How to Turn Your Beautiful Photos to Brilliant Prints
Sometimes, I take tons of photos a day but only some of them are worth printing out. So, I think it would be great if those photos are printed out with the quality just like what we see in camera’s LCD screen. So I have some of the tips and techniques for you. Let’s check it out.
Get your camera ready
Generally, camera that you buy from store doesn’t give you the best quality of image. To get the most accuracy image, you should, if possible, manually calibrate you LCD monitor screen. Firstly, you have to turn your camera on for about 30 minutes to warm up the CCD lamp to the right temperature. Then, you adjust the ambient lighting and switch your camera to user adjust mode in order to adjust contrast, brightness, etc., to match with your printer setting. There is also a tool, such as colormunki, to help you calibrate your screen.
Resize your image
In some case, you may need to resize your photo to suit your particular need. The easiest choice would be to leave the resizing to Photoshop program since it has its automatically resizing feature called “Scale to Fit Media”. This feature is excellent if you’d like to have only small amount of snap shots. However, if you want to make quality printing, then this method isn’t the best option because it may lead to several issues related to framing, cropping and resizing. To resize your image properly, you can either use the crop tool or the image and Canvas Size commands. In addition, when you open the Photoshop, go Preferences and then under the Image Interpolation menu, please ensure that Bicubic is selected rather than the Bicubic Smooth or Bicubic sharpening options.
Properly maintain your printer
It’s not a good idea to leave your printer without using for a long period of time as the ink contained may be dry up. Normally, this type of problem can occur if your printer is left for more than two months. So, if you realize that you’re not a frequent print maker, you should turn you printer on at least every week or two weeks.
Gloss or matte paper
If you like color saturation, contrast and tonal range, the gloss paper is the choice for you. On the other hand, matte paper is a lot more subtle and suitable for portrait or landscape photos very well. All in all, both types have advantages and you have to decide which is the best for you. Trying to print photos using both types and then compare is probably the option that I would do.
Use color checker
Sometimes, you may be subjective about color. So color checker allows you to make comparison in terms of color with non-subjective standard. The color checker consists of variety of colors which represent particular subjects like sky, foliage and human skin as well as black and white. It will reflect light pretty much like the visible spectrum. Given this feature, the squares of each color will match the colors of natural objects for any illumination and with any color reproduction process. Therefore, it will help you find the true balance of any color rendition system.
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Tagged with: howto • photo • print
Filed under: General Tips for Beginners
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I think it’s worth knowing that Industry Watch have tested the Brilliant Prints canvas and they don’t use the 100% cotton canvas that they say they do.
In fact, they use a poly / cotton canvas and we believe they’ve never used a 100% cotton canvas. This is a massive breach of the Trade Practices act.
Industry Watch (www.industrywatch.com.au) is taking action against this misleading advertising and encourage anyone who feels misled to contact us so we can lodge a claim on your behalf.
http://www.eosrebelcamera.com – da best. Keep it going!