Dealing with Warning Icons

One problem that can appear any time you print a digital photo is poor quality, or rather, your inability to predict the quality of a print. Numerous variables can play a part in reducing the quality of a printed image, but iPhoto tries to help prevent one of the most commonprinting an image at a size larger than is appropriate for the image's resolution. When you have an image that's too low resolution for the proposed size, iPhoto displays a triangular warning icon to alert you to the problem (Figure 7.23).

Figure 7.23. When a page design calls for a photo to be printed larger than its resolution allows, iPhoto places a warning icon on the offending image.

Ways to deal with a lowresolution warning icon:

• Choose a different page design so the photo with the warning icon shrinks small enough that the icon disappears (Figure 7.24).

  Figure 7.24. To make the warning icon disappear, change the page design so the printed size better matches the resolution of the image. Adding more photos decreased the size of each photo to the point where they would print at a decent quality.

  

• Move the image to a different location on the current page or another page where it will appear at the necessary smaller size.

• Cropping a photo or zooming it makes it more likely that the image won't be large enough to print properly. To remove cropping, select the image, and from the Photos menu choose Revert to Original. Remember that this will remove all your changes, not just the cropping. Try again after cropping the image less heavily.

• If you run into this problem regularly, make sure your camera is set to take pictures at its highest resolution.

• If you decide to live with a low-resolution warning icon, note that the icon won't appear on the printed page.

Text Warning Icons

If you see a small, yellow, triangular warning icon next to a text box while designing pages (Figure 7.24), it's because the text doesn't fit in the box. The font size is predetermined by the theme, but you can switch to a different font or shorten the text.