“Ron Martinsen is an internationally renowned commercial photographer who has educated over 800,000 visitors on his popular Photography and Photoshop blog. His printing series last year was a huge hit, but there was so much great information to share that his loyal readers asked for a book. Printing 101 Notebook: An Introduction to Fine Art Photography Printing is an eBook that is designed to help frustrated ink jet printer users get the most out of their investment by educating them on everything they will need to make great prints.”

Ron Martinsen’s ebook Printing 101 is packed with digital printing tips and tricks, peppered with links to more resources. In a casual personal tone he offers advice based on his real world experience. While the book is applicable to photographers using any inkjet printer, it offers more information on Canon printers than any other source I’ve encountered. The supporting interviews with industry leaders in printing offer even more information from a diverse group of individuals.

Find out more about Ron Martinsen here.

Get your copy of the Printing 101 Notebook at Flatbooks.

Learn more with my free digital printing ebooks.

Learn more in my digital printing workshops.

Category: ebooks
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Bambi Cantrell, Douglas Dubler, Greg Gorman, Jay Maisel, Steve McCurry, and Jeff Schewe share their thoughts and feelings on their work and how they relate to it when it’s printed.

View my Epson video interview here.

Find out more about Epson Focal Points here.

Category: Printing, Video
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In this video, I share my thoughts and feelings on photography and printing.

Find out more about printing here.

Read other interviews here.

Read my artists statements here.

Category: Interviewed, Printing, Video
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Softproofing

October 19, 2011 | Leave a Comment


As a rule, always softproof an image to determine a rendering intent and make printer/substrate specific adjustments to a image file before printing it.

You can get Photoshop to display an image the way it will appear when it’s printed, before you print it, by softproofing an image. If you softproof before you print, you’ll get your best first proof or maybe even a finished print.  Not to be confused with a hard proof or physically printed piece, a softproof uses an ICC profile to create an onscreen simulation of an image as it will appear when printed.

Wait. Haven’t you already done this by calibrating and characterizing your monitor with a colorimeter, choosing an editing space along with color management policies in Photoshop, and specifying the right profile for a printer/paper combination with your printer driver? Almost. Doing these things ensures that all of the different color behaviors of the devices you’re using are accurately described and that color conversions are handled precisely, but it doesn’t ensure that you will see exactly how an image will look when printed. Without softproofing, you see how an image looks on a monitor. To see an image on a monitor with the appearance of how it will look when printed, before you print it, you need to take the final step of softproofing the image. This simulation won’t change your file, just it’s appearance. Once softproofed, if you choose to, you can make output specific adjustments to your file before printing to get a better first print. Read more

Category: color management, Photoshop, Printing
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Category: Video, X-Rite i1Photo Pro
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Quickly cure curl in prints made from roll papers with D-Roller.

This device is extraordinarily simple and effective.

You might wonder why a simple plastic tube with an attached sheet of plastic costs as much as it does – 24” $259.99, 36” $279.95, and 50” $299.99. When you see how effective, easy, and fast it is to use you’ll realize it’s money well spent.

Here’s how easy it is.

1 Place a print on the white carrier film near the tube.
2 Roll the tube away from you, wrapping the print between the tube and the film.
3 Hold for a few seconds.
4 Unroll the tube
5 Turn the print 180 degrees and repeat.
6 Remove the flattened print.

Here are a couple of tips for using it.

The longer you hold the paper rolled up the more curl you take out; you can actually reverse the curl if you hold the paper too long.

Paper coming off the outside of the roll requires less derolling than paper coming of closer to the core.

Low humidity requires more derolling.

Non-rag papers require more derolling.

Though the very smooth plastic won’t damage print surfaces, you can include a cover sheet in the derolling process for exceptionally delicate materials.

Special rollers can be custom ordered for very long prints.

Is it really that simple? Yes!
Does it really work? Yes!

Visit inkjetart.com for more information.

Read more about the tools I use here.

Learn more in my digital photography and digital printing workshops here.

Category: Equipment
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Interested in printing on exotic substrates? Consider InkAID (inkaid.com). InkAID is a liquid coating that prepares surfaces for inkjet printing. Coating an exotic substrate’s surface will do several things. It will reduce dot gain, allowing the print to hold more detail. It will increase gamut, providing greater saturation. It will increase dmax, yielding a better black.

Artists are experimenting with many types of exotic substrates from aluminum, to acrylic sheets, to wood, to uncoated fine art and handmade papers. Basically, if you can get it through the printer and you can get the ink to stick you can print on it. InkAID helps the ink stick.

InkAid is easy to use. Stir it. Brush it on. Let it dry. Print.

There are currently five InkAid products. White Matte Precoat creates a white matte coat on any surface. Clear Semi-Gloss Precoat creates a transparent semi-gloss finish on any surface.  InkAID Adhesive and Clear Gloss Precoat create a transparent glossy surface with two coats. Clear Gloss Precoat II creates a transparent glossy surface with one coat. When using clear coats, you can choose to let the coloration of the base surface show through (the material itself or a surface with an image) or you can coat it first with White Matte Precoat.
ping and handling.

Surfaces are water resistant and can be reworked with subsequent printings, over painting, or distressing.

You may be able to use ICC profiles for similar inkjet surfaces (if you get lucky), but it’s more likely that you will have to create new ICC profiles specifically for this surface to achieve the optimum results, especially if the final state of the coated substrate is not white.

InkAID is acid free and contains no optical brighteners. Nonstandard tests (hang samples in a window in direct sunlight next to other prints and compare) indicate longevity is roughly on par with similar inkjet prints. Longevity ratings obtained from standardized tests are not available as the variety of substrates being used today is so vast.

A liter costs $25. A gallon costs $65. A sample set (5 ounces of five products) is available for $21 plus ship

InkAID.com has a useful FAQ section answering many common questions about it’s use. The book Digital Art Studio: Techniques for Combining Inkjet Printing with Traditional Art Materials by Bonnie Lhotka, Karen Schminke, and Dorothy Simpson Krause is another source of useful information.

Find InkAid here.

Read more about the tools I use here.

Learn more in my digital photography and digital printing workshops here.

Category: Equipment
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Black and white printing presents several significant challenges; the ability to produce a neutral color, the ability to maintain that neutral appearance under different light sources (reduced metamerism), the ability to attain graybalance (consistent color throughout the entire tonal scale); the ability to achieve a very dark black (high dmax) without sacrificing shadow detail (low dot gain), and longevity. All of these things are now easily attainable.

Black and white inkjet printing has come of age. In past years, there have been many compelling solutions for making black and white prints with inkjet technology; some have been fraught with problems (third party quadtone ink sets clog easily) and others have been expensive (ColorByte’s ImagePrint RIP). Today, superior quality inkjet printing is both affordable and easily achieved.

Epson has addressed these issues by reformulating their inkset to include not one, not two, but three black inks. You now have a choice of using either Matte Black ink or Photo Black ink with Light Black ink and Light Light Black ink. These inks are used with the other color inks (Cyan, Light Cyan, Magenta, Light Magenta, and Yellow) for a total of eight inks.

Manufacturer’s have reformulated their inksets, adding multiple black inks to highly saturated color inks. To produce the best black and white prints, you want to use all the inks because printing with Black ink only produces a visible dot structure and a lighter black.

Manufacturers have also introduced their own software solutions to separate digital files differently, using more black ink and less color ink. Using more black ink to make a print does several things. It makes it easier to achieve a truly neutral color; it uses more neutral ink and less highly saturated ink. It makes it easier to achieve graybalance (consistent hue throughout the entire tonal scale); graybalance has also been improved by advances in software in both the driver and with improved profiles. It increases the density of the black; dmax ratings for Epson’s UltraChrome II inkset on glossy papers (3.65) now exceeds the dmax of silver gelatin prints (3.2). It reduces metamerism; black ink is the least metameric ink and using a Light Light Black ink makes it possible to carry very subtle highlight detail with gray instead of yellow, the most metameric and fugitive ink. It increases longevity (up to 326 years before visible fading depending on paper type and inkiest); black ink is the least light sensitive so using more of it makes prints last longer.

Epson offers an Advanced B&W Photo feature in their driver software. While you can make a black and white print using either the Epson route or the Photoshop route, for the best graybalance, dmax, and longevity, choose the Epson route and the Advanced B&W Photo feature.

Take these steps.

1    Choose Print. Select Printer Manages Color. Click Print Settings.
2    Under Printer select the printer of your choice.
3    Change Copies & Pages to Print Settings. Select the appropriate or nearest Media Type. Select Advanced B&W Photo under Color. Check Advanced. Choose the highest printer resolution available under Print Quality.
4    Change Print Settings to Color Management and under Tone choose Dark. Optionally, use the color wheel to tint the image.

Read more

Category: color management, Photoshop, Printing
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Successfully managing color for digital printing requires that the color in an image file be converted from its device neutral color space to a device specific color space. (Typically this occurs by converting from Adobe RGB 1998 or Pro Photo RGB  to a device specific color space defined by an ICC profile characterizing a specific combination of printer, ink, paper, and driver.)

Using Photoshop, you can either convert color in an image before you send it to a printer driver or after you send it to a printer driver.

Choose one method of color management – not two. Easily made, a classic mistake is using both. Double color management typically results in a print that is too light and magenta.

The Epson printer driver provides many ways to manage color conversions and get reasonably good color. Two methods offer the best results; the Photoshop route and the Epson route.

How do you do you choose either of these methods?

Let Photoshop’s Print window (under Color Handling) guide you – Let Photoshop Determine Colors and Let Printer Determine Colors. (While the principle is the same for most printers, interfaces will vary. Here’s information for the most current Epson interface.)

If you choose Let Photoshop Determine Colors under Color Handling, select a profile for Photoshop to make the conversion with (a paper/ink/driver specific profile not the interface default of Working RGB) under Printer Profile, choose a Rendering Intent of either Relative Colorimetric or Perceptual, and then click Print Settings. In the Print window choose the correct Printer and then change Copies and Pages to Print Settings. Select the correct Media Type, uncheck High Speed, and choose the highest printer resolution available. Finally change Print Settings to Color Management and select Off (No Color Adjustment). The Photoshop route turns Photoshop’s color conversion on and turns the printer’s color conversion off.

The Photoshop route tends to hold slightly more saturation but it’s rendition of neutral colors and gray balance is usually not as good as the Epson route. The Photoshop route is the route to take when you want to use a custom profile. Use it if you are printing with either third party inks or papers which require the use a custom profile to accurately describe the behavior of the alternate media.

If you choose Let Printer Determine Colors under Color Handling, choose a Rendering Intent of either Relative Colorimetric or Perceptual, and then click Print Settings. In the Print window choose the correct Printer. Change Copies and Pages to Print Settings to select the correct Media Type, uncheck High Speed, and choose the highest printer resolution available. Finally change Print Settings to Color Management , choose EPSON Standard (sRGB) under Mode, and select Color Controls. The Epson route turns Photoshop’s color conversion off and turns the printer’s color conversion on.

The Epson route tends to deliver significantly improved rendition of neutral colors and gray balance with slightly less saturation. Try it when printing neutral colors. Use the Epson driver’s Advanced B&W Photo feature for black and white images.

Each route works well. Each route yields slightly different results. Test them to see the differences. (Note that you cannot see the differences between printing routes when softproofing; you have to make physical proofs to see these differences. They can significant.)

Read more

Category: color management, Printing
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Get This – Correct Color Management

Avoid This Double Color Managed

Is your print too light and magenta? Double color management. It’s a classic mistake. I sometimes make it myself when I’m working too fast. So that you know what to look for, I recommend that you make the mistake deliberately, once, and only once, if possible.

Don’t do this …

And this …

What’s the right solution?

Check your software (Photoshop or Lightroom) and printer software (Epson driver) settings, reset them, and print again. Choose one method of color management – not two.

Read more in my online resources.

Learn more in my digital printing workshops.

Category: color management, Printing
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300 million are photos taken each day generating over 100 billion a year. While 20 years ago 10% of photographs made were printed, today less than 1/10 of 1% are ever printed! Historically, what’s printed lasts; what’s not, doesn’t. Has this changed?

Find out about my digital prints here.

Find out more about printing in my free Digital Printing Lessons.

Learn more about printing in my Digital Printing Workshops.

Category: Printing
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Blurb’s Bookify

October 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment

Blurb recently announced it’s new online bookmaking tool Bookify.

“Some projects are simpler, just begging for a streamlined solution. If what you want to create is a beautiful photo book – tonight – then you really should give our new online bookmaking tool, Bookify, a spin. It’s a fantastic new way to make books at Blurb.
Bookify features a specially curated set of our most popular layouts – or you can just drag and drop your photos and the page will design itself. Amazing. Plus, the whole thing is online so you can make a book from wherever you are.
So while PDF to Book is great for more involved projects, Bookify is ideal for simpler work.”

Here’s why:
•    It’s streamlined. Curated layouts and our most popular fonts.
•    It’s convenient. No download necessary. Simply import your photos from Flickr® or your computer, and start making your book instantly. You can even work on your book from more than one computer.
•    It offers all the Blurb goodness – professional quality, stellar image printing, great paper choices, hardcover or softcover, and five of our book sizes – and all at affordable prices.

Make a book with Bookify by November 2 (11:59 p.m. PDT) and save 25%.*

Just type in the appropriate promo code at checkout and you’re set:
•    USD $ coupon code: BOOKIFY
•    GBP £ coupon code: BOOKIFY1
•    EUR € coupon code: BOOKIFY2
•    CAD $ coupon code: BOOKIFY3
•    AUD $ coupon code: BOOKIFY4.

Find more resources in my Bookmaking lessons.

Learn more in my bookmaking workshops.

Category: Blurb
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Find printing tips is my latest interview with Ron Martinsen.

Find more tips in my Lessons.

Find out about my fine art digital printing workshops here.

Category: Interviewed, Printing
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Thought you knew what a hickey was? Never knew paper had a tooth? Had no idea it out gasses? Learn these terms and you’ll not only be able to speak more knowledgeably about printing, you’ll also know what to look for in prints and how to get the best results in your prints.

Epson’s Dan Steinhardt assembled a great Glossary of Fine Art Related Terms.

It’s not published; it’s a useful resource that’s circulated around the web.

Dano generously shares it with us here!

Thanks Dano!

Find out more about Dan Steinhardt here.

Bookmark this post and you’ll be able to quickly find terms anytime anywhere.

.

Dano’s Glossary of Fine Art Related Terms

Abrasion Resistance

The resistance to scratching of a surface of paper by other paper surfaces or other materials.

Absorbency

The ability of a material to take up moisture.

Acid Free

(Neutral pH of 7.0) During paper production, treatment employed with a mild base is employed to neutralize the natural acids occurring in wood pulp.  Buffering may also be used to prevent the formation of additional acids. If prepared properly, papers made from any fiber can be acid free. Read more

Category: Technique
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Find out how Neil Enns creates custom portfolios and portfolio covers on my Alumni Blog.

He can do it for you too! Find out about what he has to offer you here and here.

Category: Alumni, Printing
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Do you need to make your own printer profiles?

Probably not, if you’re using a printer manufacturer’s standard papers.

Yes, if you’re using 3rd party or exotic substrates or inks.

Is it hard?

No! This video highlights several easy solutions.

Learn more on my DVD Fine Art Digital Printing.

Learn even more in my Fine Art Digital Printing Workshops series.

Category: Printing, r/evolution, Technique, Video
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Framing

February 9, 2010 | Leave a Comment

framed

You’ve been framed. It sounds terrible right? But, when it comes to your prints, it’s great. It’s a sign that after all that work you’ve arrived.

Think of how many photographs you make; a lot. Now think of how many of those actually get selected and processed; a few. Now think of how many of those actually get printed; fewer. Now think of how many of those actually get prepared for formal presentation, mounted and matted, perhaps for a portfolio; fewer still. Finally, think of how many of those actually get framed; even fewer still. The images you frame are a very small percentage of the total umber of images you create. They’re the rare few.

Framed images represent your very best work. Framed images are the ones that go on your walls or someone else’s walls. You spend the most time with them and live with them the longest. They represent your work publicly. They’re the ones used for exhibitions. They establish your reputation, and once made, reinforce or elevate it. If you’re a fine artist, framed images are the images that generate a significant amount of your income.

You’ve got choices. And the choices you make speak volumes to your viewers. There are so many framing choices available to you it’s easy to get lost in endless details. Identifying a few broad categories or types of frames can help you focus on specific areas, where details become important rather than superfluous.

Frames can be simple or complex.
Frames come in many sizes, from thin to thick.
Two framing materials are used more than any others – wood or metal.

Consider framing fashion for your images. Dress your images appropriately. The right fit will make your images look like a million bucks. Presentation enriches a viewing experience. The wrong fit may seem cheap, be distracting, or even send conflicting signals to viewers and put them off. Your viewers may not think twice about or have a second look at your images. Since there are so many types of images, no one size or style fits all.

Would you go out in public naked? Don’t let your artwork go out into the world poorly presented and unprotected.

This is an excerpt from the current issue of Photoshop User magazine.

Read more in PhotoshopUser magazine.
Find out more with my free Lessons.
View more on my DVD Fine Art Digital Printing.
Learn more in my Workshops.

Category: Printing
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Ansel Adams’ Clearing Winter Storm, 1944 is interesting to me because of the image’s complexity. It’s a specific kind of complexity. Like many other complex images, it’s made of a lot of separate elements but is still unified. Unlike many other complex images, it can be broken into many separate images, each complete compositions in themselves; four peaks in clouds, one vertical monolith in clouds, shadowed valley between monolith and peak, waterfall and peak, waterfall and two trees, etc. (Try finding as many separate compositions in this single image like this as you can.

 

When you look at prints of Ansel Adams’ Clearing Winter Storm many assumptions about the medium, the man, and his work are confirmed and challenged. It’s neutral, perhaps even slightly cold in tone, which is appropriate for the subject. The tonal scale is high contrast and full scale, perhaps heavier than expected with very full highlights and it may be surprising that some shadow detail is not preserved. The large format original renders detail well, though there are traces of visible grain in light smooth areas. There’s detail throughout the image (deep depth of field, sharp focus, full scale printing); when it was printed this may have been the sharpest image quality possible while today it looks classically smooth in comparison to new high resolution digitally sharpened images. At 16×20” it’s a medium scale enlargement, not a contact, and could have been printed larger; that it wasn’t is an interesting reflection on both the man and his times. Print quality becomes not only a window into the past of the subject but also into the medium, which this man above all others epitomized for his time.

 

(There’s a lot to be learned from looking at originals, which is why we look at masterworks from my collection in all of my  digital printing workshops.)

Find my comments on other Masterworks In My Collection here.

Learn more in my digital printing workshops.

Category: Masterworks In My Collection, Printing, Workshops
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PixelGenius has added a free ICC profile for the new Epson Stylus® Photo 2880 Printers designed to work with Epson Exhibition Fiber Paper. Many free profiles are available at the PixelGenius web site. (Printers supported include Epson R2400, 3/4/7/9800 series and 4/7/9/11880 series.)

Learn more from Jeff Schewe at PhotoshopNews here.
Get the PixelGenius profiles here.

Category: Printing
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Today, Mac Holbert and I started teaching The Fine Art of Digital Printing at the Hallmark Institute of Photography in Turners Falls, MA. Epson shipped in new 2880 printers for this special event. Epson’s new 2880 uses UltraChrome K3 with Vivid Magenta. How much does Vivid Magenta expand the gamut? Check out these diagrams – 2D, 3D, and 3D looking at Dmax. The 2400 is in white and the 2880 is in full color. Both are graphing Epson Premium Luster Paper. The graphs indicate warm blues, magentas and greens are where it pays off. Slight increase in Dmax. It’s not a dramatic increase but in specific images (polarized skies and saturated foliage, it can be significant. There are also slight tradeoffs in other areas of the spectrum (wherever the white volume extends beyond the color volume).

Words and pictures can work together to tell a fuller story. These diagrams were made with Chromix’s ColorThink. I use it to graph ICC profiles and compare substrates and to compare inksets. Doing this more clearly illustrates the pros and cons of each.

It’s something I do in all of my color management sessions (like the whirlwind tour of color management participants in the FADP workshop got this morning and the sessions you’ll find on my DVD 6 Simple Steps to Color Management).

Check out my Review of Chromix’s ColorThink used to make these graphs.
Check out Chromix here.

Check out my earlier post on the 2880 here.
Check out the 2880 here.

Check out our workshop the Fine Art of Digital Printing here.
Check out my Fine Digital Print workshop series here.

Check out Hallmark’s post on today’s session.

Category: DVDs, Printing, Workshops
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