I need a little advice on printing please.

[accentstencil]

I am printing my own business cards on an inkjet printer. On the card I want to put a photo about an inch square and I want ther best quality I can get with what I have.
I have a 3.1 megapixel camera. Should I set the camera to maximum resolution to take the picture which is to be used on the card or will there be a problem when the picture is so small? As far as printing goes I assume I would set that to best quality.
Thanks for any advice offered.

[Longwatcher]

Generically you should always use the best quality setting unless there is a reason not to.

But since a 3.1MP camera can usually produce a full resolution 8"x10" print, you probably don't need to use the highest resolution for the picture. For a 1inch print you need at most 300 pixels x 300 pixels so anything that gives you more then that is good, the more the better actually. That way you should get better results when you downsample (shrink) the photo down to fit on the business card.

For printing though, you should indeed use the highest resolution.

Your results will primarily be affected by the software used first to convert the picture, then to shrink the picture and finally the printer software. So if you took the highest resolution and are printing at the highest resolution and you still don't like the results you will need to change some setting in your software.

Lastly, I am guessing you are new to digital photography, so I will remind you to be sure to sharpen the picture at least once before printing if you have software that lets you do that.

Hope that helps,