Alan's HINTS & TIPS - My pictures print out HUGE

My pictures print out HUGE

"When I print out pictures and photographs they are too big. How can I fix that?"

There are several ways to do this and I will mention three of them to give you the idea.
Firstly, rather than resizing the picture in a graphic program like Paint Shop Pro, Photo Studio, etc, it will give better results if the picture file is left at its original size but printed at your required size. The following information should get you there.

Paint Shop Pro (Version 5)
Locate your picture or photograph and load it into Paint Shop Pro.
Go to "File", "Page Setup". Set the correct paper size (probably A4).
Select the size you want the picture to be printed at by looking at the small page representation and adjusting the "Scale" i.e. 50%. You can set where you want the picture printed on the page also.
Once happy with your settings click [OK]. Go to "File", "Print" and click [OK].

MS Word (The method may vary between versions).
Open "Word" so that you have a new document, then go to "Insert", Picture", "from file".
Locate your picture and click "Insert". When the picture appears in your document, click your left button to show the outline marker. Move the pointer to the top right of the outline and when the doubleheaded arrow appears click and hold the left button, drag the mouse down to the left to resize the image. You may have to repeat this till you get the picture size the way you want it. Click in the centre of the picture to get the 4-headed arrow to move picture around the page. Go to "File", "Print", and you should get your desired result.

Windows XP
By using My Computer, Windows Explorer, or My Documents -> My Pictures, locate the picture or pictures you want to print.
Double-click the picture you want to print - this will bring it up in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. (If this doesn't happen see note at bottom).
Click on the Printer icon, this brings up the Photo Printing Wizard.
Click [Next], select the photo or photos to be printed, click [Next].
Adjust your printer settings if required, click [Next].
From the 'Layout' section select the size and number of times each picture is to be printed.
Note that as an example, you can have 5 of each of 7 pictures printed on a sheet as 'thumbnails', or 2 separate pictures printed half size on an A4 sheet, or any of a number of variations in size and numbers of photos.

Note: If your picture did not come up in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer when you clicked it as mentioned in the beginning of this section, you may have changed your default viewer to another program at some stage. If you want to revert to the original setting with Windows Picture and Fax Viewer as the default viewer do the following.
Right-click (use the right button - you knew that) on one of your pictures in My Pictures, or other folder. Select from the list 'Open with', 'Choose program'. Click on 'Windows Picture and Fax Viewer' and tick 'Always use the select program to open this kind of file'.
In future when you click on that kind of file (probably a .jpg in this case) it will appear in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer.

See also:
How do I make the picture smaller afterwards if I saved it in a large size? Check this page.