Printing your photographs is a magical experience that elevates your work from digital files to tangible pieces of art. It allows you to experience your images in their full glory, appreciating details and colors as intended, much like viewing a painting in a gallery or listening to music at a concert.
Coming to you from Nigel Danson, this informative video explores the essential aspects of printing high-quality photographs. Danson emphasizes the importance of understanding key concepts like color management, paper choice, and printer settings to achieve optimal results. He gets deep into the significance of monitor calibration and creating a controlled editing environment to ensure accurate color representation.
Danson advocates for using Lightroom for printing due to its built-in color management capabilities and wide color gamut. He walks you through the process of soft proofing, which allows you to preview how your image will appear on different paper types before printing. He also highlights the importance of utilizing paper profiles to achieve accurate color reproduction, recommending specific papers for various artistic effects.
Beyond the technical aspects, Danson shares valuable insights on upscaling images using Lightroom's Super Resolution feature, allowing you to print larger formats without compromising quality. He also offers practical tips on printer maintenance and storing your prints to preserve their longevity. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Danson.
Nigel Danson is an great photographer and I have been enjoying his videos for several years however, being an accomplished photographer does not make one an equally qualified teacher and this video is hard to follow as it moves from subject to subject without a logical workflow. Terms like A2 and A3 are used without explanation, a brief touch on printers, a quick look at three kinds of paper and then we are on to editing and monitor calibration, a whirlwind of terms and references and technology that I found hard to follow and gave up in confusion.
Which is disappointing as Nigel is a wonderful artist and printing is a topic that until recently has been overlooked by the majority of photography sites along with framing and displaying which are also part of the to printing experience and equally expensive. As a photographer who has started down the road of having prints made and framed and is considering printer ownership, I have come to appreciate the complexity of the printing process and believe it cannot be taught in a 20 minute video.
The reality of printing is unfortunately that home printers, regardless of brand, although Canon seems to consistently come out ahead, is that they break down and that the break usually involves several components. Which results in a hefty repair bill. And if your brand doesn't have a local repair facility with qualified technicians you are in for a lot of down time. The advice I have got from professional printers is that you should price in at least $500 per year for repairs and plan on printer replacement every three years as $500 per year will soon exceed the replacement cost of a new printer.
For Professional grade printers like the one Nigel is using the story is slightly different but unless you are printing in volume the cost of ownership can be overwhelming. For what it is worth here is my conclusion, buy a home printer to create 8X10's or 11X14's for display purposes or personal satisfaction, nothing like holding your image in your hands but for large prints on archival paper and ink that are to be professionally framed, get your printing done by a Pro shop. It is cheaper and far less time consuming, you can choose between different paper, canvas or metal, go as big as you like and in all likelihood, it will look better.
I think the video is quite good for a 33 minute review of printing. Naturally it's hard to expect that a person would start from scratch and become an expert in that amount of time. But he does touch on the major points of printing. To which I'd add that it takes a similar amount of time, research, practice, and experience to become a good printer as it does to become a good photographer, or good teacher. None of those skills are mastered overnight. Did you make great photographs the moment you acquired your first camera? There are no short videos on printing which will concisely explain the necessary skills for turning out a perfect print on your first try. In many ways, it's taken me longer to have confidence in my printmaking than it took to start making consistently decent photos. So, yes, be prepared to waste plenty of paper and ink in the process. And that's not for everybody. I feel like a person must really appreciate the fine points and details of photography in order to enjoy printing. Otherwise it's just a picture on paper that you might as well buy from Walmart.
Watching the video might lead someone to believe that making a print is a terribly complicated process. And without marginalizing each of the subjects that are touched upon, the most overused cliché of all times is worth repeating here... it's not rocket science. Most people have probably at least used a cheap desktop printer for printing recipes or printing a term paper for school. If you've purchased a printer and can tell one end of a cable from another, you're on your way to your first print. Monitor calibration, paper profiles, soft proofing, printer settings... sure they can get complicated, but you can make a decent print from the start without understanding all of that. If software management of color sounds daunting, let the printer manage the colors. It's easy and it won't be a terrible print. And an effective way of learning a new skill, in my opinion, is to understand what's wrong and the limitations of a certain way of doing things, before recognizing what's right and how to get that result.
Lastly, no inkjet printer is designed to last forever. And like every other type of electronic technology, some people get lucky and their product lasts for much longer than another person owning the same identical product. Think cars or televisions or washing machines. I owned a 24" Epson 7600 for eight years before it needed a repair of any kind, and about the same timeline for a 44" Epson P8000. Smaller desktop printers for less than a thousand bucks probably aren't even worth repairing. But I think it's reasonable to expect a $250-$500 Canon 13x19 printer should last five years or more. If you're analyzing the cost/benefit of making your own prints, you probably aren't a good candidate for buying a printer. If you take immense pride in your images and care greatly about the details and how they're presented, then it makes a lot of sense.
By the way, for starting out I would recommend picking just one paper and getting more confidence in your results before bringing a variety of other papers into the equation. Getting consistent color between papers can be a bit frustrating. Besides, some of them are pretty expensive for tossing in the trash while you learn. Canon's premium luster is an inexpensive paper that produces bright colors. In the US, Red River Paper offers an independent brand of various papers at a lower price.