To print photo’s in Ubuntu you need a how-to. Here it is.
My set up:
-Operating system: Ubuntu 10.04
-Printer: HP Photosmart Premium C309g, connected to the local network via cable
-HP printer drivers for linux, hplip-3.10.5. Get yours here. Though normally Ubuntu will have these already installed. You can check this with your package manager. Ubuntu has Synaptic to manage its packages.
Forget all the print options in your photo management programs like F-Spot and DigiKam. They don’t work very well. DigiKam does have a Kipi plugin that is a print wizard, but I have had limited success with that.
Easiest thing to do is to open the image you want to print with Gimp. Also installed per default in Ubuntu. Otherwise install it with your package manager of choice.
The biggest advantage of Gimp is that it has a preview function that actually shows the image as it will appear on paper.
- When working in DigiKam, right click the image to open the context menu and choose “Open With”-“GIMP Image Editor”. The image is opened in GIMP.
- From the GIMP image window choose “File”-“Page Settings”. In the popup window choose your printer, paper size and orientation. Paper size is important because photo paper is usually smaller than normal paper. Measure the dimensions of your photo paper with a ruler if you don’t know the size.
- From the GIMP image window choose “File”-“Print”. Go to the tab “Page Settings” and verify the page size. Also set your paper settings to use the paper from the photo tray of your printer.
- On the tab “Image Settings” you can play around with the image size. For example, reduce it so you get white borders around the image.
- Set image quality to “Best” in the tab “Image Quality”.
- On the tab “Color” set “Output Mode” to “Color”
- Click the “Preview” button. If everything looks ok, hit the print icon on top!
Menu item names are translated from Dutch, so they may differ from what it actually reads on your screen. Happy printing!
