Printing Digital Photographs

Printing digital photographs is the equivalent to the work in the darkroom in the film era.

Printing Work-flow

Of course, first comes appropriate RAW conversion, editing and post-processing before you can jump to the printing work-flow. These steps are not discussed here, i.e. there must already be a final edited photo with prepress proofing before stepping over to printing. These following steps are thus meant to produce a fine art print from a processed photograph. The necessary steps include

• Color management. If you are using a RIP (Raster Image Processor, e.g. ImagePrint or PowerRIP ), there are specific profiles for printer-paper-combinations available.However, a RIP is not cheap. Many paper manufacturers also offer ICC profiles for the papers for use with different printers without a RIP. You need to have a calibrated monitor to edit your photo and prepress proof it on screen. For example, Pantone has an easy to use system (huey).
• Scaling as needed (e.g. using Bicubic Smoother in Photoshop to upscale the photo in 120% steps to A3 at 360 dpi).
• Careful sharpening. Sharpening is essential both from a technical as well as a creative perspective. Even the sharpest digital cameras and lenses introduce some softness. Sharpening should be specifically targeted at the individual printer-paper-combination using the appropriate color profile for your printer and paper. Sharpening also depends on size of the photo and the medium. This is the reason that press agencies and stock photo companies want your photos without sharpening. Sharpening a photo for web presentation is not the same as sharpening for print. There is for example Photokit Sharpener offering such targeted printer-paper-specific macro combinations.

If you are using Adobe Photoshop for printing, use Print with Preview. Select Document for the source space and the appropriate ICC profile for your specific paper-ink-printer combination. Rendering Intent and Black Point Compensation have to be tested. I often use Perceptual and ON but it really depends on the photo. Then, choose the paper medium (e.g. Premium Luster Photo Paper) depending on your paper and set quality (hey, we are going for best!). Next, and very important: color management has to be turned of at this step – you do not want to let the printer driver alter your carefully edited photo, do you? I have saved these settings as a printer preset on my system.

Paper

Hahnemühle is famous for its Photo Rag series. These papers feel like classical baryt. I often use Hahnemühle FineArt Pearl paper for my prints. Its surface is not pure glossy, but more like pearl or satin (see the sample shot below). You can achieve very deep black tones and bright whites. And it’s a paper with a very nice feel to touch, too, and excellent archival. I do not miss my wet darkroom since I use this paper. Hahnemühle offers a broad spectrum of ICC profiles for specific paper-printer combinations. Sometimes I also use Ilford Galerie Smooth Gloss paper, PermaJet Gloss, and Epson Glossy paper depending on the situation. A technical review of several fine art papers is here.

Printer

This blog post does not aim at reviewing printer models. My printer is a trusty Epson Stylus Photo R2400. It’s an ink desktop printer capable of a format up to A3+. It uses the same Ultrachrome ink as the big professional Epson printers. And I can connect it to my mac via fast Firewire or conventional USB. Luminous Landscape has a review about this – and many other – printers.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 20th, 2008 at 12:12. It is filed under Gear and tagged with color management, digital photography, feature, fine art print, printer, sharpening. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.