Table of contents for Photo Printing in Photo Printing

As we reported in Photo Review’s Photo Backup pocket guide, people everywhere are taking more and more photos, thanks in part to the proliferation of very capable cameraphones that make it easy to share precious moments online using services like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and Flickr (to name a few of the most popular sites). According to Social Media News, as of April 2018, more than 60% of Australians were active users of Facebook with 50% of the population logging onto Facebook at least once a day. Many of the images shared through social media will be ephemeral; taken, posted and forgotten about. And that’s fine in some situations. But what happens when you want to recall shots taken on an important holiday or of somebody who has passed away?…

In theory, if you have a properly calibrated monitor and a colour managed workflow, you’d expect the image on the screen to reflect how a print will look. Sadly, in practice, things are a bit more complicated. For starters, there’s a huge difference in the dynamic range of on-screen images and those that are printed. This is because colours are displayed on screen via transmitted light whereas colours on paper are seen via reflected light. A screen’s contrast ratio is typically around 1000:1, whereas the contrast ratios of inkjet prints range from around 50:1 on textured fine art papers to around 200:1 on glossy media. It is difficult to translate the relatively high contrast in an on-screen image into the much lower range that can be reproduced on paper although,…

Most people expect to be able to take a photo and obtain printed images that match their expectations or improve upon them. However, this requires a colour-managed workflow where image data is passed along a chain and re-interpreted at each step to ensure the closest possible match between the image data and the printed result. It all begins with a colour space, which defines colours as numbers. The most commonly-used colour space is sRGB, which is the default for all cameras, display devices and printers. Professional photographers and serious enthusiasts often prefer the Adobe RGB colour space, which has a wider colour gamut, particularly in the green and blue bands of the spectrum and gives better colour reproduction in landscape shots. It’s essential to maintain a consistent colour space from…

Many photographers enjoy producing the occasional monochrome picture, either because the tonality suits the subject or to differentiate the composition from the multitude of colour pictures seen in everyday life. Fortunately, all cameras and most smartphones include a monochrome mode. But what’s the best way to create B&W photos and how should they be printed to obtain the best possible quality? Many systems are available; some better than others. What matters more is having the right printer for the task. For starters, the printer’s ink set will include two or three levels of grey (or ‘light black’) ink to ensure a good spread of tones between bright white and total black. Printers with only one black ink rely upon the coloured inks to reproduce intermediate grey tones. That almost inevitably…

Because a special coating is required to accept the ink, inkjet papers can normally be printed on only one side, although some manufacturers produce double-sided papers. There are two ways to tell which side to print on so you can load paper correctly. It’s not a problem with papers that have the manufacturer’s name (or some other identifier) printed on the rear surface. With most matte papers, choosing the whiter side of the paper is a good strategy. For glossy and semi-gloss papers, touch a corner with a slightly moistened finger (NOT wet). The coated surface should feel slightly sticky.…

ICC profiles contain data that characterises each colour input or output device according to standards set up by the International Colour Consortium (ICC). Each ICC profile defines the most saturated colours and the range of tones the device can produce in a standard colour space. An ICC profile can be created for every device or medium, including input devices like scanners and cameras, display devices like monitors and projectors and output devices, which include papers and other printing media. When profiles are consistent throughout the workflow, the output will reflect the colours and tones recorded by the capture device. Without profiles, variations between devices and media will inevitably lead to off-colour prints.…

You need the right shot, effective editing, the right printer and the right media for printing your photograph. Best results will be obtained when you start with a full-colour image file containing maximum image data. This means shooting with the highest available resolution and quality and using the camera’s raw format where it’s available. In most cameras, selecting the B&W or monochrome shooting mode will discard the colour information when JPEG files are saved, giving you much less image data to work with. Unless you capture RAW+JPEG files, monochrome modes are best avoided unless you need a ‘quick and dirty’ conversion for an application where quality doesn’t count. (Raw files always capture all image data, including colour information.) You can obtain a true monochrome image in several ways, which are…

When you buy a new printer, the first thing you should do after you’ve loaded the inks and a couple of sheets of paper is to run an initial Nozzle Check. Nozzle checking is one of the key maintenance tasks. It’s designed to confirm all nozzles are delivering the correct amount of ink and the printer is operating correctly. Printers that are used on a regular basis may not require much additional maintenance. However, if you don’t print for a few weeks, you may encounter clogged nozzles in the print head, regardless of what type of ink the printer uses. When cartridges are inserted in the printer, their seals are broken and the liquid carrying the colours begins to evaporate very slowly. Pigment ink particles, which are one to two…