triangle.com | Home

Your location is ... [change]

Welcome to Share! Here you can post photos and news, comment on forums and create community groups.

Search

Printing in the digital age

Submitted by breakPRranks on July 7, 2008 - 7:33pm. photography

Undoubtedly, I’m wasting my time posting anything to the Photography forum, seeing that it’s effectively defunct. But I’m curious what process others use to print photographs, and would welcome any experience and observations along these lines.

I grew up in the old days when Kodak was king and everything was processed in a darkroom -- even had my own freestanding one in the basement as a teenager, complete with running water and ventilation. So in some respects, I’ve yet to drag my knowledge base fully into the 21st century.

As with anything computerized, though, there are a million-and-one different paths to the same end. So ultimately, I suppose the issue comes down to which is most closely responsible for print quality: the software, the printer, or the paper?

Has anyone found, where software is concerned, that photo editing packages outperform photo management applications? Have you compared those results with simply printing through a word processor like MS Word?

There are a couple of printers on the market that seem expressly designed with photographic output in mind. Any endorsements, warnings?

It used to be that photo paper -- both maker and type -- played a significant role in the final product. Has the field been pretty much leveled in this respect, with no clear winners?

Average rating

(0 votes)

I've never done any photo printing at home...

Submitted by Java55 on July 8, 2008 - 11:38pm.

...so I can't really help on the software/paper etc aspect, but have got excellent results from Wolf/Ritz Camera just bringing in my digital faves every half year or so to have enlargement prints made. Normally I just use my raw photos for prints but I too would be interested in knowing what kinds of software are available and which is best/recommended for fine tuning the images before printing, and paper etc just in case I ever do decide to start printing at home.

Good topic!

» reply

For pure picture enjoyment ...

Submitted by breakPRranks on July 9, 2008 - 12:22pm.

Thanks for weighing in on this, Java. Maybe we can stimulate some discussion.

It does seem as if, with the existence of computer monitors, the incentive to actually print photos isn't a great as it once was. In fact, speaking personally, I consider the purchase of a widescreen monitor to be about the best investments one can make toward enjoying their digital photography. I've simply been blown away by how awesome many photos look on a 24 inch screen. To have that size output instantly at one's fingertips is something that simply wasn't available to the average shutterbug, even 10 years ago. The best you could do was slide projection, and that's cumbersome, to say the least.

I've heard a little bit about photo printers I'll share in another post.

» reply

I'm pretty happy with the

Submitted by Art_Wannabe on July 9, 2008 - 8:35pm.

I'm pretty happy with the results I get from my home printer and some matte photo paper, as I mentioned in another forum. I have an hp j5780, which isn't even for photos. I bet printers made for printing photos are even better.

I have noticed that printed images seem darker than they appear on the screen, and therefore I often lighten them up before printing.

» reply

Prints seem darker than they appear on the screen?

Submitted by Java55 on July 10, 2008 - 12:07am.

Does your monitor have a brightness/contrast control that you can adjust to the point where your prints will more closely match what you see on your screen? Just for reference I have my contast set at maximum and the brightness at about half - this seems to match fairly close to what I get when I see my prints alongside the monitor screen when comparing.

» reply

adjusting the monitor

Submitted by Art_Wannabe on July 13, 2008 - 9:08pm.

Thanks for the idea. Based on your previous suggestion in another forum, I've darkened my monitor to the defalut settings, and my recent postings seem more in line with what I expected.

My maximum contrast is really harsh, so what you describe does not look like it will work for printing.

» reply

Objects darker than they appear

Submitted by breakPRranks on July 11, 2008 - 12:07pm.

I'm right there with you on the "darker" part, Art; my experience is the same.

I also find this phenomena of image size between screen and print mystifying. How the file can be enormous in terms of monitor size, but substantially smaller in print, escapes the limits of my technical knowledge.

I do know, when printing in the nominal 8 by 10 range, an imaged sized to roughly 1800 pixels wide is not too much data to use, and may even be too small as it is, without resizing the image.

» reply

Images sizes and prints

Submitted by Java55 on July 11, 2008 - 11:52pm.

I am not sure exactly what is involved with the use of dpi resolution in digital photos when viewed upon a standard monitor screen as 300 dpi and 25 dpi look about the same, however printers must 'see' an entirely different 'picture'. That is all that I can surmise.

» reply

So many printers, so little comparison

Submitted by breakPRranks on July 13, 2008 - 1:28pm.

What I’m finding with the photo-specific printer market is that it appears to be Epson and Hewlett-Packard that are going after the professional sector, especially the former, which makes roll-fed color printers in widths of 44 inches or more and price tags in the thousands. (HP may too, but I haven’t seen them.) Yet both companies also offer consumer models that print in 13 by 19 inch sheets and are reasonably priced for the amateur.

I also get the distinct impression that inks themselves can make a difference in photo quality, because as one starts to move up into the higher priced, professional printers, the manufacturers tout the use of multi-color ink delivery systems that advance beyond your simple red-yellow-blue cartridge common to most color printers. But I haven’t seen the output of any of these class of printers, so I couldn’t begin to guess whether the ends merit the cost outlay.

I never will forget, though, as a kid starting out in photography, how pleasantly shocked I was by the contrast in quality between what came back from the commercial photoprocessors and what I was able to produce in a black-and-white darkroom myself. There was simply no comparison; the commercial stuff wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on, and armed only with a neophyte’s skill in the darkroom, I could still easily out-dazzle it in all respects.

So it’s not a great leap to imagine that, in this day and age, not all digital color printers are created equal. But yet, it’d be nice if there were some way to test-drive these photo printers using one’s own images rather than what the makers choose to their own sales advantage. For decisionmaking, side-by-side comparisons have great value.

» reply