Like surprisingly many others, I've had almost no images printed, relying on Flickr to make them visible to others.
This morning I got 4 monochromes back from a dedicated B&W lab, who print digital images "by hand". This was a pricey choice (relative to Snapfish etc.) but I wanted to see just how good (or bad) my images looked on paper.
The first three are from SiJ, the last from about a year ago, all shot using my E-P2 with the 35mm Summicron ...
SiJ - Day 02 by _loupe, on Flickr
reynard by _loupe, on Flickr
laundry lane by _loupe, on Flickr
Penberth by _loupe, on Flickr
They were printed uncropped at 9x12 for the 4:3 aspect and 8x8 for the square, with no borders and on a matt paper. I cropped "laundry lane" a bit before sending it to them, so it's a slightly different image on paper to the one above.
The first thing to say is that the printer did a superb job; there will always be a slight difference in tone between a screen image and a print, but these are extraordinarily close. Most importantly, the tonal range was perfectly delivered. They stressed the importance of having a calibrated monitor, and I do - I'm sure this made a difference.
The second is that I have a lot to learn about presentation; Each would have benefited from a white border, and I didn't understand this from looking at screen images alone. I have a soft-proofing plugin for LR3 and have the LR4 beta, but didn't really use either after (email) discussion with the printer (although they sent me some experimental profiles for their service).
The third is ... on paper, there's no place to hide:
"laundry lane" looks wonderful on my laptop, but just doesn't cut it on paper. The bokeh blobs look ugly, and the depth of field/plane of focus works poorly up close (it still stands up as an image viewed from across the room ...); so this was a significant disappointment
"penberth" suffers from a bit too much denoising in the original image I reckon. It's OK but not wonderful.
"SiJ Day 02" and "reynard" however I'm really really pleased with. Coincidentally (?) I applied a very mild split-tone to both (I modified "Platinum Palladium" from TLR B&W Split Toning Presets The Light's Right | An Online Community for Digital Photographers - these are free presets for LR) and I also cut the denoise right back.
"reynard" is the outright winner on paper ...
Learning so far is that being satisfied after pixel-peeping at 1:1 (or even 2:1) on screen does not guarantee a good print ... and that viewing an image intrinsically illuminated on a screen is very different to how it will look when it is illuminated by light falling on a surface (I expect that people who have been long-time film photographers will understand this automatically, but those of us who have really only been photographically active with digital equipment might not - meaning me of course); plus bokeh (how I hate that word) might just look horrible on paper when it looks soft and delightful on screen!
As a few people (you know who you are) have mentioned that 2012 is "the year of the print" for them, it might be really helpful to have further reflections and advice from others who are either venturing into print for the first time, or from those who have been printing from digital files a while and can offer suggestions about selection and PP; most especially relating to getting prints done by labs rather than at home.
I'm particularly interested in printing monochromes, and I'll bet selection and prep are different for colour. Would it be worth having two different threads?
anyway, thought I'd share ...
This morning I got 4 monochromes back from a dedicated B&W lab, who print digital images "by hand". This was a pricey choice (relative to Snapfish etc.) but I wanted to see just how good (or bad) my images looked on paper.
The first three are from SiJ, the last from about a year ago, all shot using my E-P2 with the 35mm Summicron ...
SiJ - Day 02 by _loupe, on Flickr
reynard by _loupe, on Flickr
laundry lane by _loupe, on Flickr
Penberth by _loupe, on Flickr
They were printed uncropped at 9x12 for the 4:3 aspect and 8x8 for the square, with no borders and on a matt paper. I cropped "laundry lane" a bit before sending it to them, so it's a slightly different image on paper to the one above.
The first thing to say is that the printer did a superb job; there will always be a slight difference in tone between a screen image and a print, but these are extraordinarily close. Most importantly, the tonal range was perfectly delivered. They stressed the importance of having a calibrated monitor, and I do - I'm sure this made a difference.
The second is that I have a lot to learn about presentation; Each would have benefited from a white border, and I didn't understand this from looking at screen images alone. I have a soft-proofing plugin for LR3 and have the LR4 beta, but didn't really use either after (email) discussion with the printer (although they sent me some experimental profiles for their service).
The third is ... on paper, there's no place to hide:
"laundry lane" looks wonderful on my laptop, but just doesn't cut it on paper. The bokeh blobs look ugly, and the depth of field/plane of focus works poorly up close (it still stands up as an image viewed from across the room ...); so this was a significant disappointment
"penberth" suffers from a bit too much denoising in the original image I reckon. It's OK but not wonderful.
"SiJ Day 02" and "reynard" however I'm really really pleased with. Coincidentally (?) I applied a very mild split-tone to both (I modified "Platinum Palladium" from TLR B&W Split Toning Presets The Light's Right | An Online Community for Digital Photographers - these are free presets for LR) and I also cut the denoise right back.
"reynard" is the outright winner on paper ...
Learning so far is that being satisfied after pixel-peeping at 1:1 (or even 2:1) on screen does not guarantee a good print ... and that viewing an image intrinsically illuminated on a screen is very different to how it will look when it is illuminated by light falling on a surface (I expect that people who have been long-time film photographers will understand this automatically, but those of us who have really only been photographically active with digital equipment might not - meaning me of course); plus bokeh (how I hate that word) might just look horrible on paper when it looks soft and delightful on screen!
As a few people (you know who you are) have mentioned that 2012 is "the year of the print" for them, it might be really helpful to have further reflections and advice from others who are either venturing into print for the first time, or from those who have been printing from digital files a while and can offer suggestions about selection and PP; most especially relating to getting prints done by labs rather than at home.
I'm particularly interested in printing monochromes, and I'll bet selection and prep are different for colour. Would it be worth having two different threads?
anyway, thought I'd share ...