At the end of my Bokeh 101 tutorial, I briefly mentioned the importance of resolution when you’re taking photos. A digital photo is made up of megapixels, or picture elements. The more megapixels in a photo, the more details you will capture. This is important when you want to print your picture. If your image has a large number of megapixels, you can print high-quality enlargements.

I used to take photos at a lower resolution to help save room on my memory card, and I came to regret it when I’d go to print out the pictures. They looked great on the computer screen but horrible on paper.

Here is a handy chart to see the largest high-quality image you can print with the megapixels you have available:

What does this have to do with Bokeh? Well, Bokeh pictures look AMAZING when you print large sizes and frame them. And since part of the beauty of Bokeh photos is the blurry light pockets in the background, you REALLY don’t want those to be blocky (the effect you get when you over-enlarge a photo). So, go into your camera’s settings and make sure you set your camera to take pictures at the highest resolution possible!

The printer I bought my parents is currently on sale, the Photosmart Plus e-All-in-One Printer. They use it to print out the photos of Annie that I post on my blog and flickr. They love it, and the photos look great. I highly recommend it!

To go along with their printer, I gave them glossy photo paper (which I talked about here) and ink. My parents now have photos of Annie and Maddie all over their house – and the best part is, they did it themselves! YAY!

Have any questions about megapixels or printers? Let me know! If you want some display inspiration for your gorgeous Bokeh photos, I have some here and my photo partners HP have some here.