Photos can be a powerful tool for documenting your life and memories. But if you’re not careful, they can also be a headache to print. Here are four tips to help you print photos quickly and easily on your Mac:
- Choose the right printer driver. When printing photos, it’s important to choose the right printer driver. Some printers require a different driver than others, so make sure to check the printer’s documentation or use an online search engine to find the correct driver for your printer.
- Use duplex printing. Duplex printing is a great way to print photos on two separate sheets of paper so that they look like one big photo. This technique is especially helpful if you want to share photos with friends or family members who have different types of printers.
- Use photo software that supports duplex printing. Photo software that supports duplex printing will let you print both sides of each photo at once, which will make it easier to share photos with friends and family members. Some popular photo software programs include Photoshop, Lightroom, and Camera Raw Pro."
If you need a quick and easy way to print photos on your Mac, look no further than the Photos app, which comes bundled with macOS. It allows you to print single or multiple photos at custom paper sizes. Here’s how to do it.
What You’ll Need
To keep this guide simple, we’re going to assume that you have a Mac with Mac OS X 10.10.3 or later (the first release to include the Photos app) and a working photo printer you’ve already configured to work with your Mac.
The image files you want to print must already be copied to or imported on your Mac, too.
RELATED: How to Import Photos From a Camera or Phone Using Photos on Mac
How to Print Photos in the Mac Photos App
First, open the “Photos” app. Its icon looks similar to a flower with eight differently-colored petals. You can find it in your “Applications” folder.
If the photos you want to print are not already in the Photos app, you will need to import them. You can use the File > Import option in the menu bar to import them. You can simply drag the photos you’d like to import from a Finder window (or the Desktop) to the Photos window, too.
Once your photos are imported, you will see them as a grid of thumbnails. Find the photo or photos you’d like to print and select them.
To select more than one photo, you can hold down the left mouse/trackpad button and drag your cursor over a group of thumbnails. Or, if you’d like to select one at a time, hold down the Command key as you click individual photos. Each selected photo will have a blue border around it.
Once all the photos you want to print have been selected, click File > Print in the menu bar at the top of the screen. Or, you can hit Command+P.
A print dialog will pop up. Here, you can select the printer you’d like to use, the paper size, print layout, or ink options.
If you’d like to print multiple images on a single sheet of paper, click on the “Paper Size” menu (the second drop-down menu from the top) and select “Other.”
With “Other” selected, you will see multiple layout options, including fitting two 4″x6″ photos on a single sheet of letter-sized paper and a “Contact Sheet” layout that can print small many thumbnails at once.
If you’re only printing a single photo, select the paper size you’d like. When you’re ready to print, click the “Print” button at the bottom corner of the window.
The job will be sent to your printer, and if all goes well, you should have a hard copy of your images in hand very soon.
If you have trouble with the quality of your printed photos, read up on the reasons why prints often look different on paper than they do on the screen. Or, you could consider sending your photos to a professional photo service instead. They are often fast and inexpensive.
Either way, photos are a great way to recall old memories. Have fun!
RELATED: Why Do Photos Look Different When I Print Them?
