printing in china How to Print Photos

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How to Make Great Prints
© 2006 KenRockwell.com



INKJETS ARE DEAD

See quality instances here.

I 1st issued this page in 1999. Back then, inkjets were the cheapest way for amateur photographers to make prints from digital files. Ultra high-end mercantile labs with the equipment to print from digital files onto real photo paper were almost nonexistent outside of the advertising worlds of New York City or Los Angeles. In those days we scanned our membrane. It wasn't until the end of 1999 that Nikon introduced the world's first practical DSLR, the D1 at $5,000, and at less than 3MP was only for news.

Things alteration! The 1990s are already the black ages of digital.

Inkjet printers went obsolete back in 2004. I still use a $99 Epson printer,printing in china, but only for printing emails and, once a year, business cards.

This is because today we can get many better prints on real, light-sensitive, chemically-processed photo paper at almost any lab including Wal-Mart, Costco and Target. They, and probably your regional camera store, have all bought the $50,000 and up machines necessitated to print electronically onto real photo paper. Adorama Lab's printers cost $150,000 each and the ones at Calypso cost almost $500,000.

I'm defining photo paper as light perceptive, chemically processed paper. Inkjets spit ink onto plain paper. I'll reserve this prejudice. I prefer the look of real photo paper for my work.

Sending prints out costs less than inkjet paper and ink. You don't must buy or nourish a printer, either!

Prints made from my files for bottom dollar at Costco are far better than the prints I used to get from expensive professional labs from film negatives.

Thank God the current lab machines are loyal. You no longer must depend on the kid working at a lab to get your photos to look right. I ask for "uncorrected" and my prints forever match the file I send, even at the cheapest printing places.

It took photographers a few years to get to digital from film. Today everyone does it. It's the same for sending prints out, just a few years newer. Inkjet printer makers today cost tons on improvement and seminars to reserve you considering you need one. Nikon and Canon never needed to try to reserve you stuck in film. Inkjets strove to "photo quality," but never got there for me. I love the ultra glossy, vivid wet-look prints I get on Fuji Super Gloss. Inkjets don't get that glossy.

I print photos, not canvasses. Inkjets are still the way to go if you need to print on sheet, fabric, T-shirts, CDs, DVDs and cardboard.

Mainstream medium is equitable starting to pick up on what photographers and savvy buyers already know. The New York Times, October 8th, 2005 pointed out that namely the percent of prints made at home is dripping. The NY Times quotes Consumer Reports that tangible print costs at home are 50 pence every just for paper and ink, and they are for low for 13 cents each at areas like Sam's Club or 10 pence if prepaid at Snapfish.com. (You may be proficient to peruse the treatise here.) Of course to make prints at home you'd also have to buy a photo printer. Sending prints out you get free use of something else's time and their $50,000 Fuji Frontier or Noritsu or Agfa printer.

Which makes a better print: a $50,000 printer using real photo paper at Costco, or your $1,800 Epson. Duh, the $50,000 printer of way! Remember: all the hours of painstaking amending and optimization are reflected in your digital file. Your genius is in the file, regardless of where you take it to print.

Even the Wal-Mart in Flint, Michigan had a Fuji Frontier in June of 2002. If they had one I'm sure your local deduct store or lab has one, too, in 2006.

GICLÉES

Giclée is the French word for inkjet. People too entangled to agree they are selling inkjet prints spat out of a computer mention giclée instead of inkjet. It's the same object. Giclée is also used in the drawing world for a technique where ink is spritzed onto the middle, which is why it's been accepted to euphemize inkjet printers. Emails printed on my $99 Epson are also giclées!

MODERN PRINTING

Pro Labs

I see no more intention for outdated pro labs. In the old days you needed one to hope to get the right colors. Today the printers everywhere are automated to give you the same colors in your file. It used to take a lot of dark sorcery to reproduce your slip and even more to get color from a negative. Wal-Mart's Fuji Frontier machines do an even better job automatically printing from your files.

No longer do nice photographers need to disburse top dollar to a custom professional lab to have a kid screw up your prints. The children at the valuable custom lab who secondhand to get between you and a excellent publish is gone. You tin get a great print nearly everywhere.

I use an expensive pro lab like Calypso today for they have the aptitude to print on Fuji Super Gloss at any promiscuous size I absence. They charge by the square foot and each array is custom. Getting special sizes or materials are the only reason to pay extra for a lab providing to pros. I look not difference in picture quality between Costco or anywhere else for standard size prints. They all use the same machines and chemicals.

Profiles

We don't need no stinking profiles!

I amaze my friends with knockout 12 x 18" prints made at Costco for $2.99 directly from the JPGs that came out of my camera. The results are at present beyond what an inkjet can do that human are floored.

For me life is too short to screw with profiles for printing at discount labs. Their machines are well enough calibrated as-is. Shoot at the default sRGB color space and you're nice. If you're a sapient fellow shooting Adobe RGB you will have to screw with colorspace conversions, otherwise you'll get duller colors!

Hobbyists love to make asset as complex as feasible. That's why they're cried hobbyists: they enjoy the process of all this for its own sake. I'm a photographer and care for make pictures over piddling with details.

People who enjoy fiddling with their computer more than creating images love to violin with profiles from places like drycreekphoto.com. Adorama also publishes color profiles. Most labs, other than the deepest discounters, publish these.

When you try apt get natty and work appearance the standard program with these outlines constantly one operator ambition hit a erroneous clasp and you'll have to ask for a re-do!

File Formats and Color Spaces

I never worry about this. I always send sRGB JPGs to everyone and love the results.

Of course no 1 can print raw files. Raw files always have to be converted to a standard, like JPG or TIF, first.

When electing my files by Adorama's network site it showed only my JPGs. I don't understand if they print from other formats. JPG namely the merely format I'd use online, since TIFs garbage also many time and space in transmit.

Matching Your Screen

My prints match my screen. They also match my camera's LCD. I get this everyplace I've tried.

If your colors don't mate, your screen probably out of calibration. See my sheet ashore monitor calibration.

Great news: calibrating a screen is cozy and inexpensive. Calibrating printers is a afflict. Sending prints out you don't need to calibrate any printers. Modern lab printers calibrate themselves for us automatically.

If your computer matches your camera's LCD and you're not getting this from your lab, migrate on to dissimilar. Just be sure your files are sRGB!

Big Prints

12 x 18" is my standard size. My local Costco prints up to that big on real Fuji chemical photo paper in that size. I send out to Calypso for bigger prints.

Labs often print up to a definite size on their good printer, and revert to an inkjet for bigger ones. These good printers are expensive, like $150,000, so smaller operations may not go up to 12 x 18." They buy as big a machine as makes sense to them.

You need to ask the lab up to how big they print on the real paper. Go somewhere if they only attempt Epson, inkjet, giclée or whatever for the bigger sizes you need.

DIGITAL LAB SUGGESTIONS

Be careful that the lab uses chemically processed paper, not just an inkjet or dye-sub printer in a big box! Look on the back of the prints and they ought to say Fuji Crystal Archive, my favorite. Some may say Agfa or Kodak. Beware of any inkjet prints, which don't look as good and are going to discolor or smear and have alter levels of luster depending on the darkness of each portion of the image. Some labs also offer "giclée," which is just the idea French word for inkjet.

Avoid labs and kiosks that cheap out and print on inkjet or dye sublimation ("tinge sub") printers. You need to determine that they print on sincere light sensitive, chemically processed photo paper.

Color and Exposure

I'm an artiste and want things done my way. I want prints that match the way I built them on my screen.

Be sure to ask for NO AUTOCORRECTION. They used to leave it lonely, but now the people who love to screw up a good thing apply "improvement" to every print. Remember to ask them to PRINT AS IS, NO CORRECTIONS and you'll get what you want, presuming you have never screwed with the settings of your monitor at home.

Online, good labs will have a NO CORRECTIONS carton to check.

MUCH MORE DETAILS:

Online Printing

Walk-In Printing

Black-and-White Printing

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