The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Printing Photos Phillip Rocke |
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With many people now printing their own photos Alan Stevenson explains how to achieve and maintain print quality |
Like many people I have been printing my photos as a matter of course. Most of them need some sort of adjustment either by cropping, stitching or minor alterations to the colour, brightness and contrast, or hue and saturation.
Recently I purchased a Pantone colour correction device for my monitor. It is called a Huey and automatically brings the colour of the monitor to near perfect and then constantly adjusts for the background lighting.
Now that the monitor is adjusted, no longer do I have the excuse "Oh, it looked OK on the screen".
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Buying packs of photo quality paper, printing some off and comparing them is
both time consuming and expensive so, like many others, I have tended to keep to the printer, inks and papers that I like and hope it's close enough. However, recently I approached a specialty paper supplier in my capacity as a teacher from the U3A in Nunawading and they very kindly sent me about twenty samples of their matte, semi gloss and gloss papers as well as canvas, silk and linen papers which are ideal for reproducing paintings, drawings and so forth. Although that was very kind, I was still in the position of having to compare photos, determining which was the best and trying to figure out why one was better than another. My colour sense is well below average but I was surprised to find that some high quality papers came out with a bluish cast to them while others didn't. Research on the Internet proved difficult since whenever I came across a site that referred to coatings on photo paper, they either referred to printers or were so esoteric as to be impossible to understand. It appears that the coating, while being a wax, absorbs the ink at a predetermined rate. This rate determines the brightness of the image as well as the durability both with respect to light and physical wear (coming off, onto the glass, plastic or whatever is against it). Different surfaces react to the chemical composition of the ink, and the speed and direction it hits (some jets come in at a slight angle to produce an oval dot). After a certain amount of speculation which included looking at images through a microscope and using non standard inks (much to the horror of Mr. Epson), I determined that GIGA inks, which are American and slightly more than one sixth the cost of Epson inks are best for my Epson Photo R 350. However, this only holds true if I don't use Epson paper! I am very aware of price and savings but also want quality. Hence the survey. A very useful site I stumbled on during my search was http://www.imagexpert.com and it has a PDF file named Printer 720 Target. This is an A4 image (see Figure 1) which takes your printer and the paper to their limits. Using this, I have determined which papers (matte, semi gloss and gloss) are the best for my printer and the inks I use. There were some surprises, one of which was that the most expensive is not necessarily the best. |
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Reprinted from the March 2007 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
