Printing to Size

Q: I just scanned and edited a picture with a crop for 5 x 7. Now how do I print it as a 5 x 7? I can’t find where to choose photo size. When I hit print I got a full page picture.

Two For One: What about resizing an image for web use? I can crop them to a certain ratio in iPhoto, but the size is still huge online!

iPhoto gives you extensive printing options, so sometimes it’s difficult to figure out how to do one specific thing. The following screenshots are from iPhoto ‘08, so the previous version of iPhoto might differ a bit in execution.

First, crop the photo to the ratio you want to use, as the questioner has already done. You can do this in iPhoto. Double click a photo to edit it. Press the “crop” button. A rectangle will appear around your photo at a specific aspect ratio. This can be changed with the drop-down menu called “Customize.” If the ratio you want isn’t there, you can just select “custom”and enter your own. Drag the cropping rectangle around by the middle to reposition it, or an edge to change the size. Be sure to click “apply,” or the ratio shown will just be a preview. I chose a 3×5 in landscape mode for my photo here:

After cropping your photo, click “done.” You’ll go back to the screen that shows all your photos, and the photo you just cropped will still be selected. Next, press the “print” icon. (Note that you can select more than one photo before you click “print” and print all of them at once instead of going through the following steps for each individual photo.) Here, you can select theme, printer, paper size, quality, and print size.

You’ll notice in the view above, one of my cats is cropped out of the photo because it’s not printing as a 3×5. If all I want to do is print a plain 3×5, I can select 3×5 (or a custom ratio) from the “Print Size” menu. Much better!

If that’s all I need to do, I can just hit “Print” and be on my way. If I want to get a little fancier, I can click the “Customize” button to bring up a menu of extra options.

Print Settings is the menu we were just viewing to select paper and print size. Themes are the different layouts offered on that same menu (matting, borders, etc). You can also select background colors, borders and layout or settings. You can click the photo in the window and select “Adjust” to do any last minute alterations to color balance, etc. The “Settings” menu allows you to choose fonts for titles or how many photos to print per page (if you want several of the same photo on a page or several different photos on a page, this is where you’d find that setting).

Once you’re done tweaking all your settings and options, you can just click “Print” and your perfectly cropped photo should be printed in no time.

What about resizing an image for web use? I can crop them to a certain ratio in iPhoto, but the size is still huge online!

Shelley wrote in with this great tip for resizing images you want to put on the web. Select any photos you might want to put online, and go to the File→Export menu option. Under this option, you can select JPEG, TIFF or PNG if you want to change the size.

Then choose a size at which you’d like to export your image(s). You can go with fast food-esque Small, Medium or Large, or you can choose “Custom” once again. That allows you to specify the size of a chosen dimension in pixels. When you’re ready, click “Export”, choose a folder to export your images to, and click “OK.” Your photos will be copied to that folder, scaled to the size you want, and ready for upload!