How to Print Photo Strips at Home

A digital photo strip is a file. It sits in a downloads folder, gets backed up, and is never looked at again. A printed one goes in a wallet or inside a cupboard door. Fifteen years later, it turns up in a box you meant to sort. Don’t have strips yet? Make some free in our online photobooth.

Getting from file to print is easy, but three things often go wrong. The export resolution, the page layout and the printer driver can each quietly ruin it. Get those three right and home printing is genuinely straightforward.

This guide covers the whole process with real numbers. You'll get sizes in millimetres and pixels, the settings that matter, and options if you don't own a printer.

How big is a photo strip, really?

The classic vintage booth strip is roughly 1.5 inches wide. The modern standard, and the size almost every print shop assumes, is 2 × 6 inches. That's about 51 × 152 mm. Four frames stacked vertically with a small footer for a date or logo.

That size matters for one practical reason. Two strips sit side by side on a standard 4 × 6 photo print with no waste. 4 × 6 is the cheapest, most common photo paper size. Every home photo printer and kiosk supports it. So the whole workflow is simple. Make a 4 × 6, put two strips on it, and cut down the middle. Every strip from our free online photo booth exports at that size. So do shared strips from our online photobooth for long-distance couples.

For frame heights, margins and footer placement, see photo strip sizes and dimensions. For printing, the four numbers above are all you need.

What you need before you start

• Your strip file, exported at the largest size available rather than a screenshot.
• Photo paper. 4 × 6 glossy or semi-gloss, 200 gsm or heavier. Ordinary copier paper will physically work but the result feels like a receipt.
• Any inkjet printer that accepts 4 × 6 media. A dedicated photo printer is nicer but not required.
• A metal ruler and a craft knife, or a guillotine trimmer. Scissors will work but the edge will show it.

Step 1, export at 300 DPI, not screen resolution

Print resolution is measured in dots per inch. Below about 240 DPI, detail starts to look soft. 300 DPI is the standard target every print lab assumes. A 2 × 6 inch strip at 300 DPI needs to be 600 × 1800 pixels.

Screens work at a fraction of that. A strip that looks sharp at 400 px in a browser prints at about 200 DPI. It looks mushy, especially in hair and footer text. This is the single most common reason home-printed strips disappoint.

When you take a strip in LensBooth, download the full-size file rather than right-clicking the preview. The downloaded version is the one built for printing.

Checking what you actually have

1. Windows: right-click the file → Properties → Details. Look at Dimensions.
2. macOS: select the file and press Space, then Command-I in Preview → Tools → Show Inspector.
3. Phone: open the image in your gallery and check the info panel. It's usually a swipe up or an ⓘ button.

If the width is under 600 px, printing at 2 inches wide will be visibly soft. Print it smaller instead. At 1.5 inches wide, 600 px still gives you 400 DPI of headroom.

Step 2, lay two strips onto one 4 × 6 sheet

Printing one 2 × 6 strip on a 4 × 6 sheet wastes half the paper and ink. Doubling up takes about a minute, and you get two copies. Keep one and give one away, which is the whole point.

The quickest method is a word processor

1. Create a new document and set the page size to 4 × 6 inches. On a Mac, use Layout → Size → Manage Custom Sizes. On Windows, use Page Setup → Custom.
2. Set all four margins to 0.
3. Insert your strip image twice.
4. Set each image to exactly 2 inches wide and 6 inches tall. Then set text wrapping to "behind text" so you can move them freely.
5. Place one at x = 0, the other at x = 2 inches. Both at y = 0.
6. Export as PDF. Print the PDF, not the document.

If you have image editing software

Create a new canvas at 1200 × 1800 px, 300 DPI. Paste your 600 × 1800 strip twice, aligned left and right. Flatten and export as a maximum-quality JPEG or a PNG. This gives you the most control over the seam between the two strips.

Step 3, the printer settings that actually matter

Almost every bad home print is caused by the driver resizing the image without being asked. Four settings prevent it.

• Scaling: 100% / Actual Size / None. Never use "Fit to Page" or "Scale to Fit". Those settings silently shrink a 6-inch strip to 5.8 inches and adds a white border.
• Paper size: 4 × 6 in (10 × 15 cm). Set this in both the app's print dialog and the printer driver's own settings. They are separate and they disagree more often than you would expect.
• Media type: Photo Paper Glossy (or whatever matches your paper). This changes how much ink is laid down and how long the printer waits between passes. On plain-paper settings, photo paper comes out washed out; on photo settings, plain paper comes out soaked.
• Quality: High / Best. Slower and uses more ink. For something you intend to keep for a decade, it is worth it.

If your printer supports borderless printing, turn it on. If it doesn't, expect a 3 to 5 mm unprintable margin on each edge. Position your strips so you can trim it off.

Print one test on ordinary paper first. Hold it against a ruler. If the strip measures 6 inches, your settings are right and you can load the photo paper.

Choosing glossy, matte or semi-gloss paper

Glossy gives the deepest blacks and the most saturated colour, which is why it is the default for photo prints. It also shows every fingerprint and reflects light badly under a lamp. For strips that live in a wallet, glossy will scuff.

Matte is more forgiving. Fingerprints don't show, it curls less, and it's easier to write on. That matters if you date your strips on the back. Colours are slightly muted and blacks are closer to dark grey.

Semi-gloss or lustre is what most print labs use as standard. For strips it's usually right, with nearly the contrast of glossy and the durability of matte.

Weight matters as much as finish. Anything under about 180 gsm feels like paper rather than a photograph. 230-260 gsm is where a strip starts to feel like an object.

Cutting without ruining it

1. Let the ink dry properly. Fifteen minutes minimum on glossy, longer in a humid room. Cutting wet prints drags ink across the surface.
2. Cut on a self-healing mat or a spare piece of card, never directly on a table.
3. Use a metal ruler, not plastic. A craft knife will shave slivers off a plastic edge and wander.
4. Make several light passes rather than one hard one. One heavy cut tears the paper fibres and leaves a fuzzy edge.
5. Cut the long centre line first, then trim the ends. It is easier to keep one long cut straight than to correct four short ones.

Want the rounded corners of a real booth strip? A 3 mm corner punch from a craft shop costs very little and makes a big difference.

If you do not own a printer

You have three reasonable options, and honestly the second one is what most people should do.

Pharmacy and supermarket kiosks. Boots, Walgreens, CVS, most large supermarkets. Upload or bring a USB stick, order a 4 × 6 print, cut it yourself. Takes an hour, costs the price of a coffee. Make sure you order it as a 4 × 6 photo print of your doubled-up sheet, not as a custom size.

Online photo labs. Better paper, better colour, and cheap in bulk. Got a year of strips saved up? Printing thirty at once costs little per strip, and the quality beats a home inkjet. Order 4 × 6 prints of your two-up sheets.

Instant photo printers. Pocket-sized Bluetooth printers using ZINK or instant film. They're convenient and fun, but the paper is usually 2 × 3 inches, the wrong shape for a strip. Useful for single frames, not for strips.

Portable photo printers. Dye-sublimation printers like the Canon Selphy print true 4 × 6 photos at home or on the go. Print your two-up sheet at 100%, cut it in half, and the strips look close to a real booth print.

Fixing the four common problems

The print came out with a white border

Either scaling was set to "Fit to Page", or borderless printing is off. Check both. If your printer cannot do borderless, design your sheet with the strips inset by 5 mm and trim afterwards.

Colours look dull or too dark

It's almost always a media-type mismatch. The driver is laying down plain-paper amounts of ink on photo paper. Set media type to match your actual paper. If it persists, screens are backlit and paper is not: brighten the image 5-10% before printing.

The image is soft or pixelated

Resolution. Check the pixel dimensions as described in step 1. If you're stuck with a small file, print it smaller instead of upscaling. A crisp 1.5-inch strip beats a soft 2-inch one.

There are faint horizontal bands across the print

Clogged or misaligned print heads. Run the printer's head-cleaning and alignment cycle. On an inkjet that has sat unused for months, expect to run cleaning twice.

What to do with them once they exist

The best thing about printing strips is that it forces a decision about where they live. A folder of files has no natural home; a stack of prints demands one.

A cheap A5 notebook with the date written beside each strip becomes something worth keeping almost immediately. So does a corkboard, the inside of a wardrobe door, or the back of a phone case. You'll find more ideas in what to do with your photo strips. To make it a habit, read starting a photo strip tradition.

Haven't made one yet? The free photo booth runs in your browser with no download. The export is already sized for this workflow.

Frequently Asked Questions