Printing Photos With Windows XP

Even modestly priced printers can produce photo prints to rival high-street developers, Running them isn't cheap, though. It's not just ink costs that mount up. Specialist photopaper is essential for high quality results, but costs upto 50p per A4 sheet or grapple with image-editing software to fit several photos on one page, you'll be delighted to hear there's a much easier way to print photos built into Windows XP.

1. Open the folder containing the photos you want to print. If they're split over a number of folders, copy them all into a new one. Right-click the desktop and select New, Folder. Name it, then slect the pictures you want, hit Ctrl and c to copy them and Ctrl V to paste them into your new folder. Make sure Windows knows that this folder contains images. Closing and reopening it will usually do the trick, but if not, click View, Customise This Folder and select Pictures from the drop-down list. Click OK, and on the left of the window you'll see a group of links called Picture Tasks. Click on Print Pictures
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2. The Photo Printing Wizzard appears. Click Next, then go through the thumbnails and untick any pictures you don't want to print. You won't need to do this if you've created a new folder, but you might want to deselect any pictures you want to print larger or smaller than the others, then come back to them later.
3. Click Next and make sure the correct printer is selected. Click Printing Preferences to specify high-quality printing and the type of paper you're using.
   
4. Click Next again, and you'll be presented with various layout templates. These range from one photo per page to a contact sheet-style print of up to 35 images per page with filenames appearing underneath. Standard photo sizes such as 18x13cm (around 7x5") and 10x15cm (around 6x4") are also avalible, and you can fit three of the latter on each A4 sheet. Click Next to print your pictures