The Art of Printing Your
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The A rt of Printing Your Art An Introductory Course in Digital Ink-Jet Printing for Photographers Lesson One © 2013 - 2017 Mark English Page | 1 © Mark English 2013 --- 2017 Why print your own images? Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop 1… and you no longer have to deal with Digital photography and the internet have fundamentally changed the working in the dark with smelly, toxic chemicals to achieve your artis- way we display and share our images. We have traded family photo tic vision. albums and shoeboxes of 4X6 prints for Flickr galleries, smart phones and tablets. Finally, your images deserve to be printed and shared, rather than horded on hard-drives. Holding one of your images, expertly printed So why should you print your images instead of just viewing them on on heavy weight fine art paper is a much more pleasant tactile experi- your computer screen? ence compared to passing around your iPhone. The problem, at least as I see it, is that these now common forms of display are small and ephemeral… the impact of viewing an image What do you need? large, filled with all of the fine detail and subtle nuances of tone and colour present in your original image is lost on these devices. If you do not already have one, a photo capable printer is the first ob- vious necessity. I will not recommend a particular brand or model but Ever since the dawn of photography, the print has been the ultimate Epson, Canon and HP all make excellent photo capable printers in var- expression of the photographic image. To see an Ansel Adams “Moon- ious sizes. rise” on a computer monitor is a distinctly inferior experience when compared to viewing an original 16X20 printed by Adams himself. If you are printing just for yourself, or are on a budget (aren’t we all?) an A4 or US letter size printer is a good starting point. If you want to And here’s something else to consider: printing your images can help sell or display your work publicly, then a printer capable of at least 13” you can become a better photographer. Print your work large and hang X 19” (Super B or A3+) is a better choice. Several models in this range it in an area you pass by every day. Live with it. Look at it every time are available at only a modest premium over a smaller letter size you walk past it. What would make it a stronger image? What ele- printer. ments in the image distract the viewer and therefore weaken the im- age? Printing your images large reveals all of the flaws that you miss In my opinion though, the sweet spot in printers for serious amateurs when looking at a smaller version. Do this consistently and I guarantee and many pros, is the 17” wide market. For just a few hundred dollars your photographic vision and the images you produce will improve. more than the cost of the smaller 13” printers, you can produce excel- lent 16X24 prints. Secondly, printing your work, particularly in the current digital era, provides you with unprecedented artistic control. Local adjustments to small areas of an image are incredibly easy with modern tools like 1 Since I’ll be referring to them so often, I’ll use a shorthand for Photoshop and Lightroom from here on: “PS” and “LR” © 2013 - 2017 Mark English Page | 2 Whichever printer you buy, look for ones with these features: for example sells a paper called “Ultra Premium Photo Paper Luster”. While it doesn’t have the luxurious tactile qualities of a fine art paper, • More than 6 colours in the ink-set. Printers with 6 or fewer it does have an excellent colour gamut and dMax 2. It also matches quite colours are really intended for business graphics, not photo- closely, the colour reproduction characteristics of several high-end fine graphic images. Also, for Fine Art printing, I prefer printers art papers. I use it constantly for work prints and day-to-day printing. with at least 3 distinct shades in the Black to Gray range. Be It’s also very inexpensive as papers go. aware that many printers have provision for two distinct types of pure black ink: one for printing with gloss papers and an- There is a bewildering array of photo quality papers available for ink- other one for printing on matte papers. These printers would jet printers. The first and most obvious difference between them is the therefore advertise four different Black to Gray inks. surface: gloss or matte. Gloss papers, and variations on this like satin or luster can reproduce a wider colour gamut and produce a higher • Individual ink cartridges for each colour: ink is expensive. dMax than matte papers. They are well suited to images with a wide You don’t want to pay to replace all the inks in your printer range saturated tones. Matte papers generally have a narrower gamut when only one colour is exhausted. and a lower dMax. Many fine-art photographers insist on printing only • Printers using larger ink cartridges, although requiring a larger on matte papers, preferring the more tactile aesthetic qualities of these initial outlay, are generally cheaper to operate in the long run. papers. For example, at the time of writing, 14 ml carts for the Canon For me it comes down to the image: some images work well on matte Pixma Pro-10 printer cost $US15, while the 36 ml carts for the papers, others need a wide gamut luster or gloss paper to achieve their Pixma Pro-1 go for $US30. On a per ml basis this represents a maximum artistic impact. Insisting dogmatically on one or the other significant 28% saving. Over a short while, this will add up. merely limits the artistic choices available to you. • Some way to load thicker fine art papers. To start with, you With that in mind, here are a few of my favourite papers as of late 2013: may well stick to the printer manufacturer’s papers. Nothing wrong with that, but at some point, just for sheer aesthetic ap- • Epson Ultra Premium Photo Paper Luster: already mentioned peal, you will want to see your images printed on high quality above and hard to beat for everyday use. fine art paper. • Harman by Hahnemühle Gloss Baryta: Very wide gamut, ex- cellent dMax, and a surface texture very like the premium F- Since we are talking about paper… surface papers we used to use in the chemical darkroom. The Starting out with inexpensive papers, perhaps just those from the man- only drawback is its cost. Significantly, this is the only paper ufacturer of your printer doesn’t mean giving up image quality. Epson, I am aware of, which is available in 17 X 25 inch sheets. This allows you to print full-frame 16 X 24 inch prints which is not 2 “Gamut” refers to the range of colours and tones from light pastels to dark and/or saturated tones that a device such as a printer can reproduce. “dMax” measures the deepest black that can be reproduced. © 2013 - 2017 Mark English Page | 3 possible on the muchg more common 17 X 22 inch size. • Epson Legacy Baryta: This is a relatively new paper (as of http://harman.hahnemuehle.com/site/en/819/about.html ) late 2016) in Epson’s lineup. It has the highest dMax and widest gamut of any paper I have used. It produces rich • Ilford Prestige Gold Fibre Silk: a current favourite with a sim- blacks, wonderful saturated colours full of subtle gradations. ilar gamut and dMax to the Harman paper above. It has a It is a first-rate fine art paper and priced accordingly. As of very slightly warm base tone that works particularly well late 2016 it has become my go-to choice for the type of images with warm toned black and white images. http://www.il- I create. ford.com/en/products/photo-inkjet/galerie-prestige/gold-fi- bre-silk/ ) • Moab Entrada: when I decide that an image works best on a matte paper, I reach for this one. A heavy cotton rag paper, it • Epson Exhibition Fiber: A wonderful paper: images printed has the widest gamut of any matte paper I have tried and just with it have an almost three-dimensional quality to them that feels great to hold. is hard to describe and even harder to explain. It doesn’t (http://moabpaper.com/entrada-rag/ ) reach quite as far into the saturated greens as other papers like the Harman Baryta or Epson Ultra-Premium Luster, but These are just my current favourites, I may find others tomorrow, and these differences are more easily seen using software de- you should not feel tied to these. I do suggest though, that you pick one or two and print with them exclusively for a while to learn their signed to test these qualities in a lab, rather in actual printed characteristics well. images. © 2013 - 2017 Mark English Page | 4 What do I need to know? I’m a big believer in understanding the why of something, and not 4. Choose a paper appropriate to the image and your aesthetic simply the how . Knowing why something is so gives you the tools to goals, and print using the correct settings in your image-editing deal with new situations with a minimum amount of frustration. The program (we will discuss only Lightroom and Photoshop, here.) same is true in any endeavour, not just fine-art printing.