Where do we start? I suppose the most fundamental requirement for a good print is a good image. A good image comes from a good camera. Let’s be sure about this - spectacular subject matter is not required for good printing. Subject matter is the reason for the print, and that decision is made well before printing is considered - so, we are not discussing your photography skills here..
Camera skills are discussed, and a good working knowledge of your camera is important.
You can’t improve what you can’t control, so learn all there is about your main camera.
RULE
1: Use a decent camera.
Megapixels does not equal quality. A 12 megapixel Canon 5D
will produce stunning enlargements to 1 metre in length. A 12 megapixel Fuji compact
won’t! Why? Because there are major differences between the sensor chip size, pitch,
sensitivity, noise and operating software. Then, of course, is the lens. A $600 lens
will ‘define’ the image to a much higher degree than a 5mm plastic lens on a camera
phone - we use these 2 extremes for comparison purposes only, not every photo has
to be enlarged and printed, and camera phones take remarkable images that look great
on screens.
RULE 2: Choose a high camera resolution.
The camera itself will have many
modes of resolution. You may choose to use a low res image for your web site, but
I think that you should leave your camera on the best resolution setting (usually
raw) and worry about low resolution images later. I have seen many photographers
forget to reset the camera to a high res and get poor, poor results on an important
shoot.
RULE 3: Save images at the highest quality settings.
(See chart to the right)
When saving your images for enlarging do so in a format that doesn’t lose data. If
using Photoshop, save as a ‘psd’ file, or ‘tif’ (uncompressed). Don’t use jpeg, except
at the highest setting, and only then to forward for printing. Why not, you ask?
Well, if you compress an image every time you save it, you are degrading the image
slightly (or a lot depending on the setting) and the result is compounded every time
you do it, so your precious masterpiece looks like a checkerboard of fuzziness.
RULE
4: Make sure the heads are clean on your printer.
Inkjet heads clog for a variety
of reasons, and lack of use is one of them. If you haven’t used your printer in a
while, run a test on the heads, and clean them until they perform properly. At Ozprintshop
we check and clean our print heads every day, and before every print run. It may
seem to cost money to clean your printer but the cost is a lot less than a sheet
of quality photo paper and the ink used when the heads are dirty, and you still have
to clean them anyway.
RULE 5: Use OEM inks (original brand).
Re-inking is fraught
with problems. Even if you don’t have physical problems (ink leakage, dry heads,
perishing ‘O’ rings etc) the rebranded ink is not the same ‘colour’ as the original
ink, and will therefore not produce prints of the right colour, contrast and tone.
If this doesn’t bother you then consider that 3rd party inks fade very quickly. Check
out www.wilhelm-research.com for details of tests using original and 3rd party inks
on various papers with different printers.
RULE 6: Use high quality brand name papers.
To get the best performance from your printer you must use a matched ink and paper
combination as recommended by the manufacturer of your printer. You can not successfully
use 3rd party papers unless you have a profile (recipe) and know how to use it. At
Ozprintshop we have the technology to make our own profiles, so we can match printer
to ink to paper perfectly. This allows us to use high quality products from Kodak,
Canson, Hahnemuhle etc.
RULE 7: Don’t be afraid to adjust your image in Photoshop
after printing to fix areas that can be improved - sharpness, colour saturation,
a bit of dodging and burning, spotting etc. then print again.
The chart above shows the same image saved as 4 separate files.
- The original is saved as a tif.
- The first jpeg has the lowest compression ratio (saved at the highest quality setting) and shows no visible degradation.
- The second jpeg file was saved at a mid setting of 5 (from 1 - lowest, to 12 - highest quality). The image has lost sharpness and full colour range, and has picked up artefacts - just look at the fingernail. The degradation is minor for photos, but devastating for graphics and text.
- The last jpeg was saved at the lowest setting. Here the new image is clearly made up of boxes. Details are lost, shapes are twisted and the result is clearly at the 100% size, and is completely unacceptable.
Saving multiple times...
ABOVE: The pic on the left is the original, and the one on the right has been saved 10 times using a high quality jpeg setting. Even at 400% magnification the difference is minor.
BELOW: Again, the pic on the left is the original, the one on the right was saved 10 times on a mid setting of 5. The loss is not very visible at 100%, but very distinct at 400%
CONCLUSION: Always use the highest setting when saving in Jpeg format.
