The Print The act of seeing and photographing is a key component of the creative process for most photographers. For many others, perfecting the image in the digital darkroom is also an essential part of the creative journey. And while seeing the image displayed on the luminous backlit canvas of an electronic display can certainly be satisfying, for most photographers, especially those who come from a traditional darkroom background, the ultimate destination for their creative expression is the print. We are living in an amazing time in photographic history. More changes have occurred in our medium in the past 15 years than in the previous 150 years. The creative and technical control we have over our images now is unprecedented, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the quality of prints we can make. But, as with all things related to the digital darkroom, there is a learning curve involved in creating quality prints. In this chapter, we’ll go over some of the essential topics you need to know for crafting high-quality prints in the digital darkroom: •

Resizing

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Final Output Sharpening

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Working with Profiles

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Soft-Proofing

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Printing from Photoshop

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Working with a Service Provider

Bonus Chapter © Seán Duggan

Preparing to Print The more original prints you look at—not websites and not book reproductions—but real eye-to-eye, in person, prints, that range from family snapshots to photo group reviews to visiting established galleries, the better printer you will become. Taking the time to see, study, enjoy, and internalize good photographic prints will influence your own work in the best possible way. Study how a photographer or master printer maintains detail in the shadows and delicate highlights, how they choreograph brights and darks, and in black and white images how toning adds dimension to the image. Although certain specific procedures are directly involved in making a quality print, the preparation for printing really begins with the initial photographic exposure. Doing all that you can to capture the best set of information about the scene, whether you’re using film or a digital camera, creates a solid foundation for translating the pixels into a photographic print.

Resizing Before you send the image to the printer, you need to specify what size the printed image will be. How large a print you can make depends on a number of variables, including the quality of the exposure; the original size of the file, be it from a digital capture or a scan; the type of printer and media being used; the intended use for the image; and your own standards for acceptable image quality. For a more in-depth discussion of these factors, see Chapter 3, “Scan, Develop, and Organize.” When to resize When you resize depends on some degree on the origin of the file. If you begin with a scanned image, then ideally you have created the scan to correspond to the largest print size that you’ll likely make from the scan. If you are working with a raw file, the possibility exists to resize the file in the raw conversion process, before creating the master file. If you choose to resize at this point, then you should be making the

Master Layered Files Create Flattened Copy

Resize to Print Size

Sharpen with Smart Filters

Figure B-1. Never apply resizing and final output sharpening to the master file. For maximum flexibility, you apply these steps only to a flattened copy of the master file.

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file large enough to accommodate the largest approximate print size you envision making. Depending on the native size of your raw file and how large of a print you want to make, some additional resizing may be necessary. We’ll cover resizing in Adobe Camera Raw later in this section. If you are processing the raw file at the native size captured by the camera as Katrin does, then the resizing will come after the main color and tonal editing has taken place. In a non-destructive workflow, the master image file is never resized because resizing the file is a permanent edit that can limit future print size possibilities. You should apply any resizing to a flattened copy of the master file. You also never apply output sharpening to the master file. By leaving the master file at the native size it was scanned or captured at, or at the size that was specified in the raw conversion process, the master file can serve as a source for many different output sizes (Figure B-1). Creating a flattened copy of the master file. Once all the editing has been applied to the master image and it looks the way you want it, save the file. Then choose File→Save As, and save the file with a slightly different name (we recommend keeping the basic file name the same and appending it with something that denotes it as a print file). If you turn off the Layers checkbox, it creates the required flattened image (Figure B-2). The layered master file will be closed with all the layers preserved in case you need to return to it for further editing.

Figure B-3. The Duplicate Image dialog box. Turning on Duplicate Merged Layers Only creates a flattened copy of the master file.

How to resize As with many aspects of the digital darkroom and Photoshop in particular, you can go about resizing a file in more than one way. Understanding how the resizing will affect the image is key to maintaining quality. In the following section, we’ll cover using the Image Size dialog box and the variety of options it offers, resizing with the Crop tool, and using the Adobe Camera Raw dialog box to resize the file. The Image Size dialog box. Once you have a flattened copy of

the master file that is ready for resizing, choose Image→Image Size (Figure B-4). In the Document Size section of the Image Size dialog box, enter the dimensions for the desired print size. The resolution should be set to a pixels per inch (ppi) setting that will yield good quality for the output device to which you are printing. For desktop inkjet printers, we commonly use 240ppi or 360ppi depending on the image and the paper surface (see the box “File Resolution for Printing”).

Another way to create a flattened copy for resizing and printing is to use the Image→Duplicate command. In the Duplicate Image dialog box, turn on the Duplicate Merged Layers Only checkbox (Figure B-3). The duplicate, flattened mage will be created, and the layered master will still be open behind it. It’s important to note that although the new duplicate file has been created, it has not been saved yet, so you should formally save the file before you get too far along the resizing, sharpening, and print preparation process. Figure B-4. The Image Size dialog box.

Figure B-2. The Save As dialog. The checkbox for saving the layers is turned off, which creates a flattened version of the image. Note the file name that denotes what size print this file is to be used for.

At the bottom of the Image Size dialog box are three checkboxes. Scale Styles is pertinent only if you have an image where layer styles such as drop shadows and bevel effects are part of a layer, which is not the case in this scenario. Constrain Proportions should always be turned on. If this option is turned off, it causes the proportions of the image to be distorted to fit within a specific size, which can result in obvious stretching or squeezing of the scene. If you need to fit the image within a specific aspect ratio, then you should crop the file to the desired proportion before you resize it. We cover using the Crop tool for resizing a little later in this section. Resample Image increases or decreases the number of pixels in the image depending on the original dimensions of the image. Unless the file is already the exact size it needs to be, you will need to resample the image. Preparing to Print

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File Resolution for Printing The resolution you set for the file will vary depending on how it’s being printed. For inkjet printers, a file resolution of 240ppi for matte paper to 360ppi for glossy and luster paper works well. We do know photographers who set the file resolution to 180ppi and get excellent results that they are pleased with. Making your own test prints is the only way to determine what file resolution works best for your printer and the types of images you make. A general rule of thumb we use is 240 for matte paper and 360 for luster and glossy papers. For images with exceptionally subtle tonal transitions and a wealth of fine intricate details, using the higher setting of 360ppi may produce better results depending on the type of paper you are using. Interestingly enough, the larger the actual print the lower the resolution you can use, as the standard viewing distance increases, which allows for lower print resolution while maintaining strong visual impact. Interpolation choices. Of the five interpolation choices available in the menu at the bottom of the Image Size dialog box, the Bicubic methods are best suited for photographic images (Figure B-5). The Photoshop default is Bicubic (you can change this in the General pane of Preferences). The remaining choices, Bicubic Smoother and Bicubic Sharper, are calculated to produce better results in specific situations where the image size is being enlarged (Bicubic Smoother) or reduced (Bicubic Sharper).

Figure B-5. The Bicubic interpolation algorithms are the best for photographic images.

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Keep in mind that every image has a limit as to how much it can be enlarged without the noticeable softening of details. If you notice such softening, it could be that you are simply enlarging the image beyond what is possible from the original data.

Another way to enlarge an image is with step interpolation, which resizes the file by small percentages in a series of steps. A typical approach is to resize in 10 percent increments until you’ve reached the desired size. Although some photographers swear by this method and it may have offered some advantages when working with Photoshop 7 and earlier versions, resizing a raw file in the Camera Raw dialog box as well as via the Bicubic Smoother interpolation algorithm yields better results that surpass the step interpolation method with a lot less work

The best way to judge the effectiveness of different resizing methods is not to read about them in a book but to roll up your sleeves and run some tests for yourself. To do this, choose a file (or create one specifically for test purposes) that was shot at a low ISO, is already sharp in terms of focus (both lens focus and no trace of motion blur), and has areas of high-frequency image detail that can be evaluated for sharpness and edge detail as the file is resized. Resizing in Camera Raw. If your original file is a raw

capture, then you also have the option of resizing in the Workflow Options dialog box of Camera Raw (Figure B-6). There are limits to how much you can enlarge a raw file in this dialog box, and you can choose from a range of choices rather than entering precise dimensions. Whether it’s better to resize at the raw conversion step or after you have created a flattened copy of the master file is a subject open for debate. Further complicating the question is that not all raw files are created equal and the results are camera dependent. How much input sharpening you have applied to the raw file also influences the effect of any upsampling you apply in Camera Raw.

Figure B-6. The sizing choices in the Workflow Options dialog box of Camera Raw.

The first step is to compare the results (using a good test image as described earlier) of resizing to a specific dimension in Camera Raw with the results from a single pass of resizing using the Image Size dialog box. In tests that Seán ran on a 12.7 megapixel file from a Canon 5D, upsampling to 25.2 megapixels in Camera Raw was slightly better than a single pass of resizing using the Image Size dialog box and Bicubic Smoother, but the differences were barely perceptible (Figure B-7). Keep in mind, however, that the result from the Image Size method was before sharpening had been applied. After applying a slight sharpening pass, the two versions were essentially identical. One compelling reason for leaving the file at the camera’s native resolution, however, is that the file size is much smaller and easier to work with than if you enlarge it to the maximum size offered by Camera Raw. If you’re working with a 16-bit file and plan on adding a number of layers, the difference in file size is not insignificant. There is really no “right” answer to this question since the differences in resizing are likely to be very subtle. The most important part of the question is to understand how the different resizing methods will affect your file and understand which ones will produce the best results. Resizing with the Crop tool. You can use the Crop tool

to crop images to a specific aspect ratio and resize them by entering the precise size and resolution in the Options bar before defining a crop box on the image. The one drawback to this approach, however, is that you have no control over the interpolation method that is used to resample the file, and the Crop tool uses the method set initially by Photoshop, which is Bicubic (unless you have changed it). Although Bicubic is fine for minimal resizing, the additional Bicubic choices in the Image Size dialog box are better suited for more significant enlargements and reductions. Using the Crop tool to resize doesn’t give you access to these other interpolation options. If you do need to crop a photo to a specific aspect ratio, resize the image to the closest dimension first, and then crop the excess afterward. For example, a standard 35mm aspect ratio file from a digital SLR doesn’t fit into traditional frame sizes such as 11 x 14 or 16 x 20 without some of the image being cropped off. To take such an image and prepare it for a 16 x 20 print, first use the Image Size dialog box to set the smaller dimension to 16 inches. With a 35mm aspect ratio file, the other dimension will be 24 inches (Figure B-8). Apply the resizing, and then set the Crop tool’s options to 16 x 20. Leave the resolution blank, and drag a crop box across the image that totally fills the smaller dimension. Once this is in place, move the crop box so the image will be cropped as desired, and press Enter to apply the crop. Since only cropping with no resampling is taking place, you don’t have to be concerned about the interpolation method (Figure B-9).

Figure B-7. Resizing a 12.7 megapixel image to 25.2 megapixels using Camera Raw and the Bicubic Smoother option in the Image Size dialog box produced nearly identical results. © SD

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Factors that affect sharpening A variety of factors influence how much sharpening you should apply to an image, including the nature of the image itself. In some photographs, the sharpness of details in the subject matter can be an important aspect of the image, while in other scenes the sharpness may not play such a prominent role. In Figure B-10 the still life of the letters in the forest contains a lot of fine edge detail in the leaves, the stamps, and the bark of the tree limb that is a critical component of the texture in this image. In the photo of a fogbound Maine coast (Figure B-11), sharpness, while still important for the rocks at the bottom of the image, is not as essential to the scene as it is in the still life image.

Figure B-8. Using the Image Size dialog box to resize an image in preparation for a 16 x 20 inch crop.

Figure B-10. This image has a lot of fine, intricate details. The sharpness of those details is an important part of this image. © SD

Figure B-9. After resizing to 16 x 24, we applied a 16 x 20 crop box to the image. Since the height of the crop box is the same as the height of the image, no interpolation is taking place. © SD

Final Output Sharpening After you’ve resized the image to the desired print dimension, it’s time to apply the final pass of output sharpening. It’s important that the sharpening comes after the resizing because upsampling an image can create a slight softening of detail. The amount of sharpening you apply is also influenced by the size of the image. We covered a range of sharpening techniques in detail in Chapters 4, “File Preparation” and 10, “Enhancing Focus.” In this chapter, we want to place those sharpening techniques in perspective as they relate to printing and discuss some strategies for how to evaluate what level of sharpening is best for the size print you are making as well as the type of paper you are using.

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Figure B-11. This photograph of a fogbound coast was taken with a long shutter speed to blur the motion of the water. Sharpness is not a major player in this image. © SD

Apart from the esthetic considerations of the image itself, other factors that affect sharpening are the original level of sharpness (or lack thereof) produced by the camera, the presence of noise, how much input sharpening was applied to the raw file, how large the image is being printed, the type of paper being used, the viewing distance, and your own personal tastes and standards. Let’s take a look at some of these considerations in more detail. Original file sharpness and noise. If you are starting with a raw file, then it makes sense to apply input sharpening at the raw conversion step, whether this is in Camera Raw, Lightroom, or in another raw converter. All digital files need some amount of sharpening, and the input sharpening you apply early in the process can help yield a file that can be easily sharpened for output at the end of the process. If the file has noise issues, then you need to be more cautious with sharpening. You should apply noise reduction techniques before sharpening so that the sharpening doesn’t enhance the noise. If there is significant noise in the shadow areas, use the masking techniques as discussed in Chapter 4 to reduce noise in the shadows or the advanced controls in the Smart Sharpen filter (Filter→Sharpen→Smart Sharpen) to minimize the sharpening in the darker areas of the image (where noise tends to lurk). Alternately, if you apply the sharpening as a Smart Filter, then you can use the layer mask for the Smart Object layer and mask out the sharpening where you don’t want it to be applied at full strength. Image size and viewing distance. The larger the output size of the file, the more sharpening you can get away with. One of the reasons for this is that larger files are typically viewed from farther back than smaller files. With an 8 x 10 image, you might hold it in your hands or stand fairly close to view it, but with a 20 x 30 or larger print, you are typically not standing so close. If you are making a larger print, then the sharpening you apply may look a bit too sharp on the monitor, but keep in mind that it’s the final print that matters. We’ll discuss ways to test sharpening at actual print size shortly. Paper surface. You should evaluate test prints on glossy or matte surface paper before committing to the final sharpening of the image. Ink behaves differently on glossy, luster, matte, and watercolor papers, and this can affect how much sharpening you apply. Since glossy papers are naturally higher in contrast and have less ink spread, you typically don’t need to sharpen images destined for glossy surfaces as much as you would for matte or watercolor papers.

Sharpening test strips In traditional darkroom work, test strips were used to evaluate exposure times. Test strips can be just as useful in digital darkrooms to see how sharpening actually looks on the type of paper you are using. To create test strips for sharpening, start with a flattened copy of the master image as described earlier in this chapter. Use Image→Image Size to resize the photo to the desired print size and resolution. With the rectangular Marquee tool, make a selection of an area in the photo that contains a section of important image detail that is representative of the detail throughout the entire image (Figure B-12). To save paper, make your rectangular selection no more than 8 inches along the longest dimension so that it will fit on letter-sized paper.

Figure B-12. After the file has been resized to final output dimensions, create a rectangular selection of representative detail that you can use as a sharpening test strip. © SD

Choose Edit→Copy and then File→New. In the New File dialog box, open the Presets menu, and choose U.S. Paper. Then in the Size menu, choose Letter. If you are making a full-size sharpening test, choose a paper size that will accommodate your strips. The resolution should be the same as the data you copied, but it’s good to double-check this. Click OK, and then choose Edit→Paste to paste the copied section of the image. Choose Layer→New→Layer via Copy (Command-J/Ctrl+J) twice to make two copies of the new layer. Use the Move tool (V) to reposition the three test strip layers so that you can see them all as separate strips. If you Shift-drag with the Move tool, it will constrain the movements of the layers and keep their edges aligned (Figure B-13).

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Figure B-13. Three layers containing the same section of detail that will be used to evaluate different sharpening settings.

Next, convert each layer to a Smart Object by choosing Filter→Convert for Smart Filters. Now apply a sharpening filter to each layer, varying the settings for each (Figure B-14). We typically choose a couple of variations that are close to what we think it should be and then one that looks a bit oversharpened on the screen. Make a print of this file on the same paper you will use for the final print, and evaluate the sharpening under good light (Figure B-15). Since the sharpening is applied with Smart Filters, you can always double-click the name of the Smart Filter to see what the settings were for a given layer and change them to make additional tests as needed. If you are using Photoshop CS2, which doesn’t support Smart Filters, you can add the settings to the name of the layer or use the Notes feature to add a note to each layer that details the settings used (notes are not visible when the image is printed). Sharpening test strips are an excellent way to see how the sharpening is really affecting the image on the paper you are using. For large prints, you may need to print test strips that are the full width of the final print size so the sharpening can be evaluated from the typical viewing distance that is common for large format prints. For the final sharpening you apply to the file, use the Smart Filter method to keep the sharpening flexible. Even by carefully evaluating the sharpening test strips, you may decide to change your sharpening values once you have made a full-size print. 8

Bonus Chapter: The Print

Figure B-14. We have converted the separate layers to Smart Objects, and we have applied different sharpening settings as Smart Filters.

Figure B-15. The sharpening test strip file printed on an Epson Stylus Photo R2400.

Final spotting After you apply final output sharpening, it’s always a good idea to go through the image at a 100 percent view (View→Actual Pixels) and check for any dust spots that may have been accentuated by the sharpening process. If you find any spots, use the Spot Healing Brush to remove them before sending the image to the printer. This may seem like a bit of extra drudgery, but this final close-up inspection is always worth your time. It’s better to find the spots in the file before you make the print than after you’ve used a lot of ink and a good sheet of paper to print an image with flaws that will send the print to the wastepaper bin.

Image profile. The color tag or profile that is embedded in the actual image file is a reference for how the colors in the file should be displayed. Without an embedded profile, Photoshop can only guess at how to interpret the color numbers in the file, and the default interpretation for an untagged file is to interpret the numbers according to the current RGB working space. This is why it’s so important to embed a color tag in your image files. If you have ever ordered an enlargement from a photo lab and brought in a previously printed version of the image as a reference to serve as a guide print, then think of the embedded color profile as a digital guide print. Photoshop and other ICCsavvy applications use the embedded profile as a reference to ensure that the colors are correct.

Northlight Images (www.northlight-images.co.uk/ article_pages/test_images.html) has a good selection of downloadable files for testing a variety of printing and camera conditions, such as grayscale neutrality, linearization, color, and lens resolution.

Output device profile. The final profile in the process is the one that characterizes the color behavior of the output device and the paper that will be used to make the print. Printer profiles are always paper-specific since ink behaves differently depending on the surface of the paper. When printing from Photoshop or Lightroom, the color data in the file is converted to the color profile of the output device so that the color appearance of the image is preserved.

Inkjet Printing After you have carefully prepared the file, it’s ready to be sent to the printer. At this stage of the process, you need to properly apply some important workflow components involving printer profiles for the color appearance to be preserved in the final print.

Profiles Profiles are a critical part of a color-managed workflow and essential for creating prints that match what you see on your display as close as possible. There are three places where profiles play an important part in ensuring that what you see on your monitor is what comes out of your printer. Monitor or display profile. Although this profile plays a behind the scenes role, it’s a key component. When used in combination with a calibrated monitor, the display profile describes how your particular monitor renders color. Photoshop compares the profile embedded in the image with the display profile and adjusts the display of the image as needed to ensure that it’s correct. Without an accurate monitor profile, you can’t trust what you see on your display. The best way to calibrate and profile a display is by using products specifically designed for that purpose such as the Eye-One Display and Monaco Optix by X-Rite or the Spyder by Datacolor.

Canned profiles The profiles that come with your printer and are installed with the printer driver are often referred to as canned profiles (Figure B-16). They are written to characterize the behavior of your printer model with a variety of papers made by the printer manufacturer. And although the profile is for your printer model, it’s not a custom profile for the specific printer that’s hooked up to your computer. Still, with the current models of inkjet printers, they are generally quite good, as long as you use them with the manufacturer’s paper. It doesn’t do any good to spend your money on a quality photo inkjet printer and then buy the cheapest photo paper that’s on sale at your local big-box office-supply store. The canned profiles that came with your printer will not work with it, and you will most likely have a very frustrating printing experience with a lot of paper waste. The canned profiles that come with your printer might be of use with some third-party papers, however, if that paper manufacturer directs you to use the canned printer profile with their papers. Some paper companies formulate their papers to emulate the response of an equivalent paper made by the printer company, so in that situation, using the canned printer profiles with third-party papers may produce acceptable results. You should always refer to the paper company’s website for this information.

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Photoshop will look for them. Some profiles are saved as a ZIP or a Stuffit archive, so make sure you have properly unzipped or unstuffed the file before proceeding with the installation. On Windows systems, the easiest way to install profiles is to right-click the icon for the profile, and choose Install Profile from the contextual menu. You can also copy it and paste it into the following directory depending on the particular flavor of Windows you are using: Windows 98: C:\Windows\System\Color Windows XP: C:\Windows\System32\Spool\Drivers\Color Windows 2000 and XP: C:\WinNT\ System32\Spool\ Drivers\Color Figure B-16. Canned profiles for the Epson Stylus Photo R2400.

Windows Vista: Right-click the ICC profile, and choose Install Profile.

Profiles for third-party papers. Other paper companies

On a Mac, copy the profiles to the following locations, depending on whether you want them available to all users or only to a specific user:

such as Crane and Hahnemühle supply profiles for their papers that work with a range of printers (Figure B-17). Since Epson has been the acknowledged leader in the inkjetprinting field for a number of years, you will likely find that many of the profiles are for Epson printers. In the past couple of years, however, both Canon and HP have been closing the gap with Epson, so profiles for some of those printers may also be available. Before you purchase some paper, go to the company’s website to make sure the company has a profile that matches your printer or indicates that the canned printer profiles can work with its papers.

Figure B-17. The ICC profile download page for Hahnemühle fine art papers.

Downloading and installing profiles You can download paper profiles from the paper company’s website, and most include instructions for how to install them so they are placed in the proper directories where

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Mac OS X: /Library/ColorSync/Profiles (all users) Mac OS X: User/Library/ColorSync/Profiles (specified users) On both Windows and Mac, you need to restart Photoshop, and you may also need to restart your computer for the newly installed profiles to be available. Custom profiles For the ultimate control over your printer/paper profiles, you can also make your own custom profiles that are specific to your particular printer and the papers you are using. Though this is not as necessary as it was some years ago when the canned profiles that came with printers were not as good as they are today, if you are not satisfied with the results from the canned profiles or require the extra level of control that a custom profile offers, then this is the way to go. For example, if you are printing on a fine art paper for which no profile is available, then you need to either create one yourself or pay a profiling service to make one for you (more on that in a bit). X-Rite is currently the leading manufacturer of custom profiling hardware and software targeted toward the photographic community. Its i1Photo family of products offers a range of profiling features that includes not only monitor profiling but also RGB and CMYK printers, scanners, and digital projectors. If you are using only a limited selection of papers, however, you may not need the full-featured profiling capabilities offered by the i1Photo packages. Fortunately, profiling services are available such as ColorValet by Chromix (www.chromix.com) that will create a custom profile for your printer and a specific paper.

The standard “profile on demand” procedure involves downloading a target file, printing it on your printer on the paper you want to have profiled, and sending the print to the profiling service. Using profiling hardware and software, the profiling service measures the pattern of color swatches on the print, creates the profile, and emails it to you. Once you install it in the proper location and relaunch Photoshop (see “Downloading and installing profiles” earlier in this chapter), it will be available for use.

Soft-Proofing Using printer profiles not only ensures that your printed output looks like you expect it to, it also lets you preview what the print will look like and how certain colors might change through a process known as soft-proofing. Softproofing uses the embedded color tag in the image and the specified printer profile to simulate on the display what the colors will look like once they are actually converted to the output space. This can be a useful way of proofing the colors in the image before it’s printed because no matter how tight your color managed workflow is, there will be times when a specific color that can be displayed on your monitor can’t be reproduced in print. This is especially true if you are preparing a file for reproduction in CMYK or if you are using matte, watercolor, or rag papers.

Figure B-18. Creating a custom proof setup for Crane’s Museo fine art paper on an Epson R2400.

Figure B-19. Saving the custom proof setup so that it can be easily accessed in the Proof Setup menu. The name contains information about the settings.

Keep in mind that for soft-proofing to work you need to have the other components of a color-managed workflow in place, such as a properly calibrated and profiled display and the presence of an embedded color tag in the file you are working on (that is, ProPhoto RGB, Adobe RGB, and so on). Creating a custom proof setup To create a custom proof setup, follow these steps: To create a new soft-proofing space for a printer/ paper combination that you use, choose View→Proof Setup→Custom.

Figure B-20. After saving a custom proof setup, it appears as a choice in the Proof Setup menu.

In the Customized Proof Condition dialog box, open the Device to Simulate menu, and choose the profile that represents the printer/paper combination you want to proof. In Figure B-18 we are using a profile supplied by the Crane paper company for its Museo fine art paper on the Epson Stylus Photo R2400.

Soft-proof simulation options In the Customized Proof Condition dialog box, a few options affect how the hypothetical conversion represented by the proof is created:

Click Save, and give your proofing setup a descriptive name. For example, “Crane Museo R2400-RelCol-BPC” indicates the setup will simulate a conversion to Crane Museo paper on an Epson R2400 using the relative colorimetric rendering intent with black point compensation on (Figure B-19). Once you’ve saved the proof setup, it appears as a menu choice in the View→Proof Setup menu (Figure B-20).

Preserve Numbers. For RGB to RGB conversions, such as when you are proofing to an inkjet printer (which is considered to be an RGB device even though it uses variations of CMYK for the inks), this is not recommended. When this is turned on, Photoshop renders a proof of what the file would look like if it were printed with no conversion to the output space. Unless you want to see how bad this would look, there is no reason to turn this on since a conversion to the printer/paper profile is necessary if you want the appearance of the image to remain consistent.

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Rendering Intent. This lets you specify how the color numbers are converted from the document’s space to the output space. For most photographic purposes, the two rendering intents that are most useful are Relative Colorimetric and Perceptual. Since this dialog box has a preview, you can try either of these rendering intents and see how they affect the image. Whether you actually see any difference between the two depends on the individual image, the colors it contains, and the type of paper you are using. Use the rendering intent that gives the most pleasing results. In most cases, perceptual produces images that are accurate in color and saturation, with the added benefit of avoiding banding or noise artifacts. Use colorimetric when reproducing accurate colors is of paramount importance. The default rendering intent is the same as what is set in the Color Settings dialog box (Edit→Color Settings). If you change it here, the program remembers this and uses the last-used setting the next time you open this dialog box. Black Point Compensation. This setting maps the black in the document profile to the black in the output profile. The main reason why you would want to do this is to ensure that the conversion uses the entire dynamic range of the printer and paper combination. This setting is on by default, and we use it for most of our printing. There might be a very subtle difference between turning it on or off, or you might not notice any difference at all. The preview function shows any changes. Simulate Paper Color. This option is most useful for CMYK press reproduction on uncoated papers, and we don’t use it very often for inkjet proofing. As the name suggests, it attempts to simulate the actual color and brightness of the white of the paper. On most papers this is noticeably dimmer than the bright white from your backlit display, and you might be disappointed that the image looks duller and flatter. To properly evaluate the soft proof with this option on, you should hide all the program interface elements that contain white, since your eye will be comparing the paper white in the proof to the white of the interface, which will make the proof look duller. Use one of Photoshop’s full-screen views, and hide the interface with the Tab key before entering the Customized Proof Condition dialog box. If you look away from the screen as you turn this option on and then look back, the changes in brightness will be less noticeable since your eye can’t immediately make a comparison.

Simulate Black Ink. Like its sibling, Simulate Paper Color, this option is most useful for CMYK press reproduction on uncoated papers. For many inkjet printer profiles this will be grayed out and unavailable. For those profiles where it’s available, it attempts to show the actual density of the black ink on the specified paper. Like the paper color simulation, this may result in a less than satisfying dulling of the image, but depending on the paper you are proofing, it may be a more accurate simulation of what the actual print will look like. Making corrections in proof colors view Once you have established a custom proofing setup or chosen a previously saved setup in the View→Proof Setup menu, you can quickly turn it on and off by choosing View→Proof Colors (Command/Ctrl-Y). If you have the file in standard screen mode, the name of the proofing setup appears in the title bar of the document window (Figure B-21). If you notice aspects of the image that you think need to be adjusted, you can make these corrections with adjustment layers while viewing the soft proof (Figure B-22). For example, on some matte or rag papers, you may want to add a bit more density to the blacks with a Curves or Selective Color layer. Limitations of soft-proofing The way color is created on a computer display and the way color is created by ink on paper are very different. One involves emitted light, and the other is based on reflected light. The physics that are involved in these two systems ensure that an exact match between what you see on the monitor and what comes out of your printer is essentially impossible. But color management that is based on the use of ICC profiles has progressed to the point where you should be able to get a very, very close match and certainly close enough to be able to accurately evaluate a soft proof to determine what changes, if any, need to be made to the file. You should also realize that just because you can display a certain color on the monitor, it doesn’t mean you will be able to reproduce it in all its intense, saturated glory on the print, especially if you are using matte, watercolor, or rag papers. Like anything in the digital darkroom, color-managed softproofing is a tool to help you predict how an image will look when printed.

Figure B-21. When you are viewing a soft proof in standard screen view mode, the name of the proofing space appears in the title bar of the image.

12 Bonus Chapter: The Print

Figure B-22. Layer groups containing fine-tuning adjustments for different types of paper.

Printing from Photoshop Once you’ve resized the image, applied the final sharpening and spotting, and made any corrections after viewing a soft proof, you are ready to send the file to your inkjet printer. In previous versions of Photoshop, you had to specifically choose File→Print with Preview, but in Photoshop CS3, File→Print will take you to the correct dialog box. The layout and some of the nomenclature is a bit different from previous versions of Photoshop, but all the key settings that relate to print layout and color management are still available. Image layout and Page Setup In the top-center part of the dialog box, open the Printer menu, and select the printer you will be using. Next, doublecheck the preview of the image on the left side. Does the image appear to be the right size in relation to the paper size you are using? In the example shown in Figure B-23, we are printing a 12 x 18 horizontal image, but the paper size is Letter, so only the center part of the image is showing in the preview. If the size or orientation doesn’t look correct, click the Page Setup button, and choose the correct paper size and orientation (portrait or landscape) for the print you want to make (Figure B-24). Once you click OK after making changes to the Page Setup, the layout preview of the image should be correct (Figure B-25).

Figure B-23. In the Print dialog box, first check that the placement of the image on the paper is correct. In this example, a 12 x 18 image is being printed, but the previous paper size of US Letter is causing the image to be cropped. Clicking the Page Setup button will let you change the paper size.

Figure B-24. The Page Setup dialog box on the Mac. The same dialog box on Windows has a different appearance, but the same paper size and orientation settings are available.

Figure B-25. After setting the right paper size (Super B, 13 x 19), the preview of the image is correct.

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Position and scaled print size The default position of the image on the paper is centered, but you can change this by entering measurements to change the inset of the image from the top and left sides of the paper. When the Center Image box is turned off, you can also drag on the image preview to manually change its placement on the paper. Although you can change the size of the printed image using the Scaled Print Size controls, we don’t recommend this. Specifically, you have no control over the interpolation method that will be used, and resizing should always come before final sharpening. Resizing at this point, even if you have already sharpened the file, could adversely affect the sharpness of the image. We’re not talking about anything catastrophic, but it’s not the best way to handle this aspect of the printing workflow.

If you have a selection active in the image before opening the Photoshop Print dialog box, you can turn on the Print Selected Areas checkbox at the bottom of the dialog box, and only the selected area will be printed (though it would be nice if the image preview in the dialog box reflected this).

Color management On the right side of the Print dialog box are the settings that control the conversion from the document space to the printer/paper profile. Let’s take a look at these working from top to bottom (Figure B-26).

For most inkjet printing we choose the Document profile as the source space for the image. The Proof feature is useful if you are trying to use your inkjet printer to simulate another device, such as a specific flavor of CMYK press conditions, but you don’t need to worry about this for standard inkjet printing. The Color Handling section controls how the color information is sent to the printer, and you can choose from three options: Printer Manages Color. This bypasses the color management of the Photoshop Print dialog box and sends the information directly to the printer. Any color management takes place in the printer driver. We don’t recommend this option since it leaves critical color decisions up to the printer software that we think are handled better by Photoshop. Photoshop Manages Color. This is the color handling setting we recommend for most printing scenarios. When this is turned on, the Printer Profile menu is activated, which lets you choose the correct printer/paper profile. Photoshop will convert the image data from the source space to the printer space using the specified rendering options. No Color Management. This is an option only when you are printing a test target for making a custom printer profile. If you are printing a target file from a profiling service, this is the option you would use. After you have selected Photoshop Manages Color, open the Profile menu, and find the correct profile that represents your printer and paper combination.

If you are printing from a PC and using only the canned profiles that came with your printer, you may see only the printer name in this list. In this case, you will specify the paper type in the printer driver.

Photoshop sets the Rendering Intent and Black Point Compensation options as they are specified in the Photoshop Color Settings dialog box. If your soft-proofing evaluations indicated that a different setting would be beneficial to use, you can change those options at this point.

Figure B-26. The Color Management settings in Photoshop’s Print dialog box.

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The Match Print Colors checkbox in the lower-center part of the dialog box creates a color-managed soft-proof of what the image will look like using different printer profile settings. After years of the no color-managed previews in the Photoshop Print dialog box, this is certainly a welcome addition, but for real soft-proofing it is better to use the Customized Proof Conditions dialog box we discussed earlier in this chapter (see “Soft-Proofing”).

Output settings If you open the Color Management menu at the top of the dialog box, you can access the Output settings (Figure B-27). These are primarily used for prepress and proofing jobs, and for some of the settings to be activated, you have to be using a PostScript print driver. Although they are not directly related to the type of printing that most photographers are doing in their digital darkrooms, a couple of the settings may be useful in some situations, though you need to be sure there is enough extra room around the image for these items. Calibration Bars. This option adds an 11-step grayscale wedge and a smooth grayscale gradient to the left and right sides of the print. If you want a reference to judge grayscale neutrality in a proof, then this can be handy.

Mac: Epson R2400 driver. On the Epson print driver for

Mac, open the Copies and Pages menu, and choose Print Settings. Select the correct paper type, and choose Color if the image is a color file (we’ll discuss the Advanced B&W Photo settings a little later). Choose Advanced Mode, and set Print Quality to Best Photo. If you are printing to glossy or luster paper, then turn off High Speed (Figure B-28). Open the Print Settings menu, choose Color Management, and click the Off (No Color Adjustment) button. Photoshop has already converted the colors into the correct output color space, so we don’t want the printer attempting to apply a second color adjustment (Figure B-29). This is an important setting and is the place where most people make a mistake that results in prints that are not what they’re expecting. At this point, you can click Print.

Corner and Center Crop Marks. If you will be trimming the print down to just the edges of the image, then these can serve as useful trim marks. If you want the image area to overlap the crop marks, click the Bleed button to determine how much the crop marks are indented.

Figure B-27. The Output settings on the right side of the Print dialog box.

Print driver settings When you click the Print button, Photoshop converts the image to the printer profile and sends it to the printer. The next dialog box you see is the print driver software. Not all print drivers are created equal, and the settings we discuss here may not be available in every driver. Additionally, printer software is changing all the time, and there are also significant differences in the look and layout of print drivers between Macs and PCs. But the important part of this section is not the exact names and locations of the settings but the overall concept of how these setting affect the printed output. The most important setting here is arguably the one that turns off printer color adjustments. We will be using the Epson Stylus Photo R2400 print driver to illustrate this discussion.

Figure B-28. The Print Settings pane of the Mac Epson R2400 print driver. This is where you select the media type and set the print quality (resolution).

Figure B-29. The Color Management pane of the Mac Epson R2400 print driver. The all-important (Off) No Color Adjustment setting is turned on.

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Windows: Epson R2400 driver. After you click Print in the Photoshop dialog box, choose the printer you want to use, and click the Preferences button to open the Printer Properties/Printing Preferences dialog box.

On the main tab of the Properties/Preferences dialog box, choose the correct media type that matches the paper you are using, and then click the Advanced button (Figure B-30).

Figure B-31. The Advanced section on the Main tab in Printer Properties on Windows. This is where you turn off printer color adjustments.

Figure B-30. The basic settings on the Main tab in Printer Properties on Windows. You can set the media type, size, and orientation here.

In the Advanced dialog box, choose the desired print resolution quality. In the Color Management section, click the button for ICM, and then turn on the Off (No Color Adjustment) checkbox. This is also the place where you can turn the High Speed option on or off depending on the paper you are using (Figure B-31).

Saving print driver presets To reduce the chance of inadvertently choosing the wrong setting in one of the different panes of the Print dialog box, open the Presets menu in the Mac printer driver, and choose Save As (Figure B-32). In the Windows print driver, you can find this button (Save Setting), as well as the saved Presets menu, at the bottom of the Advanced dialog box (Figure B-33). Save the settings with a descriptive name, so they appear as a choice in the Presets menu (Figure B-34).

As we stated earlier, there are differences between printer drivers, even among printers made by the same manufacturer. The most important settings you will encounter in the printer driver are the ones where you select the correct paper type and turn off any printer color adjustments.

Figure B-32. Saving a group of print driver settings as a preset.

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Using the correct color mode When printing black and white, be sure the color mode of the image is RGB. If you have created your master file as a grayscale document, convert the version sized for printing to RGB before you enter Photoshop’s Print dialog box. Inkjet printers are color devices, and they will do a much better job of creating a black-and-white print if you give them color data. Using RGB mode for your image also lets you explore toning treatments in Photoshop.

Figure B-33. In the Windows print driver, the Presets menu and Save Setting button are on the Advanced tab.

Epson advanced black-and-white options If you are using one of the newer Epson printers, you can take advantage of the Advanced B&W Photo settings. On a Mac you can find these settings in the Color menu of the Print Settings pane, and on a Windows computer you can find them in the Color Management section of the Advanced tab. To access the full black-and-white controls, choose the Color Management menu on the Mac (Figure B-35). In Windows, you can access the full controls by clicking the Settings button in the Color Toning section (Figure B-36). These options are very good at producing excellent blackand-white prints, and using them is one instance where you let the printer driver handle the color adjustment of the image.

Figure B-34. The saved setting is now available in the Presets menu.

Printing Black and White

Figure B-35. The Mac version of the Advanced B & W Photo settings for the Epson R2400.

Until comparatively recently, printing black and white on a color inkjet printer was an exercise in frustration. True neutral prints were very difficult or impossible to achieve without resorting to custom RIP software or specialized ink sets. The former entailed spending extra money on software, and the latter approach meant you had to dedicate a printer for black-and-white use with the custom ink set. Thankfully, all that has changed, and although custom inks and specialized RIPs may still be an option that some want to consider, they are no longer the only road available if you want good black-and-white output from your color inkjet printer. Figure B-36. The Windows version of the Advanced B & W Photo settings for the Epson R2400.

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In the Tone menu, you can choose an overall brightness level for the image. The default is Darker, which we think is a bit too dark, but you should make test prints to determine what tone level works best for your own images. The Color Toning menu lets you choose from four presets that will tone the image Neutral, Cool, Warm, or Sepia. You can also use the color wheel controls to create a custom monochrome tint. In most cases, we simply use these controls to ensure that the tonal values are neutral (or toned the way we want them) and don’t use the additional slider controls. As with many aspects of working in the digital darkroom, doing your own testing is the way to determine for yourself how these settings affect the print. Custom black-and-white inks Some companies sell custom inks designed solely for blackand-white images. One of the most well-known and highly regarded of these is the Piezography ink system from Cone Inks (www.inkjetmall.com). Created by master printmaker Jon Cone, this profile-based system uses seven different dilutions of neutral gray inks that are designed to work with Epson photo inkjet printers and third-party RIP software. If you will be printing a lot of fine-art black-and-white exhibition prints and demand the best black-and-white quality possible, then you might want to investigate the Piezography ink system. Third-party RIPs A raster image processor (RIP) is specialized software that offers additional printing capabilities for controlling the output from different types of printers. Several RIPs excel at creating high-quality black-and-white output. Until the black-and-white advances in the Epson print drivers, a third-party RIP was a necessary requirement if you wanted decent black-and-white output. ImagePrint from ColorByte (www.colorbytesoftware.com) is one of the more well-known RIPs that have been used by photographers for creating black-and-white prints from inkjet printers. In addition to black-and-white controls, there are also features for batch printing and printing multiple images on a single sheet of paper. The question of whether a RIP is something that would be an asset to your workflow is much the same as the question of using custom inks. If printing black and white will be a large part of your imaging work and you need the highest possible quality, then a RIP may be a worthwhile investment.

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Beyond Inkjet: Continuous-Tone Photographic Printers The quality and affordability of photo inkjet printers has brought the ability to create high-quality prints to the desktop. The control we have over our printing today is something that photographers in the past could only dream of. Beyond the world of inkjet, however, are large-format continuous-tone printers that create images using a laser or an LED light source on actual light-sensitive photographic paper. The two models of these printers in common use are the Durst Lambda and the Cymbolic Sciences International Lightjet 5000. The Durst Lambda printer is ideal for files that have some initial noise and cannot handle any additional sharpening, while the Lightjet printers are best suited for 100% noise free and tack sharp files. The size of these printers and the chemical processing requirements of the paper mean they are not something you’ll have in your office or garage (even if it’s a particularly roomy garage). For this type of output, you need to work with a service provider or a professional photo lab. When working with continuous-tone printers you can achieve excellent results by submitting files at half the resolution that the printer requires. For example the Durst Lambda prints at 400 ppi but due to the high quality of the Cheetah RIP used to feed the printer we have achieved exhibition quality results with 200 ppi files. As mentioned earlier, talk to the lab and find out what resolution they require.

Working with a Service Provider If you need to send files to a photo lab or service provider to have either large-format inkjet prints or large continuoustone prints made, you need to take a few steps to ensure that the print quality meets your expectations. First, consult the website of the lab that will be doing the printing, and follow any file preparation direction it provides. If something is not clear, give them a call. Knowledge is power, and the more information you can gather about properly preparing the file for their output process, the more likely you will be pleased with the results. Professional labs offering large-format inkjet or continuous-tone prints usually have custom profiles that you can download and install on your computer (Figure B-37).

Figure B-37. The ICC Profiles download page for Calypso Imaging (www.calypsoinc.com).

Using Convert to Profile When printing to your own inkjet printer, the conversion from the source profile of the document to the output profile of the printer takes place in Photoshop’s Print dialog box (or the Print with Preview dialog box in versions prior to Photoshop CS3). For files you will be sending to a service provider, you can accomplish this in the Convert to Profile dialog box (Edit→Convert to Profile).

The conversion settings in this dialog box are similar to those in Photoshop’s Print dialog box. For Destination Space, choose the service provider’s profile that represents the device and paper type you’re using. In the example shown in Figure B-38, we’re sending the file to Calypso Imaging, so we’re selecting their profile for matte paper on a Lightjet 5000 printer. The other options are Conversion Engine, which is best left to ACE, and Rendering Intent. As with the soft-proofing feature, Relative Colorimetric and Perceptual are the best choices to use with photographs. The Preview function shows you any differences between the two settings.

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It’s All About the Print

Figure B-38. Here we’re using the Convert to Profile dialog box to convert a file to the profile of Calypso Imaging’s Lightjet 5000 printer on matte paper.

Once the file has been converted to the correct output profile, save it in the file format recommended by the photo lab (make sure you turn on the Embed Profile checkbox in the Save As dialog box), and upload it to the lab's FTP site.

To ensure the smoothest possible output, you should delete any alpha channels or paths from files that you send to a service provider for output. Although this is not as much of an issue as it was in the past, some RIPs are still picky about the presence of alpha channels in a file.

Online printing with no custom profiles Although most professional labs supply custom profiles for their printers and papers, not all service providers do this. Some commercial labs or online printing services have their printers and workflow calibrated to the sRGB color space since it’s the most common color space for the mass market, where many people are unfamiliar with how to properly use custom profiles. If this is the case, simply choose sRGB for the Destination profile in the Convert to Profile dialog box. For example, Seán often sends files to Bay Photo Lab (www.bayphoto.com) in Santa Cruz, California. The digital printing system at Bay is calibrated to sRGB, so he converts all his files to that profile before uploading his order. The color quality has always been excellent and a very close match to his calibrated display. If you can’t find any specific custom profile information on a service provider’s website, contact the company to inquire what it recommends.

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Digital printing has come a long way in the past several years, and we can expect only that print quality and print life will improve in the coming years. This is very fitting because since the beginning of the photographic era in the mid-18th century, the primary way that people have interacted with photographs is through the printed image. In our own lives, the printed photograph holds a key place in our personal histories in the photo albums and shoe boxes brimming full of family memories. And seeing a fine photographic print well lit and displayed in a gallery or museum is the ultimate photo-viewing experience. Although photography is becoming primarily a digital medium and much of our interaction with images is on the computer screen, in the end it’s still all about the print. We consider ourselves very fortunate to live in this day and age when the creative and technical advancements offered by digital printing have finally reached a point where print quality equal to or surpassing traditional photographic prints is possible. The initial learning curve may have some steep sections and bumps, but the hardware and software is improving all the time. We look forward to the new advancements that the coming years will bring. It’s a great time to be in the digital darkroom!