One of the highlights of learning digital photography is sharing your pictures with other people. With digital photography, there are lots of different ways to share your pictures (like email, websites, etc) but for those really important pictures they deserve to be printed and framed in stunning unique picture frames.

Besides hanging your best photographs in wall picture frames, there are a few other reasons you may find you have for printing your photos. Here are a few of the many ways printed photographs are used.

• Displayed in wood picture frames on the mantle, table and wall displays
• Posters
• Wallet pictures
• Memory books
• Greeting cards
• Photo crafts
• Photo competitions

Even in our digital day and age, we still have lots of interesting and beautiful things to do in print! But printing a photograph isn't as easy as selecting "Print" on your computer. Printing a high quality print is harder than just printing out a copy of an email or document. The following tips will make the process easier:

Digital Photography 101 – Pixels Matter

Before you resize a picture on your computer, figure out first if you may ever want to print it. If so, be sure to hang on to the original. 

The first thing to understand is how many pixels are needed when taking a picture in order to get a high enough resolution to produce a quality print for the physical size you want. Below are some examples to help you know how many pixels are needed for different sizes of prints.

High quality 10 x 13
2592 x 1944 pixels (5 megapixel camera set for high resolution)

High Quality Picture: 9×12 inches
2272 x 1704 pixels ( a 4 mega pixel camera set for high resolution)

High Quality: 8 x 10 inches
2048 x 1536 pixels (3 megapixel camera set for high resolution)

High Quality: 4 x 6 inches, 5 x 7 inches
1600 x 1200 pixels (2 megapixel camera set for high resolution)

As you can see, you don't need a camera with tons of megapixels to get quality prints.

Using the correct settings on your printer is also important. Look at your camera manual or the manufacturers recommendations on their website. Then use a photo editor to resample the photos to the appropriate dpi. For those new to printing, dpi stands for "dots per inch". The more dots per inch, the finer the grain of the picture and the better it looks. Ink jet printers used today for printing quality pictures often have dpi resolution of around 1200 to 4800. This range of dpi will make quality prints that have around 140 to 300 pixels per inch.

The ppi (pixels per inch) is the measurement for the resolution of a digital picture and should not be confused with the height and width of a picture. For example a 200 pixel x 300 pixel picture would be very small while a picture with a 300 ppi isn't necessarily small because ppi refers to the quality of the picture (not the physical size).

Digital Photography 101 – Using the Right Type of Photo Printer Paper

Make sure to use photo printing paper and if possible, use paper that is recommended by your printer's manufacturer for best results. For projects like greetings cards, use special card stock paper. You can find them online or at craft stores or office supply stores.

If you need high quality prints or extra large pictures, you can also go to your local photography store or order them online from a reputable retailer.

Have fun printing your digital images!