Continuing on from my previous posts discussing my camera and photoshop workflows. I will now share with you my tips for achieving correct prints.
If you are finding or have found in the past that your images are coming out darker or lighter than what they are on screen when printed, it is because you need to calibrate your monitor and have better colour management settings.
You also need to find out the white point and black point of the printer at the printing lab.
I will firstly talk about printing at home.
Although I do not recommend this, because it is much better to have your prints done at a professional lab.
To print accurate and pleasing photos you need to give your printer the correct information. In a nutshell, you need to tell it what colour space your file is in and what colour space you want to print in (the type of paper your printing on).
An example of this is below. I own a Canon MX870 printer. You will need to look at your printers manual to find a way of adjusting these similar settings.
These are the printer settings:
These are the printing settings in Photoshop:
You want to make sure that Photoshop is managing the colour of the document and that the printer knows what type of paper you are printing on.
For this example I have selected to print at 8” x 10” on Canon Photo Paper Plus Glossy II. I then let the printer know this by selecting “GL2/SG2” which is the same paper type.
By doing this, you should hopefully be able to achieve some nice results.
Let’s now look at how to prepare your files for printing at a professional lab.
Once you have selected your chosen lab, you will need to find out the black point and white point of their printer.
In Photoshop create a graphic that is 2 inches wide and 12 inches high.
Set at 16 BIT - RGB Colour - 300DPI.
Then create a black and white linear gradient from top to bottom.
Posterize this and set the levels in posterize to around 36.
Using the eye dropper tool hover over each tonal section and set the RGB values for the tones displayed in the info palette. You probably only need to do 4 sections on both the black and white blocks.
Then flatten the image and save this as a TIFF file with what your chosen lab has as set as its printing settings.
For example the lab I use prefer TIFF files at: 8 BIT - Adobe RGB (1998) - 300 DPI.
Then you will send this file off to be printed at your selected lab.
When you receive the printed gradient, you will be able to tell which black point and white point is going to be best for your shadows and your highlights of your photographs based on your computer monitor.
Then when it comes to sending off your final photographic files.
In Photoshop go into Image > Adjustments > Levels and set the output levels black point and white point numbers to what is referenced on your printed gradient.
After you have done this your image may look really washed out or overly contrasty on your monitor because the black point and white point on the printer at the lab are different to your monitor, however when you get the print back it should look perfect and near
One of the most important things when photographing and retouching, is preparing your work for printing and to have consistantcorrected colour throughout your photographs. Even if you decide to push your colours to the extreme for creative effect, starting off with a proper correction is very beneficial.
It is important to ensure that all your settings are in-sync with each other; from camera to monitor to photoshop to printer, to produce the same photograph (or exceptionally close to) throughout different mediums. If you are converting your files to different colour spaces through each pre-production process, the more you can potentially degrade the quality of your original image.
Continuing on from my first blog post about adjusting your camera settings for shooting RAW to give yourself a higher dynamic range, I will now go through my process of bringing photographs into Photoshop for post-production.
Firstly, I would recommend calibrating your computer monitor. Many computer’s are set to a default colour hue of blue/cyan, this is so that when they are on display at a store, they appear bright and crisp and look more appealing to the consumer.
This is not useful for consistant colour correction. You need to be able to distinguish the black and white points of your monitor. You do not want to have deep shadows or blown out highlights or an over saturated color hue.
There are various products on the market that will easily calibrate your monitor for you. I would not recommend trying to judge it by eye. I use a Spyder 3 Elite, it’s brilliant and quick and I always receive consistant results every time.
Once your monitor has been calibrated, then you can begin setting up Photoshop for post-production.
I work in Adobe RGB (1998) - This will be consistant with my camera, as previously I said that I shoot with the Adobe RGB color profile.
You will need a RAW conversion software, Adobe Camera Raw is a great program to start with - otherwise Lightroom is what I use.
I convert my RAW photographs to Adobe RGB - 16 BIT at 300 DPI and saved as a PSD (or you can use TIFF) file for working on.
Here is a screen shot from ACR once you have clicked to open and edit a RAW file:
This is in Lightroom when you go to Export your RAW files:
In Photoshop, my colour workflow settings are as follows:
To get to this go to Edit > Colour Settings.
My proof settings are as follows:
To get to this, go to View > Proof Set-up > Custom.
It would be a good idea to save these settings as your preferences.
I choose to work in RGB for the sole reason that it is a very common and standard colour profile with a broad color gamut. sRGB has a lower color gamut range and therefore will not yield the maximum numbers of colours for print.
CMYK does come into play in terms of printing for magazine publication, as generally this is the most common profile used.
This is why it is set to U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2 which is the standard for offset printing. This will be beneficial if you are requested to convert your colour profile to CMYK and then you won’t have highly noticeable colour shifts after doing so.
Once I have completed my retouching, I save a high resolution TIFF for printing.
I then covert the image to 8 BIT and the colour profile is kept at Adobe RGB (1998) with 300 DPI.
For viewing on the web, I save as a JPEG - 8 BIT - 72 DPI and converted to the colour profile sRGBIEC61966-2.1.
I use Convert to profile under the Edit tab. If you use the Assign profile it can make noticable colour shifts and should only be used if your original file does not have an embedded colour profile already.
That’s it! You are now ready to start achieving quality results from your photography!
Keep an eye out for my next post which will explain how to set-up your printer or lab for proofing your images based on your monitor calibration and how to get beautiful, near identical prints to what your photo would look like on your monitor originally.
