The recent purchase of a limited edition photo book by Scottish photographer Bruce Percy made me realize that I needed to delve a little more into the possibilities of printing my photos myself.
Just like my own photos, I know Bruce’s photos mainly digitally (I do have a few photo books and canvases), but on paper, the photos take on a whole new dimension. Many photographers only consider a photo to be a photo when it is printed.
Lately, I have read a lot about the possibility of printing my own photos. It immediately became clear that it was not simply buying a printer like the Brother DCP t510w, ink, and some paper to get good prints. There are quite a few settings and variables to take into account, so that what you see on the monitor also rolls out of the printer.
Reflect before you begin
First of all, it should be said that if you do not plan to make regular prints, then it is probably not a good idea to buy your own printer, ink, and paper. The cost price per print will probably be much too high, specialized printers can help you better.
Printers are built to make regular prints, if it is stationary for a longer period of time, the print head can become clogged by drying up the ink. The quality of the printer (more expensive) and storage location can help prevent this hiding.
For myself, I have accepted that the prints will be slightly more expensive, but I want to master the art of printing, so that I can exercise full control over the end result, get better prints and also share the acquired knowledge with you again.
In this article I assume ‘fine prints’, prints that you want to hang on the wall and print on high-quality paper, it is not about achieving the same result of a 10x15cm photo at a printing center.
Quality
The quality of the print is determined by a number of factors. First of all, by the photo itself. This must of course be sharp, the sharper the better because when printing, some sharpness is always lost.
Ideally, you photograph from a tripod or with a high shutter speed and, if present, image stabilization of the lens. When post-processing, you also apply more sharpening for a photo that you print than for a photo that you view on a monitor.
When printing photos, the number of megapixels can play a major role, partly depending on how large you want to make the final print. The more megapixels, the larger the print can become or the higher the resolution is with a smaller print.
But as many people have also discovered, too many megapixels are not good for the image quality of the photo itself. The more pixels that are crammed onto a sensor, the greater the chance of noise if you choose higher ISO values. It is therefore a compromise. For a print on A4, a 6 to a 7-megapixel camera is often enough (partly depending on the dpi, pixels per inch, that you set).
Ink
An important element in the choice of a photo printer is ink. Innovations are constantly taking place here, new inks are becoming increasingly color-like, covering even better and ensuring that the printer can produce more and more colors.
In recent years there has been a revolution in the development of so-called pigment inks. These generally last much longer than traditional inks. The ink also dries faster (important if many different colors are mixed) and the ink can withstand water better. The pigment ink does lose some color intensity because it bites deeper into the paper, but developments do not stand still.
The colors that the printer makes are composed of the colors cyan (blue), magenta (lilac / light purple), and yellow, often combined with different inks for black and gray tones and often also a black variant for glossy and one for matte. Some printers also have a cartridge for green. For example, it can happen that you sometimes install 6-8 different cartridges with a printer. In general, the more cartridges you have, the more color-like the colors.
The cost of ink is a hot topic, if you have to put 6-8 cartridges in a printer it can just happen that you spend € 200-250 for a full set. This sometimes corresponds to 1/3rd of the price of the printer itself. The larger the cartridges, the more points you can get out of them, but also the higher the cost price is if you replace the cartridges.
In many cases, the printer has loose ink for matte and glossy, but only one print head is available for this. If you switch between these two variants, the printer will first have to spray the print head clean, so the ink is lost if you change regularly. Smart thinking about the order of printing different photos and edits can therefore save a lot of ink.
For many people, this can lead to them being frantic about printing and wanting to waste as little ink as possible. It is of course good to want to save money, but the question is whether you should invest in your own printer. In general, being willing to invest money also leads to better results.
Paper
When discussing printers, the cost per print is often stated based on how quickly the cartridges empty. But the choice of paper often plays an even greater role in the cost price and quality of the final print. The choice of paper can be very personal and change depending on the desired end result.
The thickness of the paper (note that your printer can handle the thickness), the texture, high gloss or matte, and durability all play a role and affect the price per sheet. For standard high gloss 50 sheets A4 it could be that you pay € 30, but if you go for museum quality A3 fiber paper then 25 sheets could just cost € 100-150.
It’s easy to get lost in the great papers available at first, if you’re just starting to print, experiment with the cheaper ‘OEM’ papers available first. You can also be sure that a print profile (see next chapter) is available for your printer and that the printer and the paperwork are well together.
ALSO READ: 8 Reasons To Start Photography As Your Hobby
Profiles
Whether you look at a photo on a screen or on paper is a world of difference. On a monitor, the photo is exposed from behind on paper. This leads to a print looking much darker on paper than on a monitor. In addition, the color 100, 100, 100 means something different for your computer than for your printer. It is therefore important to correct this image in such a way that what you see on the monitor also appears on the print.
This can be done with color profiles. When printing you have to deal with different profiles, your camera, your monitor, the printer, and the paper all have their own interpretation of color.
Monitor profile
For the post-processing of your photos and preparation for printing, it is important that you have a calibrated monitor. In principle, almost every monitor is adjusted to the sRGB color profile, but how the colors are displayed can still differ per monitor. The red on one monitor is not the red on the other monitor. For editing photos that is not an ideal situation, as a photographer we want everyone to see the colors as we intended them.
To ensure that the color red, green, or blue that you see on your monitor is also seen on other monitors, you can use a color meter that can create a correct sRGB profile for your monitor. For example, the Pantone Huey, Spyder3 series, or the meters mentioned in the next chapter (which combine monitor and printer meter). Then you know for sure that the colors you see are correct.
Of course, it depends on whether the receiver /viewer of the photo has also done this for her / his monitor.
Print profile
Once you have edited the photo as you want, the printer profile comes into play. This profile translates the colors you see on your monitor into the colors the printer produces. This profile partly depends on the ink and paper you use, with each variant colors can be displayed slightly differently.
Colormunki PhotoThere is several methods to get a color profile. If you use a printer and paper from a brand such as Canon, Epson, or HP, you can often download the color profile for the type of paper from the manufacturer’s website. Independent paper producers often also post profiles on their websites for specific printer and paper combinations.
Make sure you use exactly the profile for the type of paper you use, a small deviation in the text (Premium or Ultra Premium) can make a big difference because it can be a completely different paper composition.
If you do not have access to a standard profile or do not like it, there are a number of options to get a profile. You can use a spectrophotometer such as an X-Rite ColorMunki Photo or Datacolor Spyder3 Studio. These scans the colors of a test print that you make with the printer and the desired paper and create a profile based on this.
Such a spectrophotometer is quite expensive (around € 380-400 online) and it takes time to create a profile, if you use a few different papers then it may be an option to send a print to a specialized lab that creates a profile for you.
Soft-proofing
Once you have created the profile, you can take the printout. However, each print costs ink and paper. To avoid having to make many prints before you have the final desired view, you can use ‘soft-proofing’ in Photoshop, Lightroom, and Aperture, among others. This gives you an indication on your screen of what the final print will look like.
It is important that you set up your monitor as you had to do when creating the monitor profile (often less bright than in normal use) so as not to make the image too light and to make the colors and contrast look more like the final print.
After you have created a profile when printing from your photo editing application, you choose the desired profile, in theory, those colors should now come close to the image on the monitor, with the caveat of course that the photo on the monitor is exposed from behind is always displayed slightly differently on a print.
Do not look at the print next to your monitor, but rate it in full daylight or use lamps or a lightbox (expensive, but worth it if you make a lot of prints that you sell to customers) that approach a daylight color temperature.
It’s a good idea to start with paper from the manufacturer itself in the first place. The advantage is that the drivers and profiles for those papers are already available, so you have to spend less time on calibration and you are also pretty sure that those papers will do well with your printer. If you do not like the paper or you want to use other types of paper, you have already gained some experience with printing and good comparison material.
Don’t be distracted by the first impression immediately after printing. Depending on the chosen paper and printer, it can take several hours to a day before you see the real colors on the paper, the difference can sometimes be quite dramatic.
I hope that in this article you have got a good impression of what is involved in printing. Based on these experiences, I will further elaborate on the topics in this introduction article in detailed articles. Do you print all your own photos, what are your experiences?
