How to print photos from your phone: 10 expert tips
There’s just nothing quite like holding perfect photo prints in the palm of your hand.
Instead of scrolling endlessly through your camera roll, printing photos from your phone lets you share, relive, and treasure all your most amazing moments. Yeah, those incredible holiday pictures definitely shouldn’t stay trapped on a screen.
There are tons of reasons why you should print your photos, but you’ll want to make sure they look their absolute *best*. They look great on your screen, so they need to look great when printed, too.
From choosing print sizes to editing your photos, our experts have put together 10 top tips on how to print photos from your phone!
Let's dive in and turn you into a photo printing master.
1. Capture high-resolution photos on your phone
It all starts with taking high-quality photos on your phone. If you’re taking low-resolution or blurry photos, then (you guessed it) you’ll end up with low-resolution or blurry prints. And that simply won’t do.
Taking photos with a high-resolution camera is obviously a good starting point, and the most recent iPhone, Samsung and Google Pixel devices have very impressive cameras. However, you’ll also want to make sure you’re printing the highest-quality version of your picture, which means you should always print the original photo.
Photos printed from social media, screenshots or photo editing apps will lose some of their detail and quality. The original file will have the sharpest, most vibrant quality, so we always recommend printing photos directly from your camera roll, rather than printing photos from Instagram if possible.
2. Save photos in the right format
Before you can start printing photos from your phone, you need to save them in the right format to preserve your photo quality. JPEG and PNG files are the most common formats for photo printing, while you can also print TIFF files if you’re working with professional-quality photography.
It’s also important to check the size of your file, as this can have a huge impact on print quality. Smaller file sizes are usually compressed and often result in blurry, pixelated prints, whereas larger files typically contain far more detail and colour.
The recommended photo printing resolution is 300 PPI (pixels per inch), as this always delivers crisp and sharp images. When printing photos with us, we’ll let you know if your photo is below the required quality!
3. Decide where to print your photos
Now you need to choose the best way to print photos from your phone. There are essentially two options: you can either print photos at home or at a professional photo printing shop.
Printing photos at home might seem like the more convenient option, but there’s just no match for the detail, colour and quality you’ll get from a photo printing lab. Even if you have a great photo printer at home, there’s still no contest here.
A professional printing shop will use state-of-the-art technology, premium materials and advanced techniques to offer superior print quality. Whether it’s a cute pet pic or a magical wedding snap, your photo will have sharper details and brighter colours when printed professionally.
You’ll also have much more choice and creative freedom. Along with regular photo prints, you can also print photos on canvases, posters, metal, or even personalised gifts for the whole family!
4. Calibrate your phone screen
Printed photos can look very different to what you see on your screen. Phone screens emit light while paper prints reflect it, so sometimes colours can look warmer (or cooler) than they’ll actually appear in print.
The key here is to maintain a natural screen brightness when looking for photos to print on your phone. You should turn off any “auto display” features and set your display to “Natural”, while setting your brightness to 50-70% will more accurately mimic the look and feel of paper prints.
5. Select the perfect photo print size
The size of your prints can have a huge impact on your photo quality. Getting this wrong can lead to all kinds of awkward cropping, pixelated images and, ultimately, some fairly disappointed faces. And we simply don’t want that.
Printing small, low-resolution images at a large size is the most common mistake we see. This often results in terribly stretched and blurry images, so we always recommend printing low-quality images in smaller sizes, such as standard 6x4”, 7x5” or 8x6” prints.
Large photo prints, including posters and A3 prints, require high-resolution photos to really look their best. If you’re unsure which size is right for you, check out our photo printing size guide or speak to the experts in our shops!
6. Decide on your paper finish
Your choice of photo paper also has a major impact on how your prints look. You’ll always want to print on high-quality photo paper, but you also need to decide what type of photo finish is right for you: glossy, matte or lustre.
Glossy photo prints offer the most vibrant colours and sharpest details, whereas matte photo prints offer a softer and subtler style with far less glare. Lustre prints offer something in between, with a semi-gloss finish that’s not as vibrant as a glossy print, but not as muted as a matte print either.
The most popular finish is glossy, but check out our complete glossy vs lustre prints comparison to decide what’s right for you!
7. Edit brightness and colour only slightly
A touch-up here, a glow-up there. You might be tempted to edit your photos to perfection, but it’s important not to overdo things.
Whether you’re enhancing colours, tweaking contrasts or playing around with filters, over-the-top editing will make your photos look unnatural. Instead of making excessive changes, we recommend using editing apps to tweak brightness, fine-tune colours and make other super-subtle changes.
You might want your photo to look completely “perfect”, but you still want your original photo to shine through. There are tons of third-party editing apps you can use, but remember that your photos will lose some of their quality when you upload them, so you’re usually better off using your phone’s editing tools instead!
8. Crop your photos very carefully
Most print sizes won’t match your camera’s aspect ratio, so you’ll likely need to crop photos to make them fit. Once you’ve uploaded photos for printing, it’s really important to preview your prints and make sure that nothing important has been cropped out.
It’s also important to note that if you crop too much, then your image will become smaller and lose some of its resolution, so you should only crop when absolutely necessary. Most phone cameras use the same 4:3 aspect ratio as our 8x6” prints, so this is the size you should choose if you want to keep cropping to an absolute minimum.
Cropping is inevitable for most other print sizes, as they all have varying aspect ratios. We recommend testing your photo on different print sizes to find the aspect ratio that suits it best!
9. Test printing different versions of your photo
Once followed all the other steps above, you might want to order a few test prints just to make sure you’ve got everything right. After all, it’d be a nightmare to order 100s of prints and feel a little unhappy with them.
By ordering a few “test” prints first, you can make sure your screen calibration, brightness settings, filters, cropping, and everything else are completely spot on. This is an especially good idea if you're printing photos in large quantities, as you can experiment with different print sizes and finishes before ordering the bulk of your photos!
10. Print high-quality photos at Max Spielmann
Okay, so now you’re finally ready to print all the amazing photos on your phone.
At Max Spielmann, you can print photos instantly at our self-service kiosks, or order prints online and collect them in-store 20 minutes later. Yep, you’ll have picture-perfect photo prints in almost no time at all.
Either way, you can choose from a great range of print sizes and finishes, and your photos will be printed on premium photo paper that’s made to last.
Your amazing photos deserve the very best, so we’ll bring them all to life in vibrant colour, pin-sharp detail and outstanding resolution!
