Inkjetsuperstore Printing Tip: Make sure you have plenty of printer ink to ensure your pictures come out perfectly. Yes it might seem too simple but most photo printing disasters come from not enough ink or toner available. Find your printer cartridge easily cartridge finder on the top left hand corner of our page just write your Printer Model Number or Cartridge Model Number and hit search.

Tip 1 - Edit copies, not originals.- Before you start editing a photo—which can mean anything from making minor tweaks, to applying special effects, to cropping the original to use only a part of it—create a copy first. That way you can return to the original if you need to. And don't plan on editing and then saving under another name. It's safer to create copies before you open a file to avoid accidentally overwriting it. Once you have a copy to work with, you can feel free to experiment.

Tip 2 - Use paper that's appropriate for the task. - Better-quality paper yields better-quality prints, but it costs more too. If you're printing a photo to frame and hang on a wall, by all means use the highest-quality paper available for the printer. If you're printing a photo to post on the office bulletin board or stick under a refrigerator magnet, however, consider using plain paper, inkjet paper, or a less expensive photo paper.

Tip 3 - Preview photos for direct printing. - If your printer can print directly from memory cards, it may limit you to previewing photos by printing an index sheet or by looking at the images on a built in preview screen. If it gives you both choices however, keep in mind that there are advantages to each, and that you may want to use one or the other at any given time.

Using the preview screen is faster, since you don't have to print twice—once for the index sheet and once for the final print—and it costs less, since you don't have to pay for ink or paper to print the index sheet.

On the other hand, if you've taken several similar photos with minor variations in settings, for example—a trick professional photographers use to increase the odds that one of the shots has the right settings for the picture to look its best—an index sheet is the preferred approach for deciding which version to print at full size. The printed thumbnails will give you a better sense than the image of the preview screen of how colors will print in the final photo and how well details based on relatively small differences in shading will show.

Read all 12 Tips