Printing help....

[luv2sleep]

I hope this is the correct place to ask this question. If not, please let me know where to go.

I have frustratingly used up photo paper trying to print out designs that are on the internet. These are available on sites to copy for free. Well my problem is that they are coming out fuzzy. How can I tell what I am supposed to do so that they don't look like that? It's like the picture is too spread out as I can start to see individual pixel boxes. I have no idea how to fix this. I am not very computer design knowledgeable...ok I know nothing, lol. Any tips on how to print an image so it comes out how it was meant to be and not messed up? I hope my question makes sense. Sorry if it does not.

Thanks for any help anyone can provide.

ETA: I even had one image made for me by a designer here and that came out fuzzy. Not sure what in the world I am doing wrong. I even printed it out in 2 different sizes. Still fuzzy.

 

[Jenzerbenz]

What are you planning to do with the designs?
It is distinctly possible that free images on the internet are loaded at a VERY low resolution and will not print out well no matter what you do.
Once you save or download the images, right click them and choose the "get info" in the box that appears.
If the image is less than 1 or 2MB, it is pretty low resolution and will come out fuzzy if you try to print it. Any images that list the image size in KB are not really high enough resolution to use for anything except on the web.
I hope that helps.
I find when searching for images on the web, I use google chrome image search and once you choose image as your search you can also choose size. Choose large and those will be a better resolution.

 

[My3Princez]

Images that are displayed on the web are displayed with 72 pixels in each inch. Printed images generally require about 300 pixels per inch (or close to it) to look sharp. So if these are images you grab off of screens, they only have about 25% of the pixels needed to print and look sharp. So you are right that they look stretched out too thin and you are indeed seeing the pixels. I have noticed that many of the designers here make their designs so that they are 72 ppi for web display and may not realize that it will not print very well.

 

[luv2sleep]

Images that are displayed on the web are displayed with 72 pixels in each inch. Printed images generally require about 300 pixels per inch (or close to it) to look sharp. So if these are images you grab off of screens, they only have about 25% of the pixels needed to print and look sharp. So you are right that they look stretched out too thin and you are indeed seeing the pixels. I have noticed that many of the designers here make their designs so that they are 72 ppi for web display and may not realize that it will not print very well.

Is there a way to fix it or print so it will come out normal?

Thank you both for your helpful responses!

 

[luv2sleep]

Thanks for the tips! I finally figured out how to print them so that they look normally.