Printing in the digital age

In Paris I had 50 photos of this lemur printed for a NG advertising event and now at home I've had some big (6+ feet long) prints made. Printing has been on my mind a lot lately. 

Whether I'm are using a professional lab or my office printer there are a couple of color management tricks I use to get the best results possible.

The first trick is calibrate the monitor. Calibration makes sure that the monitor colors match real world colors. It makes certain that the monitor is showing red as red and not as say magenta or orange. It is the single most important step in color management and the one that photographers overlook most often. It can done in the monitor preferences (SORT OF), but for consistent results use a hardware device. I use an X-Rite colorimeter every week. This ensures that the color on my monitor matches the color on everyone else's monitors. This is critical when working with a photo lab.

I've used 2 labs lately Central Color in Paris and Chromatics in Nashville. Central Color is a virtual temple to photography. They care deeply about each print and also about their place in photo history. Chromatics has been a premier color printer for a long time. They have printed much of David Doubilet's work and are my choice when I need big prints. 

For in office printing I use an Epson 3880. Managed properly, the current generation of epson ink jet printers produce astounding results. The first step in color management is calibrating the printer. This involves printing a target on the printer and having a service make a custom icc profile. 

I use Think Fixed for profiling, but there are other services (here). You need a different profile for each ink/paper combination. Most printers will come with a set of pre packaged profiles, but you will almost always get better results with custom profiles.There is an excellent video tutorial on printing from Photoshop here. 

Good luck and happy printing.

-Stephen Alvarez

 

Comments

[kaia]

A while ago I bought a Hewlett-Packard printers, it took less than two months it was broken.i am considering buy a new one,Good quality.
my website:http://www.playerassist.com/sto/

[Framelessframes.blogspot.com]

The photos of Lemur's in the stone forest were great, I looked at some of them in your website. By the way I enjoyed going through your photos.

As a person who is interested in photography, I have this problem of calibrating the monitor for ages. I do not have the budget to buy a 2000$ monitor and the hardware calibrator. However, I tried my best to find a CRT monitor (regular LCD monitors are out of question for me, the contrast changes from top to bottom). I use adobe gamma to calibrate but It seems that my photos look different on each single monitor. I am becoming hopeless about it.

One small request for a favor. Is it possible for you to take a look at my photographs in http://www.photo.net/photos/AmirAli ? I have never heard a professional photographer's opinion about my photos. Maybe cause I lived in Iran, maybe cause I did not have access to lots stuff. It would be great if you give me advice. I will come back and check here for your response. You can also put your response as a comment on my blog, email me, whatever is easier for you works for me. Pleaaaaaasee.

Cheers,
AmirAli Sharifi