My photos print out grainy while looking perfect on screen

You may have the ISO setting too high.
Try ISO 200

Your pictures should not be looking grainy. Are they printed grainy but look clear on your screen. If so then it's just your printer. Try forcing the flash in the highest resolution. If you video's are grainy too then there is possibly something wrong with your camera. Make sure your lens is really clean. Worst case your CCD sensor inside your camera could be bad. Hope not!

from cnet review of the product

• Unfortunately, as with the Z1420, fast print speeds come at the cost of print quality with the Z1300. Black text prints, though nicely dark, were beset by obvious jaggedness. The color graphics print had a slightly faded look to it and color blocks showed graininess and faint horizontal striations. Barcode-style patterns were muddled, too. For our tests, we printed color 4x6 photos with the standard black and tricolor cartridges, as Lexmark did not include photo ink tanks with the test unit. The colors were dull, details were hazy, and again, the entire print was marred by graininess and faint horizontal lines. That said, nobody buys a $25 printer to print photos for framing or to create displays for a classroom science project. A $25 printer is a convenience item for occasional reference prints, and as such, the Z1300 does its job.

Inkjet printer quality
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
Photo Graphics Text Canon Pixma iP1800
Good Good Good Lexmark Z1300
Fair Fair Fair Lexmark Z1420
Fair Fair Fair

Your printer software and the program you used to print the photo have settings to turn up the quality of the printer just for photos.
I suspect you just forgot to do that

hi i think u took print in low resulution photo. pls check ur phot resulution.

the glossy paper you are using (hp) is smearing the ink... there is now ink on the feed rollers and you need to get in there and clean it all up with alcohol...also run epson matt paper for a few prints to get the color to lay down ..good luck

Hi,

This camera takes pictures with a Ppi of 72. That is why the pictures look huge on the screen. To get good quality prints you need to have at least 200 ppi, or even better, 300 ppi.

Or, the contrast of the pictures may be to low. I have an FZ7 too, and I always tweak the contrast and color saturation before outputting.
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1. images straight from the FZ7 are generally low in contrast.

2. Pictures that are low in contrast might not look too bad on screen, but when they are printed they will look slightly greyish.

3. Low ppi pictures look fuzzy in print.

Maybe you can post a sample original picture??

That might be a problem of the photo paper. Use another brand and have a look at the manual to set the right paper settings.