Windows 7 - Actual print size when printing picures

Hi,
I work quite a bit with photos and images. Since Windows 7 there no longer seems to be any way of printing pictures in their actual size and their actual resolution. There's just this wizard that assumes you want to print a standard photo size. The problem is that some of the images I work with require the rasterization to stay true. If I create an image at 600dpi that is 3x4 cm I need to be able to print the image at 600 dpi and get a print that is 3x4 cm in size. With Windows 7 I cant do this. Is there any reasonable way around this? It would seem that making Windows 7 "idiot proof" has made it less useable by non-idiots

Regards
Mike

If it opens in MS Paint you can click File - Print - Page Setup - Scaling - Adjust to 100% normal size. This way you can print the real size, but I do not know about DPIs.

As Neutron16 says, Microsoft Paint might be the answer, albeit a bit basic.



GIMP (which is freeware) is another option: http://www.gimp.org/downloads/

Check Irfanview as well: http://www.irfanview.com/

DPI stands for Dots Per Inch and put simply, a higher DPI increases the resolution of the picture. In other words the image looks a lot clearer and sharper.

Thanks seavixen32. I know what DPI is. By that phrase I meant "I do not know if printing with this trick in Paint will keep your original DPIs".

I do apologise, I just interpreted the comment as asking for a definition of DPI.

Obviously not.

Your going to have to use your printers software to give you the best possible results. When you open the image in any software, goto your printer preferences before printing and choose the best possible results for what your trying to achieve, otherwise you might end up with poor print quality

Thanks for the replies guys. I guess It's time to drop good old Paint.NET and perhaps invest in something proper...like Photoshop.

If you don't want the full-blown version of Photoshop you could always go for Photoshop Elements 10, which although more basic than its big brother is also a lot cheaper.

Nope pal ... there's no need to purchase PS, you can carry on using paint.net or Gimp or any other free graphic package available to printout your images.
(You can even use a free image viewer program like Fasstone image viewer
Photoshop isn't going to solve the issue.
All you need to do is change your printer settings to print at a higher quality.