How do I get images to print high quality out of Photoshop?

[Quicksand7]

I'm trying to prepare an advertising piece and I'm trying to print out a mockup from my HP color laser jet. My question is, how can I get the printout to appear as it does on the computer screen, whenever I print it out now the resolution is really low and fuzzy. I want it (it least the text and other computer generated material like boxes, e.g. anything but pictures) to appear very sharp. Can anyone help me please?

I'm thinking the idea is my pixels to inches ratio is wrong but I don't know what the correct entry would be.

[Excruciating]

But Medley can.
I guess you can go ahead and try checking theese things first as I quote:
"1) The width of your display, in inches. I DO NOT want the diagonal measurement (which most manufacturers advertise), just the width. The best way to find this is by getting out the ruler/tape measure. And I only want the width of the display, not the whole monitor.

2) The display resolutions available to your monitor: 1024x768, 1152x720, etc....

3) Is the printer you're using an Epson? It's not that they're better or worse than other printers, just that they use a different native resolution. "

[Quicksand7]

I measured it and it's display is 13 6/16th inches wide.

I'm using the highest resolution available to my monitor which is 1280x1024.

And it's a HP Color LaserJet 2605dn.

Thanks for your help.

[tombothetominator]

You might want to check the easy things first. Go to image - image size. Check what the 'resolution' is set at. For basic printing you shouldn't be any lower than 150. I generally do mine @ 200-250 to a HP CLJ 4600, which turns out nice. If it is set at 72 (the default if i recall) then everything prints out like poo, even though they look decent on the monitor.

Also - you can probably download the color profile for your CLJ from the HP website. This will help you get a truer idea of what you printer is going to spit out on your monitor (but of course you have to calibrate your monitor as well).

Like Pete said - if Medley chimes in; he is the man when it comes to this type of stuff.

[Quicksand7]

You might want to check the easy things first. Go to image - image size. Check what the 'resolution' is set at. For basic printing you shouldn't be any lower than 150. I generally do mine @ 200-250 to a HP CLJ 4600, which turns out nice. If it is set at 72 (the default if i recall) then everything prints out like poo, even though they look decent on the monitor.

Also - you can probably download the color profile for your CLJ from the HP website. This will help you get a truer idea of what you printer is going to spit out on your monitor (but of course you have to calibrate your monitor as well).

Like Pete said - if Medley chimes in; he is the man when it comes to this type of stuff.

Well, I tried what you said and it helped a little bit. I did some testing and I typed in a bunch of different text styles big and small, including a 6pt arial narrow in Microsoft Word, all the fonts came out high resolution, nice edges and super fine, so the problem isn't my printer, it's a setting on photoshop.
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[tombothetominator]

Just an FYI: simply typing in a higher resolution wont do much (if anything) to highten the quality of images that are already in a project. Basically - when you pasted that image in into a doc that was72ppi, photoshop downsampled the image to 72ppi. So typing in 150ppi, simply makes photoshop take the junky 72ppi image and blow it up.

You have to create your project at the resolution you want to print at, you can't generally change it later on.

With that said - there are plugins / additional programs out there that will allow you to resample your images to a higher resolution without as much quality loss. But by far it is easier just to re-create the project from the beginning and consider it a hard lesson learned...

Just my $.02.

[Medley]

Sorry I'm late to the party. Thank you Excruciating for asking the preliminary questions.

On resolution: Your printer's native resolution is approximately 300 dpi (dots per inch). Anything you upload to the printer is going to be converted to its' native resolution, so we might just as well do it ahead of time.

Go to Image> Image Size. Make sure that the 'Resample Image' checkbox is NOT checked. In the 'Document Size' dialog box, highlight the number in the 'Resolution' box and change it to 300. The numbers in the Height and Width boxes will now indicate the largest print size possible to retain photo quality.

If you're trying to print anything larger than these dimensions, that's the cause of the image looking low-res. There are to possible solutions for this. One is to send the image off to the printer, have them print it at the smallest size possible, then order an enlargement. Printers are going to have the absolute best software for this sort of thing (it's what they do for a living), and experience has taught me that this method gives the best results.

The second solution is to use some add-ons to increase the file size, as tombo pointed out. I happen to have one such add-on, and if you'd care to post the image, I'll be happy to see what I can do with it. The plug-in works very well on some images, mediocre at best on others. It's always kind of a crapshoot, but it's worth a look.

The second part of my post deals with sharpening an image for print. Given the size of your monitor and the printer you're using, here's the best method:

If you can change the resolution of your monitor to 1024x768, that's the best resolution to use. Set the view in Photoshop to 25%. This is very close to how the image will look when printed. When you sharpen the image for print, use this resolution and magnification. Forget everything you've heard about sharpening at 100%- it just doesn't work for print.

As I said before, if you'd care to post the image, I'll be happy to look at it. It's really the best way for me to see what's going on. If you'd rather, you can e-mail it to me at tandemduo280@comcast.net

Hope this helps you.

-Medley.

[tombothetominator]

^^ Good posting.

[Quicksand7]

Okay, I tried doing what you said and it did improve it to it's best quality so far, but it's not quite how I want it. I want it to look super smooth, this is still slightly grainy, I'd like the text to appear just like it does when it comes out of a black laser jet printer.

While I'm sure when I start to work with a professional printer they are going to be able to tell me everything I need to do, but I was just trying to create my own small mock up to show to future customers before my booklet goes to print. As I've gotten it right now it looks pretty nice, if you can give me any more advice that would be appreciated also.

Thanks a ton for your help guys.