Printing and Calibration.

Dale.

Dale.

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Dale.
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First off, I rarely print. I have an A3 printer (Epson) but hardly ever use it. It's used for documents and if I ever want a particular image framed, I will print it myself but that's not very often.

I get mixed results when printing. I know it's considered a bit of an art and can also be expensive. I've dabbled before, mainly for competitons at my club but I just don't get great results, or probably more correctly, not what is on my monitor.

My printer isn't calibrated, though my monitor is (Spyder 4). I have used good papers too in the past and always OEM ink.

I am begining though to want to try it again. I have tons of DPI images but I'm begining to want something tangible, something in my hand, to complete the process, from getting up in the morning to take the picture, to hanging it on our wall. I also build my own, custom, bespoke, scratch built frames, I have a workshop set up more or less solely for the purpose ( as well as motorbike storage :LOL: ), I enjoy framing, love it in fact but it's mainly for other people. On a personal basis, I'm missing, or at least not doing very well, the printing process, which is an important part of hanging a frame on our wall.

As mentioned, my monitor is calibrated, but my printer isn't calibrated to my monitor. Here lies my question. If I were to use the printer manufacturer's papers, is it just a simple case then of using a paper profile associated with the paper and would this negate the need to have a calibrated printer?

If I try this, I will get a decent printer, probably one of the Canon ProGrafs. I am conscious though, that it might sit for a while unused. I've heard that this can affect, even ruin a printer. Is this true of more modern printers and what maintenance schedule should I follow?

I can get by on printing but to get to the level I want to, I will need advice. Everyday is a school day. (y)



TIA.
 
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If it helps at all...

I've been through a lot of time and effort and frustration printing at home and eventually decided to just let the printer sort it out and I was happy to read that ctein (famed for printing and one time contributor on The Online Photographer) recommended just this. What I ended up doing was just as the printer wanted but with a minor change to a slider in the advanced settings in printing preferences. Other than that I use the printer manufacturers paper.

I would recommend doing a thumbnail test print before each print just to make sure that everything looks right and no nozzles are misbehaving.
 
:plusone: for a test print (I do a 6x4 "proof") before committing to a bigger one.
 
If you are sure that your monitor is calibrated properly then using the printer manufacture's paper should result in prints matching the screen, as the paper's ICC profile is baked in to the paper selected.
If you use third party paper (eg Permajet, Fotospeed, Ilford etc) you need to get involved with installing ICC profiles that tailor that paper's behaviour to your printer.

Try looking at:

Northlight Images UK commercial photography experts

Commercial photography. Based in Leicester, UK East Midlands. Specialist corporate photography of industry, architecture and the built environment
www.northlight-images.co.uk www.northlight-images.co.uk
 
Getting a good print really isn't that difficult. I managed to get it down to a T and my first print is usually spot on.

A monitor calibration is the first step but most people still set their monitor brightness to bright which causes you to end up with a dark image. When editing an image for print I ensure that my lighting is the same, external light is removed by closing the blinds. My screen brightness is set to 100 cd/m2. Many calibrators default to 120 which for me is too bright. You need to figure out what works for you.

Getting paper profiles is the next step. Even buying Epson papers and printing in an Epson printer is not going to give you the best results. Each printer is slightly different. I get my paper profiles bade by fotospeed. It's a free service because I buy their paper. They recommend updating your profile every 6 months or so because papers can differ slightly as can inks. Using premade manufacturer profiles is a start but ideally you want custom profiles made to match your print, your ink and your paper even if using Epson stock.

You need to learn a bit about soft proofing, how that can help you identify out of gamut colours and and how different rendering intents can bring those colours back into Gamut. Peceptual and relative rendering intents do this but slightly differently. There is no right choice here, you need to pick the one that's best for the image.

If you have all of the above in place, you should produce a good print.
 
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Also remember that your edited image for the screen may not be the best edit for print.
While glossy papers are pretty good and look bright, vibrant and contrasty, Matt "fine art papers" won't be as contrasty and colours may not be as vibrant. A bit of additional tweaking may be required to get the best out of the paper. Again Softproofing in LR is great for this
 
ecoleman said:
Getting a good print really isn't that difficult. I managed to get it down to a T and my first print is usually spot on.

A monitor calibration is the first step but most people still set their monitor brightness to bright which causes you to end up with a dark image. When editing an image for print I ensure that my lighting is the same, external light is removed by closing the blinds. My screen brightness is set to 100 cd/m2. Many calibrators default to 120 which for me is too bright. You need to figure out what works for you.

Getting paper profiles is the next step. Even buying Epson papers and printing in an Epson printer is not going to give you the best results. Each printer is slightly different. I get my paper profiles bade by fotospeed. It's a free service because I buy their paper. They recommend updating your profile every 6 months or so because papers can differ slightly as can inks. Using premade manufacturer profiles is a start but ideally you want custom profiles made to match your print, your ink and your paper even if using Epson stock.

You need to learn a bit about soft proofing, how that can help you identify out of gamut colours and and how different rendering intents can bring those colours back into Gamut. Peceptual and relative rendering intents do this but slightly differently. There is no right choice here, you need to pick the one that's best for the image.

If you have all of the above in place, you should produce a good print.
Click to expand...

:plus1:


Permajet will also send you an icc profile for your printer for free if you use their paper. I am able to produce my own icc profiles with my iStudio, but actually I have rarely needed to - the manufacturers ones usually work fine.
 
Bebop said:
:plus1:


Permajet will also send you an icc profile for your printer for free if you use their paper. I am able to produce my own icc profiles with my iStudio, but actually I have rarely needed to - the manufacturers ones usually work fine.
Click to expand...

Just to clarify, what I meant by manufacturers profiles are the ones that are downloadable for a specific printer and paper and not the ones created by a paper manufacturer for you from a print that you send them.

The downloadable ones are a good start but are not perfect. Those profiles were made using another printer, perhaps with a different firmware, on potentially another driver version, on another OS and using other inks.

The best profiles are the ones where you print a colour chart and send that in for a profile to be created for you or or course one that you have created using your iStudio. Although the iStudio doesn't read as many colour patches as the equipment used by somebody like fotospeed.
 
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yzfmike said:
If you are sure that your monitor is calibrated properly then using the printer manufacture's paper should result in prints matching the screen, as the paper's ICC profile is baked in to the paper selected.
If you use third party paper (eg Permajet, Fotospeed, Ilford etc) you need to get involved with installing ICC profiles that tailor that paper's behaviour to your printer.

Try looking at:

Northlight Images UK commercial photography experts

Commercial photography. Based in Leicester, UK East Midlands. Specialist corporate photography of industry, architecture and the built environment
www.northlight-images.co.uk www.northlight-images.co.uk
Click to expand...
Good call and lots of useful information both with written articles and his youTube channel.

@Dale. Which model Epson printer have you got?
 
ecoleman said:
Just to clarify, what I meant by manufacturers profiles are the ones that are downloadable for a specific printer and paper and not the ones created by a paper manufacturer for you from a print that you send them.

The downloadable ones are a good start but are not perfect. Those profiles were made using another printer, perhaps with a different firmware, on potentially another driver version, on another OS and using other inks.

The best profiles are the ones where you print a colour chart and send that in for a profile to be created for you or or course one that you have created using your iStudio. Although the iStudio doesn't read as many colour patches as the equipment used by somebody like fotospeed.
Click to expand...
Yes I meant the same - that you send your print (of their patches) off to Permajet on their paper, but I realise I didn’t make it very clear!
 
I gave the "short" answer previously but, as I expected, the thread has developed somewhat.

FWIW I use an Epson P600 with various third party papers. I have calibrated my monitor, and I produce my own ICC paper profiles using a ColorMunki Photo with their latest i!Studio software. IME the difference in printed output between my ICC profiles and the downloadable is minor. I met with Permajet and Color Confidence at a joint seminar and, during the discussion, they both agreed that this was to be expected. Permajet offer custom profiles FOC where they send a file for you to print and return etc, but said that, for most purposes, the downloadable ones would be "95%". If you are a commercial photographer working with clients for whom colour accuracy is critical (eg Kawasaki green) it's worth going the extra mile.

BTW:
1 - I agree with ecoleman about 120 cd/m2 being too bright for a monitor in my environment. A bright monitor results in dark prints.
2 - If you are working with a colour controlled workflow don't forget to disable "printer controls colour" in the print dialogue.

There's the usual amount of unreliable misinformation on-line to beware of - I'd recommend anyone trying to understand the printing process to study the articles and YouTube clips on the Northlight Images site as mentioned in my previous post. Work hard to understand the process and after the steep learning curve you should get reliable results.
 
The two things that really made a difference to getting it right first time for me were
  1. As alluded to above, turn the monitor brightness down as a low as it goes (or more scientifically do a print and then turn the monitor brightness down until it looks like the print, then adjust the image on screen until it looks like you want the print to come out.
  2. Using the printer manufacturers software for the final tweaks of the image before printing. IDK about Epson becuase I use a Canon but with the correct monitor brightness the Canon software gives me a very close on-screen image of what comes out of the printer
 
I did go through the process of calibration: monitor, media and inks using an Xrite ColorMunki screen and printing thingy that I got off ebay and I am sure this is the way to go to generate ICC profiles. However, I kept changing inks and media and got bored with repeating the process so I just let the printer do its own thing now.
The prints are OK for my own interest but I doubt that they would pass muster from others.
 
Thanks for the replies.

There is some interesting reading here, which I've been working my way through last night and this morning.

I'm still undecided as to what to do but I am aiming to start printing seriously in the near future. For now, I'm going to buy some Epson paper and try that in my current printer.

I was getting dark prints previously (a few years ago) when I was printing for competition. I figured out that my monitor was too bright, so I turned the brightness down. It's still quite bright though and I sometimes tweak the brightness on an image just before a print it, just to cover the monitor brightness, which is still brighter than I'd expect on its lowest setting. I've sussed that bit though and adding 8 points of brightness in CS usually covers it.

I will cut my teeth now with the Epson I currently have but if I crack it, I will upgarde to one of the bigger pro Canons.

Softproofing is definately something I need to look into.
 
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