6 Photo Printing Tips

In this video, Aaron Nace from Phlearn talks to Xander Fischer from Printlab Chicago about different aspects related to printing images and gives some useful tips.

Printing is a complex topic and although you might get some decent results even without a great deal of knowledge (even mid-range pro photo printers do a great job these days), if you really want to get professional color-accurate results you might need to either spend a lot of time learning or get the help of professionals (like the ones Nace talks to on this video).

Some of the tips on this video are surprising, others sound to us a little counter-intuitive but they are still interesting to hear:

  1. Darken you, monitor, reduce contrast and brighten your image in your editing software on your computer with curves before you send it to print.
  2. Avoid color calibrating “non-print monitors” (what exactly falls under this category is not really clear – Fischer gives as an example the EIZO ColorEdge CG series of monitors, remember these are high-end pro graphics monitors with a very premium price tag – if you don’t print for a living you can get by with a decent IPS monitor from a well-known brand and implement Fischer’s previous advice)
  3. Work in Adobe RGG 1998 color space for print.
  4. Print in 300dpi if possible but if you are printing very large prints and don’t have the resolution go for lower DPI instead of upsampling your image.
  5. Don’t bother with ICC profiles (if you send your image to a good printing house), if you do print your own images be prepared to do some work on this.
  6. Paper choice really depends on the image and where it is going to be displayed (not every image will look good as glossy and there are images that will look better on paper than on canvas for example.

A few years back we published another printing-related video with photographer Karl Taylor which you can find here. You can also find a lot more Phlearn videos on our special Phlearn subsection.

Iddo Genuth
Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.

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