How to Prepare Your Photos for Printing: A Simple Guide
Most people who order prints online are not professional photographers. They are parents and grandparents with photos on their phones, or hobbyist shooters with a folder of images from a weekend trip, or someone who just wants to do something with the pictures sitting in their camera roll. If that is you, this guide is for you.
You do not need to understand everything about photo printing to get a good result. You do need to know a few basics. Here they are.
Check Your Resolution First
Resolution is the most common reason a print looks soft, blurry, or pixelated. The rule is simple: your image needs to be at least 300 dots per inch (DPI) at the size you want to print it.
In practical terms, that means:
- A 4x6 print needs a file that is at least 1200 x 1800 pixels
- A 5x7 print needs at least 1500 x 2100 pixels
- An 8x10 print needs at least 2400 x 3000 pixels
- An 11x14 print needs at least 3300 x 4200 pixels
Most modern smartphones shoot at resolutions that work fine for 4x6, 5x7, and 8x10 prints. Problems usually arise when people try to print a heavily cropped image, a screenshot, or a photo that was downloaded from social media at reduced resolution. Social media platforms compress and resize images — a photo that looks fine on your screen may not have enough pixels left to print well at larger sizes.
To check your photo’s resolution on an iPhone, go to the photo, tap the info icon, and look at the pixel dimensions. On Android, open the photo details. Divide each dimension by the print size in inches to see what DPI you will get.
Use the Right File Format
For most everyday print orders, JPEG is fine — as long as it is saved at the highest quality setting. When you export or save a JPEG, there is usually a quality slider. Set it to maximum (or 12 in Photoshop). A high-quality JPEG will print beautifully.
What to avoid: repeatedly opening and re-saving the same JPEG file. Every save puts it through compression again and degrades the quality slightly. Work from the original and export a fresh copy when you are ready to order.
If you shoot with a camera and work in RAW format, you will need to export to JPEG or TIFF before ordering. We cannot print directly from RAW files. Export at maximum quality and you are good to go.
For fine art prints or large-format work where you want the absolute best quality, TIFF is the preferred format — it is uncompressed and preserves every bit of detail in your file.
Understand the Aspect Ratio Before You Order
This is where most ordering surprises come from. Every photo has proportions — a relationship between its width and height. Every print size also has proportions. When they do not match, something has to give: either the image gets cropped to fill the print, or white borders are added to preserve the full image.
The most common mismatch: smartphone photos are often 4:3 ratio, but a 4x6 print is 3:2. That means a small amount of your image will be cropped on two sides when you order a 4x6. Usually this is not noticeable. But if someone’s head is close to the top of the frame, or there is something important near the edges, you might lose it.
Our ordering tool shows you the crop before you confirm — take a moment to look at it and adjust if needed. If you would rather have the full image with white borders than a cropped version, leave a note in your order and we will print it that way.
Color Space: sRGB Is What You Want
This one is mostly relevant if you edit your photos in Lightroom, Photoshop, or another professional editing application. When you export your file for printing, make sure the color space is set to sRGB. It is the standard for printing and display, and it is what our equipment expects.
If you submit a file in Adobe RGB without an embedded profile, the colors can look washed out or slightly off in the print. Most casual shooters working from their phone do not need to worry about this — phone cameras save in sRGB by default. But if you work in a professional editing environment, it is worth double-checking your export settings.
What About Color Correction?
We print what you send us. If your image is a little dark, a little warm, or slightly off in color, the print will reflect that. If you want us to review and correct your image before printing, color correction is available as an optional add-on when you place your order.
Color correction is a good investment for photos that matter — a portrait session, a milestone event, anything you plan to frame and keep. For everyday snapshots, most people are happy with the result from a well-exposed original without correction.
When in Doubt, Ask Before You Order
One of the advantages of ordering from a small owner-operated lab rather than a mass-market website is that there is a real person on the other end. If you are not sure whether your file is going to print well at a certain size, or if you have a specific question about your image, reach out before placing your order. We would rather spend two minutes answering a question than have you disappointed with the result.
Browse our photo prints online when you are ready to order, or call us at 913.217.7202 or email info@yellowlabimaging.com.