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Over the past few years, printing photos at home has become much easier and quicker than it used to be. Producing great results is now within anybody’s reach, provided that a few simple factors are borne in mind. Here are five of the most important.

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A common mistake when selecting an image to print is to use one that is of too low a resolution. A photo to be printed on paper needs to be of higher resolution than one that will remain on a computer screen, so the camera being used should be set to its highest possible image quality levels. Using a digital SLR rather than a compact camera will generally produce sharper, more detailed results. It’s also important to remember that colours look different on paper from how they appear on a computer monitor; some test prints of smaller pictures will help in making a final selection.

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It’s easy to be dazzled by a lengthy specification list. However, if a printer is incapable of printing high-quality images, no amount of options and settings will give satisfying results. Choosing a printer from a well-established manufacturer with a good reputation is more likely to bring success. The best quality is generally obtained from a colour laser printer, but this type is still considerably more expensive than an inkjet printer. Some cheaper inkjet models have no separate black ink tank, instead emulating the colour by mixing other inks together; these are usually unsuitable for photo printing.

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It is often tempting to buy photo-editing software that can do absolutely everything, even if it is expensive. Occasionally, these pro-level features are required for perfect results. Most of the time, though, doing this is simply throwing money down the drain, since the features that are needed for the majority of people are included in much less expensive packages. Once software has been purchased, it helps to spend time getting comfortable with it and learning its basic features. Then, printing out photos can be accomplished quickly and efficiently, without the need to keep referring to the manual.

INFOGRAPHIC BY RAJAPACK

Even if everything else is perfect, the wrong paper can leave a photo looking lifeless, with photographers unfairly blaming their equipment for the disappointing appearance of their prints. Therefore, the desired finish needs to be considered: the most basic division is between matt (or matte) and gloss papers. The glossier the paper used, the more vibrancy pictures printed on it will have – but at the cost of potentially distracting glare. Satin paper is a semi-gloss style which gives a good balance for general use. Cheap paper can have imperfections in its finish, so skimping on this is usually a false economy.

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However good the equipment available, poor results are still likely if the process is rushed. It is important to allow plenty of time, not just for the actual printing but also for preparation. Enough paper and ink should be available to allow several trial runs, so that the final photo will look just right, rather than looking like a first draft. It also helps not to get worked up if things go wrong, since this is likely to result in impaired judgement and a higher chance of making mistakes. Finally, getting someone else’s opinion can be valuable in spotting previously unnoticed flaws.

Veteran National Geographic photographer Sam Abell offers a look inside the heart and mind of a master photographer.

Photography News Around the Web:

1. Eye-opening: Photography Brings Life to Blind Students via CNN
2. Steve Schapiro Talks Photography Then and Now via WWD
3. Princess Photographer: Kate Middleton Goes Behind the Camera via TIME

Tagged as: printing, Tips and Techniques

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Daniel N
Daniel N is a UK blogger who writes on a wide variety of topics including business, marketing and occasionally photography. He is currently working on behalf of Rajapack.

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With the end of the year upon us, I wanted to review my team’s 2012 performance to inform our approach for 2013 and set ourselves some targets. As we’ve been preaching to clients that good content is honest content, I thought why not post-mortem our performance in public and let the data serve as a vehicle to describe how we’ll be approaching SEO in 2013?

So with a little trepidation (I don’t remember an agency going public with so much data previous to this) here’s all of our 2012 ranking data: the good, the bad and the indifferent!

Ranking for 1655 keywords across 14 clients in 3 different languages (PL, DE, UK) on day 1 of the year / engagement, vs. ranking on last week of November.Data covers a total of 376 weeks (not all clients have been with us since Jan 1st, and for most we migrated platforms part-way through the year)Monthly search volume (exact) across all keywords was 7,738,237 per monthAcross all keywords, client average rank had gone up 12.9 positions since the start of the year / engagement.Our client’s visibility had risen in more instances (against 33% of keywords our clients saw a positive rank change) than decreased (we only saw a negative rank change against 9% of keywords)Our clients appeared in the top 3 positions on SERPs more often. Across all clients, on week 1 of their engagement we ranked in the top 3 positions against 247 keywords, at latest count our clients rank in the top 3 against 352 terms, a rise of 42%.The number of keywords for which our clients do not rank has fallen dramatically: From 1028 keywords down to 789, a fall of 23%.

Not bad, especially when you consider that most of our clients tend to be very large corporate brands. Sometimes just getting a project underway and optimised content onto the website is a major challenge, so to see such positive figures proves to me that our practice is going in the right direction.

We are driven by the following 2 statements:

To rank #1 for a keyword, you must deserve to be above all other relevant sites; you must own the best piece of relevant content on the web.

SEO happens when you create great experiences for BOTH users AND search engines …and all of our tactics reflect these truths.

We have pushed clients to move beyond basic optimisation and build content that adds value to people in-market for their products / servicesWe have built hundreds of relationships with website owners in 2012, with the output being high quality, relevant links for our clients.We try to base content on what has proved to be successful for other brands and websites, rather than just having a default “build a landing page about the keyword” approach. Given these results, we will be sticking with this broad approach over the next year.For 9% of all our keywords (152 terms), ranking fell. The total audience for these terms was over 862,350 exact match searches per month.For 21 terms (1.3% of all keywords) we had dropped out of the top 100 results altogether.

Losing visibility for nearly 10% of all tracked keywords really is a major concern. This decline wasn’t concentrated on one particular client or keyword area, and none of our clients were penalised last year by Google, so I am satisfied that our efforts to convince other website owners to link to our client’s content are not at fault.

To me, this is a case of keywords slipping through the cracks because our keyword lists are too long. In 2013 we are going to focus on producing keyword lists that only contain terms we believe tie into our content plans and that will actually impact on client performance. You can see my posts on a new, fairer method for keyword research here.

Around 12% of our terms rank in the same place now as they did when the respective engagements began: the vast majority of these are brand terms or generic keywords where we have always ranked #1.To me the real story comes in the number of keywords which haven’t ranked during 2012. Of the 1655 keywords we have been tracking, our clients remain unranked for 757. That’s 46% of our total keywords. Major problem. Based on the idea that “you will rank #1 when you have the best piece of relevant content on the web” we quickly established 2 truths about the majority of keywords that had not ranked all year:

Keywords were unrealistic for our client given their current web assets. E.g. one client asked us to track “save time” because there were some very specific timesaving tips to do with a key product on their website. In reality there is no way a specialised piece of content would deserve to rank #1 for a very general term.Keywords were relevant for the client but not present on the website. E.g. one client wanted to rank for “cheap cars” but refused to use the word “cheap” on their website. Another common flaw was having “review” keywords in our keyword lists but no review-based content on the actual website.

To improve performance, these are two problems our agency has to tackle in 2013. I suspect that amongst the SEO industry we are not alone.We want to retain the idea that SEO is about creating content which will earn its own distribution rather than SEO being a group of people building links to crap pages. We also want to do better at setting client expectations on the keywords it could realistically expect to rank for. As a result, we believe SEO in 2013 is going to be about the following:

Base work on content initiatives, not landing pages. A content initiative is a project that revolves around the development and publication of a resource. The key point is that this resource adds a ton of value to people in your target market. E.g. for a financial services client you might build a free PDF eBook which covers every aspect of setting up an online business, with useful tips and recommendations for each step of the process. Using this resource as an anchor, you can develop a full distribution plan in advance of publication, then execute upon launch. When a great piece of content and a distribution plan come together, you have a content initiative.Base engagements on shorter, more focussed lists of keywords. In order to rank #1 we almost need an individual content strategy for each keyword, and so having 200 keywords per engagement is just unrealistic; major corporate clients are not going to cope with that many new initiatives. Fewer keywords = easier to prioritise where to begin less chance of inaction.

With regard to the second point we have already completely revamped our keyword research process, and now we are moving towards a point where we have a full process in place for planning and executing content initiatives. Whilst looking at our entire dataset for ranking was a bit traumatic, and there were undoubtedly some harsh truths to take on board, I’m glad we did it because it has reinforced our core principles, and helped us identify the most urgent areas for attention in 2013. As an SEO team we can accept that you aren’t always going to improve ranking for every single term, but we’re determined that we’ll see more action and better results next year. It'd be great to hear what you guys are doing to update and adapt next year – see you in the comments!

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Google has extended its Gmail search trial to include results from its calendar and online documents applications, as well as adding the features to its email application and its core search tool.

Gmail users will now be offered a mix of search results from their Google Calendar, Google Drive and email messages when they start typing into the Gmail search box.

The first version of the expanded search results offering, which launched in August, was restricted to Gmail messages appearing in Google search results.

As well as adding the new search feature to the Gmail application, Google has also updated its core search functionality. When searching Google for a particular term or name, users will be now be offered a mix of results from their Gmail messages and Google Drive files on the right-hand side of the page, as well as the core search results in the middle.

According to Google, it has received positive feedback on the initial trial, which has led the firm to expand it to Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Drive.

We signed up and were accepted for the original trial back in August, but have seen very little evidence of it in practice. Although we run Google searches on a daily basis, we've seen our Gmail messages returned only once, even though we've run tests searching for specific terms included in our email.

We've signed up for the extended field trial and will report back on the results once we hear we've been accepted.

For those of you keen to try this out for yourselves, the trial is available only in English and for those with @gmail.com addresses.

This article was originally published on the Inquirer.

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