Perfect Photo Prints
Copyright 2006 Peter Horner
There are many ways to share your landscape photos with digital
photography, but photo prints remain the most popular. Prints
can be framed and hung up on the wall to show your photos off to
friends and family. Creating the perfect print can become even
more challenging if your monitor isn't calibrated properly. You
will have suddenly wasted your time, paper and ink on a print
which doesn't match what you see on your monitor. Read these
quick tips for getting the best prints possible.
Dpi and Ppi - When you make a print of one of your photos on an
inkjet printer, a lot is happening inside the printer. Inkjet
printers work by spraying ink dots of cyan, magenta, yellow and
black from nozzles while they pass over the paper. Most inkjet
printers have a print resolution of 1440dpi and some printers go
as high as 5760dpi. In general, the higher the resolution of
your printer the greater detail you can print and the better
your photo will look. The single biggest point of confusion
comes from Dots per inch and Pixels per inch. Dpi is very
different from ppi, which is the resolution of an image on your
computer screen. Printers create dozens of tiny dots to fill the
space of one pixel, and the more pixels you pack in an inch the
finer the detail will look. The ideal resolution for printing an
image is 300 to 400dpi/ppi.
Ink and Paper - You have a lot of options when choosing
different quality inks and paper types, all of which can be
combined to form a satisfying result. Different photo papers
will give surprisingly different results from the same photo
printed on the same printer. Photo paper comes in many different
styles, weights, and photo finishes, including matte, glossy and
varying degrees of gloss, which is usually called semi-gloss.
Colour photos usually look best when printed onto glossy or
semi-gloss photo paper, while black and white photos usually
look better on matte. It is also worth while creating and saving
different profiles for your printer for each type of photo paper
you use. This is because on some papers a printer may use too
much of one colour, instead of correcting the colour yourself
you can select a profile you created before. The cost of ink can
sometimes be greater than that of paper. Purchasing brand name
inks by your printer manufacturer is usually the safest option
and will produce the best results. Remember that printer damage
caused by third party printer cartridges sometimes isn't covered
by manufacturers. Some companies such as Lyson produce high end
inks which in some cases are better than the manufacturers own.
Archival qualities and resistance to colour fading is also
important when choosing inks. For example pigment based inks
help guarantee that your prints will remain crisp and vibrant
for many years. If you are going to print a large quantity of
photos it is also worth checking the prices of online printing
stores to see if they are a better option for you.
Monitor and Printer - Calibration Calibrating your monitor and
printer is essential when viewing and printing your photos. Your
monitor could be displaying inaccurate colours and density.
Adobe Photoshop comes with something called Adobe Gamma which
will most likely already be installed on your computer. You can
use Adobe Gamma to create an ICC profile which uses calibration
settings to change the way your monitor reproduces colours.
Start Adobe Gamma, located in Control Panel and then select step
by step and follow the instructions. Daylight can affect the
accuracy of colours displayed on your monitor, this is why its
best to carry out your monitor calibration in a darkened room.
The first and most important step in printer calibration is to
use the correct driver for your printer. Every printer driver
comes with its own calibration controls and tools, designed for
fine tuning the overall colour of your prints. You can visual
calibrate your printer using test images with a wide range of
tonal values, including colours bars, photographs, and blocks of
colours. You can then adjust the colours using your printer's
controls to match on screen with what you have in print.
Alternatively ICC profiles provide a way to insure consistent
colour reproduction. Every printer comes with default profiles
for use with different combinations of inks and paper which may
be suitable for your needs.