Previewing Prints

Ink and paper for color inkjet printers are expensive, particularly glossy photo paper. If you're unsure about what's going to print, it's best to preview the output before committing it to expensive paper. Another reason to preview your printout is that the picture in the Print dialog shows you only the first page of photos to print.

To preview prints:

1.	Select one or more photos to preview.
2.	Choose Print from the File menu ().
3.	Pick a style and set desired options.
4.	Click the Preview button. iPhoto "prints" the selected photos to a temporary PDF document called "Untitled" and opens it in Apple's Preview application (Figure 6.2). Figure 6.2. To check a printout in Preview (shown above), click Preview in the Print dialog.
5.	Click the thumbnails on the right side to see multiple pages, and when you're done, close the window or, if you like what you see, click the Print button.

Tips

• Uncheck the Soft Proof checkbox in Preview (at the lower left) to see the photos in color.

• You can save the temporary document in the Preview application if you want a PDF version.

• Previewing in this fashion won't help you determine if your photos will fit within the margins of your printer. Also, any printer-specific changes you make (such as forcing black ink on a color printer) won't be reflected in the preview. See if your printer has an economy or draft mode you can use to test printer-specific features on a single page of photos.

Test, Test, Test!

A few things can affect how a photo looks when it comes out of your printer.

• Printer capabilities, both what they can do physically and what their drivers allow in the Page Setup and Print dialogs, vary by brand and model.

• Inkjet printers print very differently on different types of paper, and it's important to match the print settings to the type of paper you're using.

• iPhoto's print styles (covered next) offer a variety of options.

It may take several tries to determine the best combination of options. You may be able to try some in economy mode on cheap paper, but in the end, you may have to expend some ink on a few sheets of expensive photo paper. To reduce the waste and cost, keep good notes for subsequent printing sessions.