A Student Request... Printing!

A student of mine asked If I could do a blog post about printing. I know all of us have sent off beautiful images to a printer only to have it come back looking... well... less than extraordinary. My students problem is this: He cant seem to get prints to look like the image did on his computer or even the back of his camera. They come back what seems to be darker than what he sees on his computer. I feel this is problem for most photographers. To get a good print is a constant struggle even for the best photographers.

There are quite a few different factors that contribute to a good print. I will now discuss in detail some of the main variables dealt with while printing.

1st exposure: your initial exposure needs to be dead on. A good exposure is key to a good print. by good exposure I mean, you should have highlight and shadow detail. We can tell a good exposure, generally, by checking the histogram on our camera. This will tell us if our highlights are over-exposed as well as our shadows being under-exposed. If we have a good exposure we can then move onto the next variable.

2nd Color balance: it is really important to have your image color balanced for a good print. Sometimes we over look this step. The problem is that if we have a serious color shift, our image is loosing information in one of the red, green, or blue channels of our photograph. Basically we are overexposing a color (usually red) and losing the detail information that it holds.

3rd Screen calibration: Chances are that you have never calibrated your computer monitor. This is probably the biggest obstacle to overcome. There are thousands of manufactures and millions of monitors in the world. As far as I know there is no standard they must follow to insure the color is correct on each monitor. This makes it very difficult because whats to say that your monitor and the printers monitor are going to be the exact same. If you can minimize this variable the better off you'll be. To do this you need to buy, borrow, or rent a color calibration device. Check with your local camera shop or printer to see if they rent them. Whoever you print with will most likely have their monitors calibrated. Once you have a calibrated monitor you can rely better upon the wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) principle. Even though you may be able to see details in both the highlights and shadows on the screen, it doesn't mean that it will print that way. your monitor is back-lit which makes it easier to see shadow detail. Prints rely on reflecrted light to see details, so its much harder to see the shadow details. Prints will generally add contrast to what you see in the monitor, you can plan for this. Still there are other variables that can't be ignored.

4th Printer chemistry: This is completely out of your control, but you can be prepared for it. Big print houses control this as carefully as possible. The variations between prints might not even be noticeable, but there is chance for error. If your working on a series of prints to be displayed together its best to have them all run at the same time. This helps eliminate the chance of chemistry changes that can cause variations between prints.

5th Paper: There are hundreds of different types of paper out there. Each one will have different results. Glossy paper will print contrast and clarity better than matte paper. Glossy will also print Shadow detail better than matte. know what your printing on and plan accordingly.

6th Image enhancements: This is probably the second biggest variable on destroying a good print. Often times we get a little carried away on trying to make an image look more interesting. We add contrast generally, this can block up shadows and blow out highlights, not helping the print. If you like the enhancement its better to be more subtle than to over do it, remember prints add contrast anyway.

Great... now what do I do?

There are a few things you can do with photoshop and without. This is assuming you are consistently using the same printer for your work.

Photoshop: you can actually soft proof your print on your screen (calibrated). You will need the .icc paper/printer profile to do this.

1. open the image

2. go to View-->proof setup--Custom...

3. In the proof setup dialog box click "device to Simulate" and select the .icc profile of your paper/printer.

4.Check both "simulate paper color" and "simulate black ink"

5. On Rending Intent change it to "perceptual"

6. OK

This will help us to see on the screen how its going to print. To be sure to get the best quality with your printer its best to do what is written next as well.

Not using photoshop: This is actually more complicated but it can help drastically. Send off a few different types of images to see how the printing affects them. Here are a few to try:

1. high key image

2. low key image

3. 3 of the same image with low, medium and strong contrast

4. A nice tonal black and white image

5. A contrasty black and white image

6. a portrait of someone with nice even color balanced lighting

7. A landscape.

Make sure that when you do this that you have good exposures on all, including details in both shadows and highlights. Be sure that the light in the images is color balanced as well. when you get the prints back compare them to the originals on the screen. Take notes of what changes are taking place. Are they all darker? Did the low key image lose detail easily? or is it just barely there? How about the high key? What about color? is there a color shift in all of the images?

By asking yourself these questions you can begin to see what needs to be done in order to get good prints. For prints that are dark... lighten them. For highlights that are lost... darken them. for too much contrast... flatten it out. For color shifts... add the compliment to balance it in printing.

I know this was a bit lengthy but I really hope that you glean some information from this and that it is useful to you...feel free to comment or add your own request. Happy shooting!