You click Print, and then wait a moment. Nothing happens. Your attempt has clearly failed. A brief check confirms that the problem is not limited to one document or one app. You can’t print anything. Now what?

The number of causes and fixes for print failures runs wide and deep across the Mac troubleshooting landscape. Here’s a checklist of the more common solutions.

1. Check the Print dialog box

After a failed print attempt, press Command-P again. You’ll likely see a badge icon, such as an exclamation mark, next to the printer’s name in the Print dialog box. You may also see a message appear, explaining the cause of the failure and how to fix it.

Find the right printer: One especially common scenario occurs if you print to more than one printer. You may have not selected the one you intended. If your Mac is a laptop, you may have last printed to your cousin’s printer while visiting her in Topeka, but now you’re back home in Portland. The simple fix is to choose your intended printer from the Print dialog box’s Printer pop-up menu.

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Last week I showed you how to configure your printer. This week, we’ll explore the ins and outs of Mountain Lion’s print sheet.

As you’ve learned by now, one of the Mac OS's strengths is its consistency. You needn’t worry that you’ll find the Copy command under the Edit menu in one application and under the File menu in another application. Commands are consistent in this way, and the Print command is no exception. You can always find it near the bottom of the File menu. Let’s run through it.

Easy-peasy printing

Launch TextEdit and open a saved document (if you have one); or create a new document, enter some text, and save the file. Choose File > Print and you’ll see a very simple sheet that includes a pop-up menu for choosing a printer (the default printer will appear here by default), a field for choosing the number of copies to print, a pop-up menu for selecting the page range (by default, all pages will be printed; but you can elect to print a single page or a range of pages—pages 2 through 4, for example—if you wish), a preview area that displays a thumbnail of the document’s first page, and navigation controls for viewing other pages in the preview area. To print your document, simply click the Print button.

The Show Details button at the bottom of this sheet hints that other options await. Click it, and the sheet will expand.

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Much as you may have heard about the “paperless office,” the truth is that paper is still a popular item to have around the home and the office. And it is because many of us have at least one printer attached to our computers—either physically tethered via a cable or virtually connected over a network. Whether you hope to use that printer to produce photographs, drafts of your next novel, or flyers for your kid’s upcoming jai alai tournament, it will do you little good sitting in its box. Now’s the time to break it out and configure it for your Mac. The means for doing that is Mountain Lion’s Print & Scan system preference.

Your preference for printing

Choose System Preferences from the Apple menu and, in the Hardware area, click Print & Scan. If you’ve switched on your printer, attached a cable between it and your Mac, and if the Mac OS natively supports that printer, you’ll see the printer’s name in the Printers list. At this point, you’re well on your way. When you next wish to print something, just choose the File > Print command from within the application you’re using and your printer should shortly produce the printed document you’re after.

To the right of the Printers list is an area that contains a few options. They include:

Open Print Queue: When you print a document, the PrinterProxy application opens. (When it opens, it’s named after your printer.) Any documents in line to be printed will appear in its window. Within this application you can perform a couple of printing chores, which I’ll go into later in the column.

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We can now use our mobile devices for many of the tasks that once required a computer. Unfortunately, for the longest time, printing documents didn’t feel like one of them.

While we wait for that day, we can still output prints right now from the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. By spending a little time reviewing the iOS software available, and the Wi-Fi printers that can use it, we can configure a tidy workflow that will have us dishing out email attachments and photos faster than a short-order chef.

Not all of these configurations are AirPrint related. And for the moment, we’re not bringing our Mac into the workflow either.

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Reader Warren Lane seeks a way to quickly print his documents. He writes:

Is there some way to quickly print a single copy of a file without having to go through a Print dialog box?

Yes, if you do it in the Finder. Just open System Preferences, choose the Print & Scan (Lion) or Print & Fax (Snow Leopard) preference, select your default printer, and drag it to the desktop. Do this and an alias of your printer appears on the desktop (termed a desktop printer).

When you want to print a quick copy, just drag a file (or more, if you like) on top of the desktop printer and, in short order, your printer gives birth to a printed copy of your document without an intervening print dialog box.

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It might feel like you’ve just finished that last helping of turkey at the Thanksgiving, but the calendar doesn’t lie: The holidays are just about here. You’ve got less than a dozen shopping days until Christmas. Hanukkah starts even sooner—December 20—and even Kwanzaa is right around the corner, beginning on December 26. It seems like plenty of time to get your shopping done, but not if you’re relying on online shopping or buying customized tech gifts. If you still have gifts to order, pickup, or send, observe these deadlines to ensure that your gifts are delivered before 2012.

Gifts from the Apple Store

If you’re giving the gift of Apple this year and would prefer not waiting in a long line at the Apple Store, you can buy any in-stock product online and have it shipped to your house. Apple is even offering free two-to-three day shipping on most of its major products. However, if you want something delivered on or before Christmas Eve, you’d better act fast—some Macs need to be ordered by Wednesday to meet this deadline. Here’s the Apple Store’s express shipping schedule with a holiday delivery guarantee:

• iPad: December 19 for engraved, December 21 for non-engraved.
• iPod: December 19 for engraved, December 21 for non-engraved.
• iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS: December 21
• Customized Macs: December 14
• Regular off-the-shelf Macs and popular configurations: December 21
• Apple TV: December 21
• All other items: December 21

All of the above dates promise delivery on or before Christmas Eve. It’s too late to order an iPhone 4S online–they had to be ordered by December 5 to guarantee delivery by December 24. If you order one now, it’s set to ship between December 23 and January 3. At this point, you can either reserve an iPhone 4S after 9:00 p.m. for in-store pickup the next day, or else face waiting in line for a walk-in purchase.

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Color laser printers offer great speed and reliability for demanding business, home-office, and small-office users. While they're great for individuals who want their documents in living color, laser printers really shine in network settings that allow multiple users to take advantage of their high speed and duplexing capabilities.

How do you weigh those advantages and at the same time balance features and price? Here are some tips on shopping for a color laser printer if you’re in the market for one this holiday season. And we’ve got some recommendations for models that passed muster in our tests.

Printer buying advice

What you are printing: The decision of whether to invest in a color laser printer depends largely on what you intend to print. If you want to print text or graphics on plain paper, you need to print a lot, and you need to print quickly, a color laser is the way to go. If you want a color printer for printing photographs, buy an inkjet printer. There are many good ones on the market, with excellent image quality. Color lasers can print photos of course, but the image quality is distinctly inferior in most cases to inkjet output. Most of the machines we've tested can print perfectly pleasing pie charts, logos, color bars, and simple graphics, but they struggle photographic images.

Consider the cost: Most good-quality color laser printers run in the range of $300 and up and are generally larger and heavier than most typical inkjet printers. They're also a bigger investment than standard inkjet or monochrome laser printers and require more room to operate. Many come with longer warranties than typical inkjet printers. However, our recent analysis indicates that the price of a color laser printer is inversely related to its speed: the lower the printer price, the longer you will wait for prints.

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The holidays are fast approaching and so is the pressure to send out your annual greeting cards to update family and friends about your fabulous life and beautiful children. We looked at five of the best, most user-friendly options that make it easy to design and send photo cards. Starting with the Apple programs you already have on your Mac or iOS device, and ending with sites you may not be familiar with, here's a walk through a veritable winter wonderland of photo card-making options.

iPhoto

If you already use iPhoto to manage all of your images, it might make the most sense for you to stick to this program. Start out by selecting a photo event with your desired shots. After you’ve found your favorites, click on the Create button located at the bottom right of the window, then select Card. This takes you to a carousel of cards, where you can choose from three different layouts—Letterpress, Folded, and Flat—and more than two dozen design themes. (Depending on your chosen theme, you can include between one and 13 photos on a single card.)

Once you pick out a layout and theme, you can add text, edit your photos within the frame, import new photos, and even add effects like Black & White, Sepia, and Antique to the photos. You can also edit the fonts and the layout of the text in your cards—choosing the paragraph alignment, and the spacing of the lines and letters. When you’re ready to go, just press “Buy Card” and choose how many cards you would like. iPhoto unfortunately does not offer a discount on bulk orders. They will send them to your address in standard or express shipping, after which you will have to label them and send them out yourself. For more information, check out this in-depth guide to making cards with iPhoto.

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The holidays are upon us, which means you’ll likely be seeing more friends and family in the next few weeks than you usually do the rest of the year. It also means you’ll be taking more photos and sharing them. Rather than sending your guests a digital file via e-mail (how festive!), consider printing some photos on the spot and sending your guests home with bright, sharp prints.

Need a printer? No problem. I’ve got four tips to help you make a smart choice when you go to buy a photo printer. And after you get that shiny new printer, be sure to check out Macworld's tips on how to get the best prints from your digital photos.

1. Choose the printer type

There are three main varieties of photo printers you’ll need to think about when you go shopping.

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A reader who wishes to remain unnamed shouldn’t be so shy, as this is a perfectly lovely question. He or she writes:

Is there a way to print to an Airport connected printer from an iPad? Seems like there ought to be.

There is, although you’ll need a third-party utility to make it work. The utility I use is Ecamm Network’s $20 Printopia 2, a printing utility that works with all iOS devices. First, be sure that the printer is “seen” by your Mac (if it doesn’t appear in the Print & Fax (Snow Leopard) or Print & Scan (Lion) preference click the Plus (+) button at the bottom of that preference window and add it. It should appear as a Bonjour device.

Now install Printopia on your Mac and it appears within System Preferences. Select it and in the printer list enable those printers connected to your Mac—your AirPort-attached printer should appear in this list.

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'Tis the season to be printing address labels, not to mention package labels and envelopes. There are several powerful and creative products available that will give you beautiful and festive results, ranging from free to $50.

At the free end of the spectrum is Avery Design & Print Online, a Web-based utility for printing and merging contacts onto Avery's huge variety of labels. It also offers a sizable collection of clip art or lets you upload your own images to decorate holiday labels. If your needs are fairly modest, Avery Design & Print Online may fill the bill for you.

If you don't mind investing $40 to $50 in an enjoyable tool that will take you much, much further, consider programs like Chronos SOHO Labels 5 or BeLight's Labels & Addresses (formerly Mail Factory).

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Over the last several months we’ve covered numerous tips for producing better prints, and it’s a lot of information to remember. This article presents a handy recap as well as a guided tour through the Print dialog boxes of popular software such as iPhoto, Photoshop Elements and Photoshop CS5—including tips for borderless printing.

Printing recap

The first step to ensuring great prints is to understand that your images are made from pixels and how to control pixel size using resolution, as discussed in Image resolution—the key to excellent prints. The next step is to download printer- and paper-specific profiles for better color accuracy. You can get the skinny on profiles and where to find them by visiting How to use printer profiles for color fidelity. If you enjoy maximum control over your prints, and you’re using Photoshop Elements or Photoshop CS5, you can crop, resize your photo, and adjust its resolution manually as discussed in both How to resize digital images for print and How to resize small images for print. That said, let's turn our attention to using the print dialog boxes of popular software to produce amazing prints—without the hassle of resizing them first. While the screenshots and examples below are from Snow Leopard, the concepts and processes work the same way in Lion.

Using iPhoto ’11

Printing from iPhoto is a snap. Just select the photo(s) you want to print and choose File -> Print (or press Command + P). iPhoto’s Print Settings pane appears wherein you can choose a theme from the list on the left. Standard produces a plain photo with optional captions (under the Layout button) and white, gray, or black margins. Simple Border is much the same, though Simple Mat and Double Mat get interesting—both options let you add a cardboard frame around the photo that prints right on the page (a great way to add more impact to your image).

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[The is the second of a two-part series on how to create and print a comic book or graphic novel on your Mac. Part one was published on Friday, July 29th.]

In my last article I talked about using your Mac to create printed comic books by scanning, editing, and enhancing your original comic book art. This time the focus is on organizing that artwork in a page-layout document, adding word balloons or sound effects, and working with your copy shop to create the best-looking book for the money.

Lay out your pages

Before you import and arrange your scans, contact your copy shop to ask what order they’d like you to provide your pages. This will be either sequentially or in printer’s spreads that appear out of order in your layout document, but fall into the proper sequence when printed and folded in a book.

Organizing pages sequentially is easy. Create a new page-layout document at the size of your individual pages (mine were 5.5 by 8.5 inches). Allowing for a .25-inch margin on all sides, center a picture box on the page. Artwork beyond this area may be cropped during printing. Duplicate the page until you have enough for every page of art in your comic, including covers. Then, starting with the front cover, insert each page of scanned artwork in order until the pages of your book are full.

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[This is part one of a two-part series about how to create and publish a comic book or graphic novel on your Mac.]

Years ago I used my Mac and the services at my local copy shop to create small print runs of comic books to sell at comic conventions. Times have changed, but there’s still something to be said for making comics the old-fashioned way, with ink on paper. Using your Mac and some additional hardware and software, you can create your own comic books and graphic novels that look good without breaking the bank. In this first of two articles, I’ll discuss the materials you’ll need, how to scan your artwork into your Mac, and how to make those scans look their best.

Plan your project and gather equipment

A look at the sample projects in your local copy shop will tell you the sky’s the limit in desktop publishing, but some options are more economical than others. I wanted my comics to be inexpensive to produce, so I created 24 pages of black-and-white art printed double-sided on standard letter-size paper. These pages were then folded and stapled to make a 5.5-by-8.5-inch booklet. You can expect to pay roughly $100 for 100 booklets made this way, but prices will vary. If your budget is higher, extra features like trimming, different paper stocks, and even color printing can improve the look of your final product. I’ll talk about those in greater detail in the next article.

Besides your Mac and the original artwork, you’ll need a scanner to import your artwork into your computer. Almost any highly rated letter-size flatbed scanner capable of capturing 300 pixels per inch will do. You’ll also need an image editor like Photoshop or Pixelmator to clean up and style your scanned images, and a page-layout application like InDesign, Pages ’09, or Word ’11 to assemble your scanned artwork into a book.

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With the release of Bento 4, Filemaker's consumer-oriented database application offers vastly improved printing features, making it possible to create and print mailing labels without any Address Book voodoo or other parlor tricks. But Bento handles these printing tasks in a fashion far different from any other application that you may be using.

Setup: Unlike most database applications, which require you to create some kind of label document and then merge your data into that document, Bento handles the layout and merging of data from within the application's print dialog.

Printing mailing labels

When you select File->Print in Bento, you now have two options: Print Table/Form... (Command-P) and Print Labels... (Shift-Command-P). Selecting the latter opens a print dialog that provides all usual the print options, but you'll also see three tabs‚ Setup, Layout, and Appearance‚ that you use to configure Bento to print your labels.

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When it comes to printing images at home—whether they be drawings, graphic art, or photos—the cost of paper and ink add up quickly. That’s why it’s handy to know how to print several images on the same page.

Aside from printing contact sheets—a grid of thumbnails that’s great for quality comparison or even test prints—or distributing images of different sizes to friends, this technique is useful for showing off your work in a mini-portfolio. In this article you’ll learn how to print multiple images per page using iPhoto, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Adobe Bridge, and Photoshop CS4 and CS5.

iPhoto ’11

Printing multiple photos per page is easy in iPhoto, though there’s a slew of options to wade through. Start by highlighting the photos you want to print by Shift- or Command-clicking them (it doesn’t matter if you’re in Events, Photos, album view, or even Edit mode). Choose File -> Print (Command-P) and iPhoto opens the Print Settings pane. The important thing here is to understand the difference between a photo layout and a page; each photo layout holds up to four photos and each letter-sized page can hold two of those photo layouts. Pick a customizable theme from the list on the left—either Simple Border, Simple Mat, or Double Mat—and then use the “Page 1 of 2” arrows in the pane to scroll through page previews. At the bottom you can pick paper size and print size (in other words, what size layout you want printed on that size paper).

Click Customize and you’ll land inside a mini page-layout view where you can fine-tune the photo zoom level and location within its placeholder (click a photo to summon the Zoom slider; click within the photo to move it around inside the frame). At the top of the window, you can choose to see thumbnails for the layouts themselves, or thumbnails of the photos for printing. Drag a photo down into one of the placeholders to replace what’s there, or drag the same photo into multiple placeholders to print multiple copies (like a school portrait package). Use the buttons in the toolbar to switch themes, change background and border colors or styles, and choose the number of photos included in each layout.

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Among other things, the iPad is a great way to save paper: It lets you carry around all kinds of digital documents that you might otherwise have had to print.

But from time to time you may still need to print data that’s on your iPad—business documents that you created in Pages and Numbers, for example, or driving directions to hand someone who’s not packing silicon. Printing from the iPad can be easy if your needs are modest, but even if you require extensive printing control, there is, as they say, an app for that.

(The following steps work for any iPad, including the iPad 2 and both Wi-Fi and 3G models.)

The basics

Even though you can add a USB port to your iPad with Apple’s iPad Camera Connection Kit ( ), it’s no use plugging in a USB printer, because iOS doesn’t know how to talk to printers via USB. Some printers have built-in Wi-Fi (a natural match for the iPad). But for the rest, you’ll need a computer or other proxy device to serve as a conduit for iPad print jobs: your iPad connects wirelessly to your Mac (or other device), and that in turn connects to the printer.

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Adobe recently acknowledged a print-related bug affecting some users of Adobe Creative Suite 5 applications, especially Photoshop: When you click the Printer Settings button, nothing happens; the Printer dialog does not appear. The Adobe support article implies that the bug is restricted to Epson printers and occurs only if you have chosen “Printer Manages Color in Adobe Photoshop’s Print dialog box” (which I believe is the default option). According to Apple, the symptom is most likely to appear if you have just changed printers via the Printer pop-up menu.

While the precise symptom will never affect the bulk of Mac users, the solution is worth knowing because it will solve a wider array of printer problems.

Assuming you are running Snow Leopard, Adobe offers two potential solutions.

First, make sure you are using the latest Epson printer drivers (if you regularly use Mac OS X’s Software Update, you should already be okay here). Additionally, install Epson’s Common Updater 7.0. This adds Mac OS X 10.6 support to the currently installed Mac driver, but (if I understand the convoluted logic on Epson’s website) is only needed for some of its printers, such as the Epson Stylus Pro 3800 and 3880.

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When you print documents with your Mac, they show up in your printer's queue. You can view that queue by clicking the printer icon in your Dock. Sometimes, though, it's difficult to tell exactly which documents are which in that queue—especially if you're printing a bunch of untitled or similarly-named files. Hints reader ppinheiro76 figured out a delightfully simple way to get quick previews of the files you're printing.

Once you're in the print queue, just double-click on an individual print job to open a Quick Look preview of the document being printed; since it's Quick Look, you could instead tap the spacebar to trigger the same effect.

This reminds me that Quick Look pops up in some unexpected places, and it's often a delightful surprise. For example, I frequently use it in Open and Save dialogs to preview files there. And don't forget that the print queue has some other hidden functionality, too: Remember the one about dragging documents directly into the queue to print them?

Sometimes documents just don't print properly. My latest example: After filling out an expense report in Microsoft Excel, I tried to print it, but the document came out cut off on all four sides. I tried printing it again, specifying in the printer dialog that I wanted to scale the document to fit on one page; it still didn't work. I didn't know where the fault lay: Was it an Excel issue, a printer issue, or something else? But I didn't have time to investigate; I needed to get that expense report in the mail. My solution: I remembered a recent hint about opening two copies of a PDF at once, and used a variation on that to get the report to print.

In Excel, I went to File -> Print, and then clicked the Preview button at the bottom left. (Excel, like some other apps, uses that Preview button instead of an Open PDF in Preview option in the PDF dropdown; the functionality is the same.)

With a PDF version of my spreadsheet now open in Preview, I tried printing the document again—still specifying that I wanted the expense report shrunk to fit. This time, the spreadsheet printed exactly as desired. The same trick should work in any app that isn't printing properly. If you're facing printer frustration and don't have the time or inclination to resolve them, opening a PDF version of your file in Preview and then printing that can be a quick and functional workaround.

In order to make an informed decision, you need to consider issues far beyond the basic cost of purchasing and owning the printer and focus on factors like speed, paper capacity, and ink technology.

Inks can be particularly esoteric; the terminology surrounding printing inks is often confusing and manufacturers don’t always offer a good overview of the strengths and weaknesses of the choices available.

Fear not, however, for this handy guide will shed light on the most common ink technologies, and provide basic information on how they work and which tasks they're best suited for. Hopefully, this guide will to steer you in the right direction and help you eliminate large classifications of printers from consideration so you can concentrate on the choices most useful to you.

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Getting your prints to match what you see on your monitor is one of the biggest challenges you’ll face when dealing with digital art or photography. This article explains how you can use printer- and paper-specific instructions—called profiles—to achieve more accurate results.

The first step, however, is to understand the different ways in which color is produced by monitors and printers. Once you understand that, the whole “color-matching” problem starts to make a lot more sense.

How monitors and printers work

A monitor’s surface is made from glass (or other transparent material) and, depending on the type, produces colors with phosphors, LCD elements, or other light-emitting technology. Printers, on the other hand, use a combination of opaque paper, reflected light, and CMYK ink (short for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black). Newer printers designed for fine art prints can also use additional colors like light cyan, light magenta, several varieties of black, and so on.

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The bad part is that dealing with the challenges presented by a print job—from business cards to posters—can be difficult, particularly if you have never worked with a print shop before and don’t have the budget to contract a professional to handle the process for you.

The good part is that you probably have all the tools you need to produce excellent printed materials already installed on your Mac, so the real trick in establishing a successful relationship with your print provider is to know what questions to ask. For example, does your chosen vendor accept online jobs? Is your job in a format that your printer can handle? Have you chosen the right paper for the job? Do you have a preference for digital or offset printing for your job?

Consider your options

When it comes to printing, your choice of providers is virtually unlimited; while many professional print shops continue, even in this day and age, to cater primarily to professionals in the field of design, many have at least attempted to simplify their processes in order to become more accessible to customers with simpler needs and tighter budgets.

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