Printing Novice

[GaryS70]

I am an absolute beginner when it comes to producing prints from my images, so am struggling a bit to understand what I need to do to get things right.

I want to produce a few images for display (some from my old D40 and most from my D90).

I have looked at the options provided by The Print Space (http://www.theprintspace.co.uk) and estimate I can probably get some prints that are either 12*16 inches or 16*20 inches (based on their standard sizes).

As such, I have created an export preset in Aperture to export an image at 16*20 inches, but when I look at the resulting file, it is showing as 20*13.34 inches. An image exported as 12*16 results in 10.66*16 inches.

I am assuming the original aspect ratio is affecting something ?

Am I going to need to crop the image to get the physical print size I want, or do something else ? Cropping or resizing will affect the look of the image so want to avoid if I can..

As I say, this is completely new to me, so am hoping I am just making a novice mistake, but will appreciate any advice that can be given.

Thanks

 

[G12RDH]

Heres another spanner.... Is your monitor calibrated for your printer....?

 

[GaryS70]

Heres another spanner.... Is your monitor calibrated for your printer....?

Nope, that's a whole new headache ! I was actually planning to use a print company rather than print myself. They apparently have print profiles I can download. I've never calibrated my Mac for a printer specifically but have run through the calibration wizard built into the OS.

This is much more involved than I imagined..

 

[Spuriousfish]

You don't calibrate your monitor for your printer. You calibrate and profile the monitor for it's on purpose, which is to accurately render images.

This requires a hardware device like an i1Display, Spyder or such like.

Print Profiles from print shops are only of use for Soft Proofing, you do not use them as profiles for your display or printer to actually make the prints.

Your display profile will be unique to your display.

Printer profiles must match the printer/paper/inks that you are using on your machine.

Colin