RE: Printing Digital Camera pictures

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "John Morawa by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <morawaj-at-interaccess-dot-com>


I am a 35mm guy.  It was a hugh hobby for a good 10 years.  I even developed
the film and made the prints (B&W only).  I am pretty picky when it comes to
print quality.  Anyway, I recently bought an HP 950C printer from Sams club
for $140.

When fed with a good image the results are excellent!  As long as I keep the
print about 12" or more from my eyes the image quality looks GREAT!  The
biggest downfall is the problem of getting even a tiny drop of water on it.
I
don't believe laserjets have the water problem but then again the cost of
the
printer is hundreds of $'s more.  If it is something you treasure then take
the
printout and get it laminated.

I have a poor 640 x 480 digital camera so unless I make a tiny print they
look
like crap.  But I have scanned in images at 300dpi (the max optical
resolution
for my scanner) and reprinted them at the same size/resolution and they look
very
good.  For HP printers make sure you set it to Best quality and choose the
Photo
quality paper and select the exact paper you are using if that item appears
in
the drop down list.  It will make a difference.  As far as printing photos
from
digital camera prints, well I can't help you out there.

I would strongly recomend using the unsharp mask function in photoshop to
sharpen the image some before printing.  That is if you have photoshop.  The
book "Real World Scanning and Halftones" has a few sentences explaining what
is
the correct way to adjust the settings when using the unsharp mask command
for a
good correction without going overboard.

Of course don't try to push your cameras capabilities.  There is info on the
net
that describes what resolution (megapixel, etc) you need to print various
size
prints.  You might be printing something larger than it should be for the
output
resolution of your camera.

Just a few of my thoughts on the subject...

Thanks,
John M.



-----Original Message-----
From: Tesla list [mailto:tesla-at-pupman-dot-com]
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2001 10:18 PM
To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: Printing Digital Camera pictures


Original poster: "Paul Kidwell by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>"
<tmb-at-ieee-dot-org>

I've been reading all the posts on the various cameras that are available.
The problem I see with digital cameras is that if you want something you can
hold in your hand and pass around to your friends, you have to print it out
on your printer. I have an HP976 and even with high quality photo paper it
still "looks" like it came off a printer. (not to mention what happens to
the ink if it gets wet)

I've seen the post about Shutterfly, but that's not exactly what I'd call
convenient. If I get some good shots of my coil one evening, I'd kinda like
to be able to bring some shots in to the office to show off the next day.

If you had loads of money, say $700, to spend on a photo printer....


                                           .... what would you buy?


Thanks for your thoughts.
Paul