Printing and framing photos without the stress

Too often, photos are doomed to a virtual life, existing solely on your computer screen or shared digitally via social channels or websites. There are many who feel, however, that a photograph does not properly exist until it’s printed. So here’s a guide to printing and framing photos as easily and effectively as possible.

This is not a detailed, technical guide to resizing, upscaling, output sharpening and printer profiles. I’lll leave that to people who do this all day every day to exhibition standards and have the time and patience to do it this way.

Instead, this is guide for photographers who rarely print their best work and realise it’s about time they did. It’s for photographers who just want to put a picture on the wall without having to navigate all the technicalities, advice and instructions. You must do this, you can’t do this, you have to learn about that… and so on.

There’s a reason you and I don’t get around to printing our photos, and it’s rarely the cost. Very often it’s just the effort.

So here’s a very personal guide to printing and framing out photographs that’s simple and practical enough that we might actually get around to doing it.

1. Buy a frame

Yes, do this first. You might think printing the photo is the obvious first step, but it’s a LOT easier to size and print a photo to match a frame than it is to find a frame to fit a photo you already have. 

You can get inexpensive photo frames from DIY stores and homeware stores everywhere. I like a black and white frame with a matte – an inner carboard frame with a bevelled edge – but box frames can be really good for smaller photos. How big do you want your photo to be? Get a frame that size. Don’t worry about how you’re going to print a photo that size. Just choose a frame in the style and size you like. That’s step one.

2. Measure your frame

This is the area that will be occupied by the photo, so either measure the full frame size or the size of the matte if it has a frame-within-a-frame. Add a centimetre or so to the width and height to allow a bit of leeway then write these dimensions down.

3. Crop your photo

It’s unlikely that your photo will have exactly the same aspect ratio as your frame size. Most cameras shoot in a 3:2 ratio, but most frames have a squarer aspect ratio of 4:3 or even squarer. This is why you should never crop your original photos, because you never know what aspect ratio you will need until the time comes to print or share them. 

Any photo editor will let you set up custom crop sizes if needed, and you can work these out with the frame dimensions and a pocket calculator. For example, if you have a frame size of 50 x 40cm you just need to find the lowest common denominator (see, those maths lessons at school WERE useful). In this case, it’s easy to see that this is a 5:4 ratio, which your photo editor probably has among its preset crops. If not, just add it yourself. 

4. Resize your photo – or not

You can go about this a couple of different ways. You can create a print simply by specifying the dimensions you want in your print options dialog, if available. Or, if you’re using an online lab, you can use the site’s own print size tools. Either way, you don’t need to stress over print sizes or dpi or upscaling or resampling your image manually because the printer or the lab will just adjust the print size according to the dimensions you enter. Bigger prints will have lower resolution, but you look at them from further away so it all balances out. 

Or you can take control of everything and use your photo editor to resize/resample your image to fixed dimension and resolution values. The usual advice is that a good print has a resolution of 300dpi. You will often need to upsize smaller resolution images to get big prints at this resolution and I’m really not sure it’s worth the effort. My feeling is that with any modern camera of 16MP or more it’s really not necessary to start stressing over AI upscaling or resampling methods unless you really are preparing an exhibition of large prints.

You don’t have to be a Photoshop expert. If you export an image from Lightroom Classic or Capture One, say, you can specify the image dimensions and resolution as part of the export settings and they handle any resampling automatically. They can also apply print sharpening – another rabbit hole that most photographers probably won’t want to go down.

5. Desktop printer or lab?

For me, this just depends on the print size. If it’s A4 or smaller (or the equivalent US size) I’ll use my home printer. If iI need a larger print, I’ll use an online photo lab. I use Loxley Colour in the UK, but there are plenty to choose from. Most will offer some kind of preview to confirm your print dimensions. 

If you print at home, do you need to buy an expensive photo printer? Unless you’re printing every week, I would say not. The colours will be a little better and the ink costs might work out cheaper, but it’s a big expense, and if you go for a larger A3+ printer, you’ve also got to find the space to put it. You can get a LOT of online prints for the cost of a home printer, and every time you have to buy a new set of inks you’re pushing the payback time even further away. Online labs are also ideal if you want to print in black and white but don’t want the expense of a desktop printer with dedicated gray inks.

6. Mounting your print

Often your print will be on a larger sheet that needs to be cut down to fit your frame. For this I recommend a craft knife, a steel ruler and a cutting mat. You don’t need anything fancy like a guillotine unless you’re doing this a dozen times a day. If your frame has an inner matte, you can turn photo and matte over and use masking tape to hold down the corners of the print on the back of the matte to keep it in place as you assemble the frame.

So that’s my quick and dirty guide to printing and framing your prints. I know a lot of these steps and recommendations will horrify more technically minded photographers out there, but this guide is not for you. It’s for photographers who just need help overcoming all those barriers to actually getting photos printed and framed like they deserve.