Some simple tips to help you get the results you want from your digital prints.
1. Calibrate Your Monitor.
When your monitor is calibrated, your prints will look closer to what you see on your monitor. Adobe products ( www.adobe.com ) include an excellent Adobe Gamma wizard that walks you through monitor brightness, contrast and colour adjustments
2. Know The Colour Difference Between A Monitor And A Print.
A print's colours and tones result from light reflecting off its surface, while a monitor shows us an image based on transmitted light of glowing red, green and blue phosphors. Reflected light and transmitted light can never look identical to our eyes.
In addition, viewing a print is a very different experience than seeing a photo on a monitor. Photographers who sell photos frequently use a highly corrected and consistent light source (such as daylight-balanced fluorescent lights) to make a final evaluation of their prints away from the monitor. If you're not selling prints, you need to evaluate your prints in the conditions in which you expect to display them. Bright lights vs. dim hallways, daylight vs. incandescent—all can change the way a print looks compared to the monitor.
3. Check your colour.
A print's colours are greatly effected by the white balance of your digital camera. Have you noticed many winter photos on the ski fields are looking really blue? Most cameras do a good job on “Full auto” but it's never perfect. If there's any chance you can make the adjustment on your own computer the print will look much better.
4. Enough Pixels.
Now that cameras are producing loads of pixels in the image, make sure you don't lose those pixels in re-sizing! If you decide to crop always be sure that your final image for upload fits the table below.
| PRINT SIZE (inches) | Minimum dimensions (pixels) | Mega | Minimum File Size |
| 3.5x5 | 525 x 750 | 0.4MP | 60KB |
| 6x4 | 900 x 600 | 0.5MP | 70-100KB |
| 5x7 | 750 x 1050 | 1.0MP | 100-300KB |
| 6x8 | 900 x 1200 | 1.1MP | 300-400KB |
| 6x9 | 900 x 1350 | 1.2MP | 500-700KB |
| 8x10 | 1200 x 1500 | 1.8MP | 600-800KB |
| 8x12 | 1200 x 1800 | 2.1MP | 700-900KB |
| 10x12 | 1500 x 1800 | 2.7MP | 1.1MB |
| 10x15 | 1500 x 2250 | 3.3MP | 2+MB |
