Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers - Martin Evening [297]
Figure 13.2 The Mac OS X Printer Settings, showing the paper size selection.
Figure 13.3 The Windows Vista Printer Settings, with the Paper Size section circled.
When the ‘Show Bounding Box’ option is enabled in the Photoshop Print dialog, you can position the image anywhere you like, by dragging inside the box, or scale it by dragging the bounding box handles. In the Position section you can choose to center the photo, or position it precisely by entering measurements for the Top and Left margins. In the Scaled Print Size section, if the image overflows the currently selected page size, you can choose ‘Scale to Fit Media’. This automatically resizes the pixel resolution to fit the page and the Print Resolution PPI adjusts. You can also enter a specific Scale percentage, or Height and Width for the image, but I don't advise you to do this unless you absolutely must. It is always much better to resize the image in Photoshop first and print using a 100% scale size.
Output settings
To adjust the Output settings, make sure that ‘Output’ is selected from the top menu (see the close-up view in Figure 13.4). Here, you can select any extra items you wish to see printed outside the image area. When ‘Calibration Bars’ is checked, this prints an 11-step grayscale wedge on the left and a smooth gray ramp on the right. If you are printing CMYK separations, tint bars can also be printed for each plate color and the Registration Marks can help a printer align the separate plates. The Corner and Center Crop Marks indicate where to trim the image and the Bleed button (Figure 13.5) determines how much the crop marks are indented. Checking the Description box prints any text that was entered in the File File Info box Description field and check the Labels box if you want to have the file name printed below the picture. Click on the Background… button to print with a background color other than paper white. For example, when sending the output to a film writer, you could choose black as the background color. Click on the Border… button (Figure 13.6) to set the width for a black border, but just be aware that the border width can be unpredictable. If you set too narrow a width, the border may print unevenly on one or more sides of the image.
Figure 13.4 A close-up view of the Photoshop Print dialog Output options.
Figure 13.5 The Bleed option works in conjunction with the Corner Crop Marks option and determines how far to position them from the edge of the printed image.
Figure 13.6 The Border option allows you to add a black border and set the border size.
Output options
To apply some of the Output options mentioned here, you must be using a PostScript print driver and you should also allow enough border space surrounding the print area to print these extra items. For example, when the ‘Include Vector Data’ option is unchecked, it will rasterize the vector layer information, such as type at the image file resolution. However, if it is checked, it rasterizes the vector information (such as type) much crisper at the full printer resolution, provided that you are outputting from a PostScript RIP.
Image data is normally sent to the printer in 8-bit, but some more recent inkjet printers such as the Canon ipf5000 are now enabled for 16-bit printing (providing you are using the correct plug-in and the ‘Send 16-bit data’ box is checked). There are certain types of images that may theoretically benefit from 16-bit printing and where using 16-bit printing may avoid the possibility of banding appearing in print, but I have yet to see this demonstrated. Let's just say, if your printer is enabled for 16-bit printing, Photoshop now allows you to send the data in 16-bit