'm working with 400%, 300dpi scans of the original postcards, which I then reduce to 100 dpi resolution on screen, perform my multi-layered art history voodoo, then merge the effected layers seperate from the original. That final merged layer is what I want to print, at a good quality...225 or so I'm seeing as a recommended resolution, final printed image being roughly 6.25 inches wide, postcard proportion. The 2 different views I get when switching between "actual pixels" and "print size" are so wildly divergent, I don't know which to use as the "standard".

I'm stumped in deep here, and feel like I have to have some Eureka! moment before I waste a lot of time creating more images, or ink and paper printing a bunch of mud in microscopic detail.

puzzled in portland....

I recently read about setting your view print size in Photoshop User magazine. I was just leafing through the magazine, but didn't buy it. However when I got home I decided to give it a try -- of course by then I had forgotten the details. I finally figured it out, but I'm sure there's a more efficient way to do this.

Under your program preferences go to the "units & rulers" menu. On this screen there's a section called "New Document Preset Resolutions". Your Print Resolution may already say 300. If not, set it to 300. Screen Resolution is what you then need to tweak. Have a document open with the ruler showing and view at "print size". Here's the shot in the dark method I used because I couldn't remember the other instructions. Hold a regular ruler up to the screen, then go over to the screen resolution and change it up or down by say 10. Hold your ruler up again and see if you're any closer. Keep adjusting the number until the image file's ruler matches your "real" ruler. Mine turned out to be 96 pixels/inch. So now, when I hit view print size it's the same size it will print out on paper. Like I said, I'm sure there's a rational forumla to figure out what your screen resolution should be -- and maybe someone else knows what that is.

One problem with this is that on my monitor, the print size is 16% of actual pixels. At that zoom level, the image appears pixelated. I usually end up working at something like 25 or 50% and then flip back to print size just to get an overall look at actual size.

HTH,
Jennifer

I tried what you suggested, and lo and behold, it worked. Set my screen res to 100, and bingo.... The when I tried it on a different document, I was right back in the same pickle.

I'm not sure I understand what those specs mean exactly, but at least now I know what sub-chapter to hit the reference books and re-research.

When it says "new document pre-set sizes...", is this something I need to set immediatly after opening a new image, or before? The adjustment to the preference didnt seem to translate to the second image, even tho the value stayed set.

You also mentioned "my print size is 16% of actual pixels..." Here is where I get confused.

Am I the only one with some kind of mental disconnect here? Why do none of the books I have have a specific chapter on "calibrating print size to actual pixels on screen"? My newly purchased Photoshop CS Bible, Professional Edition doesn't seem to have a "going to print" chapter at all. (scratches head)

Does the screen res setting at 1024x768 play into this at all?

Thank you so much for your response, I think I'm on the right track here somehow....back to the books.

Sorry you're still having trouble with this. I hesitate to respond because I don't really know what I'm talking about .

After I made the change in preferences, it seems to have "stuck" when I open any of my files. I believe the program preferences should stay in effect for working with all your files until you change it again.

It seems like the actual ratio has to be a function of your print resolution (whether your're printing at 300dpi or 150dpi or whatever) and your monitor resolution.

The image I had open when I wrote this before I had scanned in at 600ppi -- so at 600ppi on my monitor it shows it at 16% of actual pixels. But after I wrote that post, I opened another one that was scanned at 300ppi, viewed "print size" and it only reduced it to 32%, does that make sense?

Hmm, maybe there's someone out there with a past issue of Photoshop User that could look this up for us. It was just about a month ago when I looked at it, so probably just the Feb or March issue.

Wow, this one is really complicated and intrigued me. Don't know if this will help, but it's an article that explains the method that Jennifer referenced and the difference in PS between pixel size and view actual...

HTH
http://www.planetphotoshop.com/tutorials/pete225.html

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Susan
Outer Banks Foto Art

Wow!

I don't really understand what anyone is asking for here.

I'm a photographer. I do a lot of printing from my images. I start my images out buy cropping to the size I want the final product to be (i.e. 8x10) and crop at 300 dpi.

I do my work on my image (either a .tiff or .jpeg or .psd). When done I flatten the image and SAVE AS either a .tiff or .jpeg. I print from the final image which is at 300 dpi. I don't have any problems with this.

When I want to post my final image I "SAVE FOR WEB" and give the result a different file name (i.e. w-picture.jpg). I will sometimes reduce the size of the file in increments (i.e. 200 dpi, then 100 dpi) then finally size the image (i.e. 640 px X 480 px at 72 dpi) for posting to web.

All the images in my gallery were done this way. The wedding image was originally 11x14 at 300 dpi. Regardless of the "physical size" of the image the monitor is only going to display at 72 dpi.

The ruler thing is amazing. Am I missing something? The whole concept of ppi versus dpi and resolution is mind boggling to me. I was taught the way I described above. It works for me so I've stuck with it.

This probably all sounds more complicated than it really is. Basically, what the original poster is trying to do is make it so that when you click the "View Print Size" button, what you see on your screen is the same size as it will print. In order to get that to work, you have to set your preferences to account for your monitor resolution.

It's pretty nifty when you get it set up. You can create an image, add text or whatever, then view it at actual size before sending it to print to see if you like the way things look at that particular size.

I mean, when I work on a LO at 50%, I tend to make the fonts much larger than they need to be in order to be legible, just because I'm looking at a scaled-down view of the page. Since my scrapbooking style is more of a journal w/photos, I've got a lot of text and it just looks funny if it's all really big. By viewing at print size, I get a better idea of whether it's in line with what normal reading text is like before I send to print and waste ink and paper on something that's not quite right.

I just posted this response on another photography board, so I thought it might be of help here....people PM me about this all the time since I used to work for one of the big inkjet manufacturers.

PPI (pixels per inch) is the correct term for referring to an image's resolution (as used in Photoshop), but DPI is often used interchangeably. DPI really refers to the printer's resolution.

An image with more pixels can be resized larger and still be sharp. The more pixels, the bigger it will be on the screen at 100% scale. They way it looks on the screen is affected by so many factors. When you print, you can resize to any dimension in Print Preview, and PHotoshop is effectively resizing it for you while printing.

In Photoshop (or other software), you choose to 'squeeze those pixels together' to make a really high res image with smaller dimensions, or 'pull the pixels apart' to make a lower res image with bigger dimensions. (Use Image> Image size to do this).

Whether your image is high PPI or low PPI, your printer will print it at whatever DPI your printer offers. Just remember, DPI really refers to how many droplets of ink the printer can place within an inch. PPI is the real measure of your image quality.

You can print a 72ppi image from the web, on a 2800 dpi printer, and it will still look like crap (very jagged edges).

Does that all make sense?

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Roseanne

232 digi layouts so far in 2005 Avatar by Hunibuni!!
"Creative expression is at the root of one's physical and emotional well-being"