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printing to scale


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blacknatty

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Hi gurus,

I'm trying to print photos in my Photoshop3 so that the mm scale I have in the picture prints out to life size on the paper. I need to print the image exactly life sized. I'm going through a ton of paper and ink in trial and error here. How do I do this?
I keep the rulers visible and try to scale the mm ruler in my photo to match up with them, but it still prints out wrong. I know I don't press "scale to fit media". It's more confusing because of what zoom I put on the image to try and line it up with the ruler on the side of the image - different percentage zooms of course make the ruler not match the one in the photo. I've googled this and it's just confusing me more.

Any advice?
 
Go to Image --> Image Size... and check the Resolution of your image and the Document Size in CM or Inches.

Also, make sure the resolution of your document matches the print resolution. For example, if your document resolution is 300 dpi and the size is set to the actual print size that you want, then make sure when you print it your printer is set to print at 300 dpi. If your printer can't print at 300 dpi then your image will not be the right size.
 
Thanks Gaussian. I did mess around with it a bit more after reading further in an adobe site, and eventually ended up just running the ruler in the photo from top to bottom, then counting the mms of the height the photo should be. Went to Image>image size and changed the height to be the same. I put the resolution at 150 for both the image and the printer. That seems a bit...unprofessional to me though - counting out the mms in the photo. There must be a better way.
 
What are the print dimensions you want? What are the pixel dimensions of your image? What are the resolution options of your printer?
 
blacknatty said:
That seems a bit...unprofessional to me though - counting out the mms in the photo. There must be a better way.
Click to expand...

There is. Assuming that your printer is set to correctly output your desired resolution:

Choose Image Size. Turn off Resample Image. The Pixel Dimensions will be grayed out, and the document size values will show they are linked (chain link icon). Make sure you choose "mm" from the drop down menu, then choose the desired dimension for the width or height (you only have to choose one - the other two update automatically), click OK. It should now print at the correct size.

Don't bother with upsampling or anything like that - you can't add detail that way and PS will just average the available pixels.
 
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