How many of you guys are old enough to remember making test strips in the darkroom? That's how we used to figure out print exposures. We'd tear off a piece of print paper, put it under the enlarger, hit the timer, throw it in the developer and see how close we were. It might take two or three tries, but eventually we got close, and only then did we risk a whole sheet. It saved money and avoided wasting materials, and I still do it today. Only now I'm doing it with inkjet printers.

The idea's the same - check to make sure everything's right before committing a whole sheet of paper. I'd say it's even more important today, since there are more variables involved. You want to make sure the amount of sharpening is right, the print resolution is enough, the color's good and there are no problems with the printer (clogged jets, print heads out of alignment, etc.).

The first step is to prepare your photo for printing. Once you've got it all sized and sharpened (and hopefully are using soft proofing), you're ready to make a test strip. To do that, start by cropping out a narrow section of the image, an area with detail (to check sharpness) and importance (to check color).

Step two is to make a new document in Photoshop. Control/Command N brings up that dialog. Choose the paper size you need (I usually use 8 X 10 sheets for this), Resolution, Color Mode, Bit Depth and Color Profile. Use the same settings that match the image you're going to print. Now you'll have an empty page to work with.

Step three is to take the cropped image from the first step and move it onto that blank page. Use the Move tool (V) to do this. The first time I use a sheet like this, I just put that cropped image at the top of the page. When using a sheet that's been used before (and thus will already have some strips printed on it) you'll need to position the new image in a spot that hasn't been printed on before.

(An alternative method would be to just issue a print command for the cropped image. In that case you'll need to choose a page size in Print Setup, and then turn off the "Center Image" box in Print Preview. After that you can position the image wherever you want to on the page.)

Now print that test sheet, using all of the same settings you'd print the final image with. When it comes out of the printer, you'll see whether everything looks good, or whether you need to go back and change one of the settings or adjustments.

I have a shelf in my office with nothing but test sheets on it, in sizes ranging from 8 X 10 to 13 X 19 and papers from glossy and matte to fine art. Not only does it save me ink and paper (and thus $$), but also avoids putting even more paper in the recycling. And every time I do it, I'm reminded of all the time I spent in darkrooms years ago, making test strips.