Photos print grainy, dull or banded

Photo paper has one coated side, usually the brighter or glossier one; the back is often plain or printed with the paper maker's logo. The paper box or your manual shows whether your printer wants the printable side facing up or down. Printing on the back gives dull, blotchy color and ink that never dries.

Plain paper soaks ink in and spreads it, so photos on it look soft and dull. Use inkjet photo paper, not glossy laser stock, and keep unused sheets flat in their bag so they don't curl and brush the print head.

For a sharp print, aim for roughly 300 pixels per inch at the printed size: about 1800 by 1200 pixels for a 6 by 4 inch (15 by 10 cm) photo. Images saved from messaging apps or social media are often shrunk, and tight crops throw pixels away, so print the original file from your camera or phone.

Fine bands across a photo usually mean a few blocked nozzles. Print a nozzle check from the printer's maintenance menu or the maker's app; if any line is broken, run one cleaning cycle and check again.

If the nozzle check is clean but photos still show banding or slightly doubled edges, run print head alignment from the same menu, with the paper the routine asks for loaded.

In the app's print dialog, open Printer properties, Preferences or More settings, or go to Settings > Bluetooth & devices > Printers & scanners > your printer > Printing preferences. Choose the exact paper type, such as glossy or matte photo paper, and the highest quality, often called Best, High or Photo.

Some drivers have a high-speed or bidirectional option that prints as the head moves in both directions. It's quicker but can leave faint banding; turning it off, where your driver offers it, often gives smoother photos.

In photo editors that manage color, such as Photoshop or Lightroom, either let the app manage color and turn off color adjustment in the printer driver, or set the app to let the printer manage color. When both adjust color, prints often come out too dark or tinted.

Printing a small image to fill a large page enlarges every pixel, so choose a photo size that suits the image. Borderless printing also enlarges the image slightly, so a little of each edge is cut off.

In Photos or Preview, press Command + P. Open Media & Quality, or the maker's own section for paper and quality, then set the media type to your photo paper and the quality to the highest setting.

Open the Color Matching section of the print dialog and leave it on its default unless you're using an ICC profile for your paper. In pro photo apps, choose either app-managed or printer-managed color, not both.

A bright screen, or one with True Tone or Night Shift on, makes prints look dark or tinted by comparison. Turn them off in System Settings > Displays and lower the brightness while you compare. Once a print looks right, save the settings with Presets > Save Current Settings as Preset.