How to Print and Display Instagram Photos at Home
We write a lot about Instagram because it's pretty amazing. It's a fast and easy way to share great looking photos from our iPhones. We've written about how to order prints and a number of other things using your Instagram photos, but they aren't always cheap. And, worst of all, they aren't very instant. There's nothing worse than having to wait for all those photos to show up at your door. So, here's the easiest way to put the "insta" back into your Instagrams and print your own photos at home.
We're choosing to make 4" x 4" prints in this guide because they're easy to frame and because you can fit four prints to a regular sized page, getting you the most bang for your buck.
What You'll Need
>> Glossy photo paper
>> Scissors
>> A printer with a fresh cartridge of color ink
>> Adobe Photoshop, or any other image editor that lets you resize images
>> Instagram, of course!
Choose Your Photos
Instagram, by default, holds images in the app itself, saves photos to camera roll, and lets you export photos to services like Flickr and Facebook. The only place you can get high resolution photos though is through your Camera Roll. So, you'll get the highest quality prints if you email your photos directly to yourself.
Unfortunately, Camera Roll limits the number of photos you can send to yourself via email. And, it might be hard to find the Instagrams you want while looking through all the pictures you've ever taken. If that's the case, the easiest source to save your pictures for printing is through an online Instagram viewer like Instagrid. It's easy to make an account, and you can quickly peruse your photos and save them to your hard drive for printing.
The difference in resolution is pretty drastic. Instagrid will display 612 x 612 images, while the photos Instagram saves to your camera roll are 2080 x 2080. For the purpose of this guide, the 612 x 612 images look just fine in 4 x 4 prints. But, if you want to go any bigger, we'd highly recommend using the 2080 x 2080 files from your camera roll.
Whatever you decide, pick at least four of your best and brightest!
Resize Your Photos
Once you've chosen your images, you'll have to resize them. This step is easiest with Photoshop, but you can do it with any other image editor you choose.
In Photoshop, once you've opened a photo, select "Image > Image size" from the menu bar. Since we're creating 4 x 4 prints, you'll want to change the document size to 4, as shown above. You'll also have to change the resolution, or your photos will be grainy and low resolution when you print them. At minimum, change the resolution to 300 pixels per inch. If you're using 612 x 612 images from Instagrid, the default will be set to 72--do not print your photos at this resolution! If you're using photos from your camera roll, you can even set the resolution as high as 520, but prints will still look good at 300.
Once you hit OK, Photoshop will blow up your photo and it won't look as good when you opened it. Don't worry about this; it'll still look great once you print the photo. Repeat this step for three other photos of your choice.
Prepare To Print
4 x 4 is a great size for conventional printing, because you can fit four prints per 8.5" x 11" sheet of photo paper--and those sheets aren't all that cheap, depending on how high quality you go.
To fit four images per page, you'll want to create a new, blank, 8 x 8 canvas in Photoshop. From the menu bar, select "File > New." Set the width and height dimensions to 8 by 8 inches, making sure to change pixels to inches in the drop down menus. Also, set your resolution to 300 pixels per inch. Again, this is the minimum resolution you'll want for a good looking print.
Now that you've created your canvas, paste the 4 photos you resized into each corner of the blank image. You can make a selection box at each corner of the blank image to properly align the photo you're pasting. If you're mixing up images with white borders and images with no borders, make sure put the no border images next to the white bordered images, rather than putting the white bordered images next to each other--it'll make it much easier to cut them up!
Now that you've prepared your photo, it's time to print! The kind of paper you choose is ultimately up to you, but there are plenty of options and quality ranges in photo paper. This high quality photo paper by HP is only a little over $12 with shipping on Amazon.com, and gets you 50 sheets. That makes each print a little less than $0.17 each--not too bad, right?
We went with a slightly lower quality paper from Kodak, which cost us around $6.00 for 25 sheets. If it's photo paper, it'll do.
Insert your paper into your printer, and enter the Print dialog in Photoshop (hit Command + P). Photoshop should be good to go by default, but just make sure the print resolution is 300 PPI and the height and width of the image is set to 8 by 8 inches. Scale to fit media must also be unchecked. This should be good to go, so hit print. Another box will pop up with your specific printer settings. Make sure to choose photo paper and the highest quality print settings your printer offers, and hit print.
In a few seconds you should be staring at four beautiful, glossy Instagrams. Cut them out with scissors and you're good to go. Wasn't that fast?
Display
Now that you've printed your photos, you'll of course want to display them. If you live by a brick and mortar Ikea warehouse, check out their Ribba line--they have several square picture frames. The Ribba frames look great and aren't too expensive.
Or, you can do as we did and hang your photos on twine. We used plastic beading string, but fishing line works well too. Or, if you want a craftier look, you can try yarn or hemp. Hang the photos with small clothes pins, or use binder clips like we did. At this point, you're only limited by your own creativity. So get to it and display those beautiful prints!
Original Page: http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/how_print_and_display_instagram_photos_home
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