Looking for help with digital printing!!!

[Stephen Willard]

I have very little knowledge about the digital world. I am primarily a color darkroom guy. However, I believe it will be easier to print sample portfolios digitally. Here is my plan.

First, I scan in an 8x10 master print. I have a master print for each composition. I use the master print to insure consistency for the prints I sell, the images on my website, and the portfolios I send out. I then intend to Photoshop the image so that it looks as close as possible to the master print. I will be printing the images on 8.5x11" paper. The images sizes I intend to print are 4x10, 6x7.5, and 6x8.4 which corresponds to my 4x10, 4x5, and 5x7 format cameras. When I tried this what came out on paper and what was on my screen was not the same. So I need some help on how to make this easier.

The tools I have are a HP Scanjet 5500c, MAC G4 with Mac OS X 10.3.7, Photoshop CS Version 8.0, the old 17" MAC studio video screen that can self calibrate, HP Business Inkjet 1100 printer, and HP Premium Plus 8.5x11" Glossy paper.

I have budgeted around $300 for any calibration tools I may need.

So what do I do next? Any help would dearly be appreciated. My hope is to keep my learning curve as short and fast as possible.

Thanks,

[John Flavell]

Hello Stephen: Can you clarify one thing?

"When I tried this what came out on paper and what was on my screen was not the same. So I need some help on how to make this easier"

Do you mean to say the color wasn't the same? Or, did you mean the sizes didn't work out correctly?

That'll help with suggestions.

[Stephen Willard]

Hi John,

I got the sizes right, but the colors, contrast, and brightness were off. I noticed on my printer's dialog box if I
reduced the ink density, the print got closer to what was on my screen. I also just noticed that the printer dialog box had other
printing options that could be overriding what I did Photoshop. The options are "Digital Flash" (which brightens the shadows)
and "Contrast Enhancement". Both were set to "Auto Adjust". Perhaps I should manually set these?

[julian_4860]

Stephen, sounds like you've just discovered colour management! Firstly, profile/calibrate your monitor using a puck - I know nothing about the Macs so can't say if your screen profiles itself accurately. then get or buy profiles for every printer/ink/paper combo you use - manufacturers profiles are sometimes good, sometimes bad. check the gamma you've set in PS is suitable - I know some mac folk set everything to 1.8 when 2.2 in PS (not the mac monitor) would be better. Make sure you are not 'double profiling' i.e. profiling in PS and then getting the printer to colourmanage as well i.e. make sure theprinter is not set to colourmanage

[David F. Stein]

Color management is all well and good, but I think you are asking quite a bit from that particular printer and paper combo. As meticulous as you are, why not have your portfolio contain "originals." It will cost more actually to try and duplicate what I take it are R or Cibachrome color prints. In any event, scanning also requires a different print from display-a lower contrast print with full highlights will give you a better scan output-scanning originals demands quite a bit from your scanner and scanner software. GOOD LUCK.

[Frank Petronio]

Get Bruce Fraser's book "Real World Photoshop" for the current version. Start with Chapter One... Seriously, you have a dozen issues to address and tidbits on a forum won't answer them.

[Bill_1856]

I'm just learning, too, and it seems to me that scanning the master print may not be the best way to do it. It will probably be much easier (and better) to scan the original transparency/negative, then match that result to your master print.

[Ken Lee]

In order to do color management, your monitor has to be profiled, or you have no clue what you are looking at. I recommend Gretag Macbeth's EyeOne Display 2 (http://www.gretagmacbeth.com/index/products/products_color-mgmt-spec/products_cm-for-creatives/products_eye-one-display.htm" target="_blank).

Every combination of paper and ink has its own response curves to colors. Therefore, you need to have a custom profile for every paper/ink combo you intend to use. Some are available in the public domain, but many are not, and every printer is a little different. I recommend CHROMiX Color Valet (http://www.chromix.com/colorvalet/?-session=tx:18DAE57E027dd11E25TGQo2494F5" target="_blank)



Once your monitor and printer are set, you should be able to realize "what you see is what you get". Without it, the odds are slim.

[Ted Harris]

I hate to say it so directly but I really don't think either your printer or scanner are up to the task. Additionally, even with an adequate scanner, why would you dacrifice a generation of resolution by scanning from the print when you can scan from the original?

[John Flavell]

Stephen, as you can see there's quite a bit to this color management stuff. You said you had money budgeted for color management software: spend it.

Also, the direct way Ted put his critique of your scanner and printer are probably dead on. Some scanners and printers are really better than others for what you're trying to do.

My humble suggestion: start with the color calibration software and see what it'll do with your equipment, learn it, then work your way steadily into better equipment. And all the other suggestions above about reading are good ones.

Good luck.

[Stephen Willard]

So far so good. The information I am getting is excellent. Ken I visited both your sites and have them book marked. In defense of my scanner and printer, I believe they are indeed lacking, but for my application they are sufficient. I am making very small prints to provide my customers with an approximation of the real thing. However, I am watching digital developments very closely, and this will provide me with an excellent opportunity to get my hands wet.

Purchasing a new scanner and printer is trite. Understanding color management is a little bit more involved. The former I will take care of in due time. So back to color management. If I purchase the equipment to calibrate my terminal and have custom profiles made for my printer, will this not only manage color differences, but manage contrast, brightness, hue, and saturation difference between
my screen and the printer?

[Frank Petronio]

You can profile and calibrate to the cows come home, but you will never actually match print to screen - the physical differences between a lighted display and flat-art prints prevent this. The best outcome you can expect is to get a reasonable match that YOU can interpolate the outcome from, and the big advantage of color management is not that it is a "magic bullet" but that it is consistent. You still will want to make adjustments - just like the darkroom - to each inkjet print. The good news is that once you get it wired, you can print a thousand identical prints.

Frankly, you should be able to get the monitor neutral and produce acceptable prints without buying all the color management geehaws - just use the Adobe Gamma software that comes with Photoshop, and read the manual (RTFM). Really. Nothing is sillier than buying a pile of software and hardware when you don't understand what it does. Good luck!

[Paul Butler]

I would suggest an alternative route, to be able to quickly run off the prints you need. This will require a longer "learning curve" at the beginning but will give you many fewer headaches in the end. You can do this once the color-management tips suggested above are applied to your printer, and your monitor is adjusted.

I recommend having your negatives/transparencies scanned (not "master prints"). This may mean sending them out for drum scans, a significant expense but worth it. If it is negatives we're talking about, and the color correction is done at the time of the scan, this saves you a lot of trouble.

Then, crop, rotate, adjust perspective (if needed), apply unsharp mask (if needed) and adjust the contrast and levels in photoshop for each composition and save the file once the print has the "look" you want. You can then re-size each one to match the different print sizes you will be producing.

From this point, you will have a perfect print for each composition and will never have to worry about it again unless you get a different printer.

Working from the negatives instead of from a print will produce much better "raw material" for you in the end.

[Ken Lee]

"If I purchase the equipment to calibrate my terminal and have custom profiles made for my printer, will this not only manage color differences, but manage contrast, brightness, hue, and saturation difference between my screen and the printer?"



That is the basic idea. However, as has been pointed out, consumer-grade paper+ink has a more limited color gamut than monitors. In other words, monitors can produce more colors, deeper saturation, and greater contrast than the printers that we use for consumer applications.



These tools have been around for a long time in the world of publishing and printing. If you scanned on an drum scanner, made adjustments in Photoshop, sent your output to a huge commercial press, and printed on fabulous paper stock, then you could expect much better results - like what we see in expensive magazines and books. But for the money we are spending on scanning, printer, ink and paper, we get an approximation only.



Once you calibrate your monitor and profile your printer/ink combination, you have the greatest potential to get a print of what you see - given the equipment and materials at hand - without having to make endless corrections and prints.

[Stephen Willard]

Boy, thanks to everyone. You all have been most informative. I am using HP's best photo paper stock which costs $40 for 50 sheets of 8.5x11". Whether this is a consumer or commercial grade I do not know, but is very much sufficient for my needs. I am in the process of getting a custom profile made for the paper, ink, and printer configuration I am using, and I have already order the equipment needed to produce a profile for my display.

Ken, I have discovered how to make Photoshop use different color profiles. I also have discovered that different profiles have different size color gamuts. For instance I have found that I got better predicting results using the sRGB profile than using Photoshop 1998 RGB profile. I latter discovered that sRGB has a much smaller color gamut than Photoshop 1998. Perhaps this restrict profile more closely approximates what is happening with the printer and why there is a closer match. Keep in mind I am still learning.

Should I ever decide to make the jump to digital, I will probably buy my own drum scanner and get profiles for it. I have over 200 images to convert, and I do very big stuff which would require big scan files. Just converting my existing inventory would probably pay for the scanner.

I have just discovered that MAC OS X 10.3.7 has a very nice tool called "ColorSync Utility" which allows me to inspect, install, and easily assign any profile I want to for every applicable device on my system. It also has the ability to inspect and repair every color profile on my system. This tool will make it very easy for me to manage my profiles and install new ones as my needs grow.

Thanks again. I am now off and running with lots more to learn.