Just when you thought Amazon's reach couldn't get any bigger, they've launched a new service: Amazon Prints. With competitive prices, it could be an intriguing alternative, particularly for those who are already Amazon Prime or Drive members.
Printing photos is a technical and complicated process, especially when it comes to getting accurate colors on paper. If you want to print your own photos, your monitor, the software you use, your printer, and the paper type should be in harmony to get the same colors and depth you create on screen. To make the color matching process easy and hassle-free, EIZO has created a software solution in collaboration with Adobe, Epson, and Canon: EIZO Quick Color Match.
It's been going on for decades. Film chemicals that coat the film and react with the various colors coming through the lens weren't made to cope with a diverse set of skin tones.
Nick Carver is no stranger to going big. Not only does she shoot big negatives on big cameras, but he's immensely passionate about printing and framing and making sure work both fills and compliments a space. In this video he goes through the process of scanning a panoramic 6x17 Portra 160 film negative, sizing up a space on the wall for the final 6-foot print, and even building a custom frame for it.
Online photo community Photocrowd.com, which recently launched a platform allowing photographers to create their own online store and sell prints of their work, has just gone public with a crowd-funding campaign. Fstoppers thought it was time to take a closer look at this community that’s drawing favorable comparisons with the likes of 500px and Flickr.
Color management can be one of the most boring topics to learn as a photographer, right up there with topics like digital asset management and accounting. They all have one thing in common, however: they’re important parts of being a photographer. Learning how to manage color doesn’t have to be difficult, however. Consider this your crash course introduction in learning how.
It's strange to think that I have been a photographer for over 10 years now, yet I have never printed my own work larger than an 8x10. Unfortunately we live in an age where sharing low res digital photos on social media has become the end all be all for the majority of our images. Recently I decided to celebrate some of my favorite personal photographs by printing them LARGE and installing them in the Fstoppers Studio. The resulting 60"x40" acrylic prints I made through WhiteWall.com has me wondering why it has taken me this long to install fine art on my own walls.
I'm generally not a fan of the opt-out model. It's an easy way to push unwanted features, changes, or price increases onto an end user, often without them noticing until it's too late. It's like someone slipping a steak into my all-vegetarian cart at the grocery store when I'm not looking. Unfortunately, Zenfolio just slipped a big T-bone into its users' carts.
If you have ever tried to create an album from an event that you have photographed, you know the difficulties that can come along with the creation process. If you have experience using Adobe InDesign, you are off to a good start and most definitely have full control of your album. However, InDesign is a complex program that takes time to learn and even more time to become timely and proficient with. A ways back while listening to a podcast I heard about Fundy Designer. Fundy is an all-in-one design suite that can be used to design, sell, proof, and print with ease. The application goes beyond album design and covers many aspects of your photo business, helping you focus on providing your clients with beautiful, timeless prints, along with a variety of other options to help your brand grow.
When Pixellu came out with its too easy to believe drag and drop album creator that synced with every popular album company's layouts, those who were not Mac users were certainly bummed to hear they would be missing out. But today, after Pixellu released SmartAlbums 2 for Mac, the SmartAlbums version for Windows is here and it comes at a generous $50 discount for those who have waited so patiently.
It is a common misconception, and it has been addressed before on photography groups, forums and news sites many times. However, for the new year starting today (2016, for those reading in the future), I reasoned a quick video review of the concept of file resolution versus pixel dimensions, and the interplay between them, would be in order.
Why is my print dark? Why are the colors off? I believe we all found ourselves asking these questions inside our head (or worse, yelling at our photo printer!) during our first steps into our journey in photography. Monitor calibration is the solution, bad settings and bad color reproduction by the monitor are the culprit. Grab a cup of coffee or your favorite energy drink and read on, I'll tell you everything about it, what you have to do, what you gain, how it's done, and what you need to correctly calibrate your monitors.
In the digital age, we spend a lot of time in front of screens. Many of us retouch our own work, distribute it digitally, and even only have a digital portfolio. Some sell prints of client work, or fine art prints. And, some get published in magazines. In a past article on reinvigorating your love for the craft, I touched briefly on printing your work, and would like to expand on that today.
When your printer is telling you it's time to change that cartridge, it's probably fibbing about how much ink is actually left in the tank. The folks at Bellevue Fine Art Reproduction had an inkling that their Epson Stylus Pro 9900 large format printer was lying to them every time it said a cartridge was empty and since printer ink is one of the most expensive consumer liquids on earth per fluid ounce, that could equate to some serious coin being thrown in the trash with each replacement. Watch them go step-by-step, weighing the cartridges and calculating how much ink is left inside when the printer won't use it anymore. Not only can you see their results, but you can do it yourself at home with their instructions.
The darkroom has been replaced with Lightroom these days and many of today's photographers do not have the experience of processing their own prints the old fashioned way, much less anything larger than a common size. Here is a video from Norwegian photo assistant Oystein Gronvold which shows the process of producing a large 4x5 foot print in the darkroom.
