We all know that the format of the DSLR shoot is 2 by 3 so the full frame image would be 8×12 or 4×6 and not 8×10. It is still quite vague about the origins of the 8×10, for so long that we’ve had 35 millimeters that somewhere along the way people started to think that eight-by-ten was the proper size to use when making a print. So in this tutorial, I am going to walk you through everything you need to know about DPI printing for 8×10 photos.
DPI for printing 8×10 photo
Best DPI For Printing Photo 8×10 Tutorial
Crop and image to 8×10, and export it at the correct resolution to print . And the important thing is to choose the suitable DPI for 8×10 photos.
The first thing that you do is choose a picture, right click on the thumbnail of the image in the filmstrip, and create a virtual copy. This way you can edit this new image for print and leave the original image untouched.
Next, select the crop overlay tool, you can hit R as a shortcut. Change the aspect ration from as-shot to 8×10. If you are going to print it 5×7 or 4×6 or 4×3 you can replace the aspect ratio here, or customize it. So choose 8×10 and you’ll see the crop ratio changes. And then click on the crop square, and you can drag the image around, or even resize the crop overlay. Once you are happy with the crop image, select done.
You might brighten it up a little bit, add a little bit of contrast, clarity, and increase the vibrancy a little, have some subtle edits to make the image pop for printing. And then, when you think it’s ready, you go to file, export.
Now you have to do a little bit of work. First, you have to choose where you want this image to go. You ought to choose the desktop, so it’s an easy place to put onto a USB key and take to the store to print. So I’ll select that folder. If I wanted to put it in a subfolder, for example, 8×10 to print, then you could check it in the little box below. If you didn’t want it to go into a subfolder, you would just leave that unchecked. You could rename the file as well.
About Video settings, you don’t have to worry. For the file settings, You don’t want to limit the file size; you want it to be the highest possible quality. So you can leave that at 100, for the jpeg quality. Image resizing, if I wanted to shrink the image, for a website, or blog, then you could resize it so that it fits that blog perfectly. But remember it’s already an 8×10, leave the resolution at 300 DPI so that it will be the highest possible quality for printing. If you wanted to you could resize it to 10 inches on the long edge, at 300 DPI. Since then it will be exported at the perfect size for an 8×10 on the long edge. You can choose width and height if I wanted to, but it’s easier just to do long edge, at 300 DPI. And you don’t have to bother sharpening it, remove the location info, but it doesn’t matter.
So really most importantly on export you choose: where is it going to go, are you renaming it, what’s the quality, and what’s the size. You can also add watermarks and do some processing and a few other things, but for printing purposes, this is the best option. You click export, you see the progress in the top left, it dings when it’s done. So now if you downsize the window, find your destination folder, double-click on the image to open it up, and your image is ready to print. If you are to zoom in on it, you can see that it’s still pretty good quality.
Example of 8×10 photo printing
So if you do not want to crop, how do you print an 8×10 image?
Print a full frame photo as an 8×10
Instead of losing two inches vertically or horizontally depending on the orientation, what you may like to do for 8×10 or 11×14 is leave a white border, show the full image and then you have your full frame image. The actual image size of the printed area will not be 8×10, but it would be the full frame laid out on an 8×10 image.
Firstly, open the image up by exporting from Lightroom. You can say open up in Photoshop or edit in Photoshop, but I want to do this so that most people no matter how your editing skill is, whatever file whatever program you’re using, whether it’s elements or full-blown Photoshop, or Photoshop 2, 3, 4…, you can open it.
Now start off with opening up a new document, make its width be 8 inches, its height be 10 inches. Then it will open a blank canvas that’s 8×10, but if you drop this image on there it won’t show up properly, it would crop because it is larger than 8×10. So you just need to set the height 9.1 inches. It’s weird but when you select all them copy the layer or copy the image and then paste it right into the frame, and it’s going to be right in the middle when you paste, so it’s already set to go. A lot of artists or photographers do this when they have a 16×20 or an 11×14 image, and they will leave a white border or frame.
Now you can also set up automation in Photoshop, so if you wanted to take a vertical image and have it resized every time you hit F6, you could create an automation where you record and how to automate the process. Go to image size, change it, boom, done. So every time you hit F6, it automatically changes your image at 9.1 inches on the vertical edge, you can do the same thing for the horizontal adjustment up to 9.1 inches for the horizontal edge so that you can have this process. If you do a lot of printing where it’s all ready to go for you, you just have to do just a few clicks or a few hits of the F6.
Conclusion:
To put it in a nutshell, whether you don’t mind cropping, and you want to get an 8×10 that fills the whole frame, or you want the full frame of the image, there is always a way for you. Pick up a way that suits your expectation for DPI printing a 8x 10 photo and enjoy the result!
