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You captured some priceless moments at your friend's surprise party with your digital camera. You sifted through the images on your hard drive and found the gems you wanted to print. But somehow, the photo prints from your ink jet printer aren't looking as vibrant as you had expected. Well, you've come to the right place. Read on, and we'll tell you how to touch up your digital images so they're primed for printing. We'll also give you some pointers on optimizing your ink jet printer and help you choose the best type of paper for the job. And before you know it, your pictures will look better than the prints from your neighborhood's best photo processing shop.

Improve Your Images

Take TIFF: Most digital cameras use JPEG format, which sheds some detail to save space when storing images. >>TIP If you plan to edit your digital photo and print it later, save the edited image in Tagged Image File Format, which doesn't compromise image quality. Choose File, Save As in your image editing program, and select TIFF from the drop-down list.

Sharpen your photo: Many digital shots come out looking "soft" or out of focus after you print them. >>TIP Use your image editor's sharpen tool to emphasize the edges of items that appear in your photo. (Though dozens of image editors are out there, we'll offer specific steps for Jasc's Paint Shop Pro.) If you work with Paint Shop Pro, use the oddly named Unsharp Mask tool (click Effects, Sharpen, Unsharp Mask). This tool runs automatically each time you select it. The program that you use, however, may not have an Unsharp Mask tool. If it doesn't, use the more basic Sharpen tool instead. If you can't find a tool by that name in your program, use the Help option to search for the term sharpen. >>TIP Take it easy with Unsharp Mask and Sharpen: If you wind up with a grainy or distorted image, undo a few levels or start over.

Bring out the subject: Draw attention to the main element in your photo by softening the background. >>TIP First, select the entire subject with your image editor's magic wand (found in Paint Shop Pro's tool palette). If your first click doesn't select the whole subject, hold down the Shift key and click to add more area. Then, reverse the selection to select the whole background. After that, run the Soften tool a few times to blur the background to your satisfaction. In Paint Shop Pro, choose Selections, Invert and then Effects, Blur, Soften.

Pump up the gamma: It's a fact of life--dark images print poorly. >>TIP Use your program's gamma correction tool (if it has one), rather than the brightness tool, to add life to your picture. Increasing brightness can turn shadows into mud or make whites look radioactive. Gamma concentrates its brightening power on the middle tones in your image more than on the extreme blacks and whites. In Paint Shop Pro, click Colors, Adjust, Gamma Correction and drag the color sliders slightly to the right (no more than three notches). Most pictures won't benefit from a change of more than 30 percent; beyond that, images begin to look bleached out.

Crop with caution: What looks great on your almost-square computer screen isn't always a good fit for an oblong frame or photo album. >>TIP Use the crop tool from your tool palette to make your photos more appealing. Instead of positioning your main subject smack dab in the middle of the frame, offset it about a third of the way to the left or right of center. Don't crop the image too severely, however. As you trim the image's size, you discard valuable pixels. The finished image needs a sharp enough resolution to print without showing the jagged edges that come from having too few pixels.

Match pixels and size: When it's time to print your snapshots, one consideration is key: How many pixels can your printer bring to the table? Most ink jet printers are optimized for images with 200 pixels per inch. >>TIP If you're producing an 8-by-10-inch print, use your editing program to verify that your image is no less than 1600 by 2000 pixels (in Paint Shop Pro, choose Image, Image Information). If you start with a lower-resolution image (1024 by 768 pixels, for instance), the resulting print may be blurry. In general, digital images taken with a 2-megapixel camera yield good 5-by-7-inch prints, and images from a 3-megapixel camera are better for 8-by-10-inch prints. Don't worry if your image has an overabundance of pixels--you can still create excellent prints of 3-megapixel images in 5-by-7 format.

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