Introduction
I’ve heard it said many times that the process of photography is not completed until you hold a printed image in your hands. That statement reminds me how exciting it was, decades ago, in my 8th grade photography class to pull a print from the developer bath and to witness what I’d created! It was all very satisfying.
Nowadays most of us “develop” our prints on a computer using a software program like Adobe Lightroom to fine tune the image. Then if you are like me, you’d show them off to your family on a computer screen and then perhaps post them on various forms of social media, hoping for positive feedback. Finally to preserve the best photographs in a safe place you would upload them to a cloud server, which in my case is Zenfolio. There the photographs would sit in the dark until you decided, for whatever reason, to retrieve them, which nowadays is a major PITA because Zenfolio archives the images and it takes a minor act of Congress to view or retrieve them. In other words it is very tedious waiting hours for an archived group of photos to be retrieved!
Before the days that I uploaded to the cloud, I would send images out for print processing. To keep costs reasonable, I would have standard 3X5″ prints made and mount them into a photo album. It wasn’t long before the albums accumulated in number and started taking up considerable space in my home. Further, the smallish prints were not very satisfying to look at and finally I had little control over the quality of the print process. Most of the time, the prints were good enough, but not always. At any rate, the aforementioned Zenfolio cloud account eliminated most print charges and saved space both on my computer and in my home, but at the cost of the images disappearing into the cloud.
Not all my photographs disappeared into the cloud. There are some that adorn the walls of my home like the exquisitely framed shot of a Maine Lighthouse that I took on a vacation in the northeast. Printed and framed images are truly special because they evoke important memories and are typically the best I can do with a camera. Large prints are expensive to produce and professional framing costs are quite prohibitive, but I think it’s worth it for those rare photos. Recently I had four smallish North Carolina wildflower images framed for our home and they cost close to $400 for the set! These recently framed images can be seen below hanging in our sun porch.
Before moving on to the main subject of printing in more detail, I would be remiss not to mention another way in which I’ve preserved some of my best photographic projects, and that would be the production of printed photo books. Below, you can see three books I’ve created with the help of Apple. Two of the books cataloged my extensive work with woodlands and tall grass prairies wildflowers, and the other documented my son Parker’s successful Eagle project. The books are a marvelous way to professionally depict photographic images in a story-like format. It is a lot of work putting one together and moderately expensive to produce, but they’re a fantastic way to show off your work!.
Mama Don’t Take My Kodachrome Away
This summer I re-invested myself in my photography hobby with the acquisition of a Leica Q3. I take it almost everywhere I go because it is so portable and can make extraordinary photographs, plus I love taking pictures. As in the past, I started out posting them in social media and finally stored them in the cloud.
Then, I started to wonder how I could raise my game to a higher level. How could I push my photography a step further than I’d ever done before? It then occurred to me that wouldn’t it be a hoot to professionally print my own images in-house on a printer that I owned! And so I began the process of researching and acquiring a photographic printer.
Acquiring a Professional Printer
Well, I started googling around for “best color photographic printers” and Canon kept showing up in the upper register of the lists. There were Epson’s too, but when I considered that Canon also manufactures state-of-the-art cameras, I gave them the edge. Further, the Canon ProGraf 300 hit a sweet spot in terms of weight and footprint.
If you intend to follow the path that I was on, be aware that photographic printers are rather large devices. They are considerably bigger than typical home document printers primarily because device size is required to make larger prints. So as you would expect, the larger the output print size capability, the larger the required printer’s footprint and corresponding weight. Also affecting device weight is the amount of ink the printer will store. For example, the Canon ProGraf Pro-1000, which uses “ink tanks” will print up to a 17″ X 22″ print, but the device is almost 29 inches wide and weighs just over 71 pounds. There is no place in my home where the Pro-1000 would fit and even if there was, it’s far too heavy for me to move around!
In the end, I ordered a Canon ProGraf Pro-300 after watching multitudes of YouTube reviews and tutorials. It had a slightly smaller footprint than the Pro-1000 and weighed half as much, but only makes a print as large as 13 X 19″ and uses smaller ink storage cartridges, which is probably good enough for my purposes. In fact, most of the printing I do for my collection of keepsake images are 8 X 10″ copies which the printer handles quite easily. Occasionally as seen above, I do make large prints too. Further, the Pro-300 is a newer design than the Pro-1000 and is said to recreate blacks in a print more effectively.
The Process of Producing a Photographic Print
Select an image and fine tune it to meet your technical and artistic sensibilities. Below you can see my old fraternity brother Captain Mike, retired USN, where his assignment was as a captain on an aircraft carrier. His image was post-processed in Adobe Lightroom and Nik Silver Efex and it is now ready to be printed.
Days earlier, when the ProGraf Pro-300 arrived, I unboxed it and went through a relatively easy set-up which involved installing the printer head and ink cartridges into the printer, as well as installing printer drivers onto my MacBook Pro. Further, I had to get the printer on my home network so that it would receive signal from my laptop. Finally, I installed onto my laptop a Lightroom Plug-in called Canon Professional Print and Layout, which could be accessed directly from Lightroom and/or Photoshop as well as run independently as a stand alone application. It is also possible to print directly from Lightroom using Adobe’s internal print program, but my analysis indicated that the Canon plug-in was easier and more effective to use. Below, you can see the pull-down Lightroom menu that leads directly to the Canon plug-in.
Now you can see the image of Captain Mike laid into the Canon printer layout work space. It is here that a variety of final fine tuning settings can be made. For example, the size of margins can be varied. More importantly, color adjustments, brightness and contrast can be altered too. The setting sliders are on the right side of the workspace.
Matching the Print to the Computer Screen
My experience is that color adjustments are best made in Lightroom and not in the Canon Layout software. Thus far, I’ve had pretty good outcomes matching color in Lightroom on screen with the final print because Lightroom has a lot more nuanced sliders to make alterations. This is no mean feat because I’m dealing with two different color theories existing between the computer and the printer. The computer screen creates hues by blending colored lights similar to stage lighting with the primary colors being red, green and blue. On the other hand, when we see a printed image we’re seeing reflected light with primary colors being cyan, magenta and yellow. In other words, the computer is transmitting mixed light and the printed image is selectively absorbing and reflecting light. To deal with these opposing color theories, It is not unusual for photographers to invest in color calibration tools to ensure best color matching between screen and print. Fortunately for me, MacBooks come from the factory with pretty accurate color calibration which helps go a long way to produce a reasonably well matched print.
On the other hand, I’ve had to master adjusting the brightness of the screen image in the Canon software to match the brightness of the final print. Depending upon my observation of the image on the screen I may adjust it to the bright side by 15 to 25 points on the slider scale of 100 to get a good match and am getting pretty accurate results.
Below you can see the image delivered from the Pro-300. It looks pretty good!
Other Considerations During Printing
There are two consumables required to operate the Canon Pro-300. They are ink and paper. The ink is visibly consumed when the printer operates. This is known because the printer does a good job of keeping me aware of dwindling ink levels. This is important as it’s really bad form to run the device with a dry ink cartridge because the printer head can be damaged. Damaging the printer head should be an avoidable failure with just a little care in keeping up with ink volumes. In order to maximize the printer’s color gamut, the device is engineered to run 10 different ink colors. My experience indicates that the inks exhaust at varying rates depending upon what the prints call for. Thus far the photo-black and the gray cartridges seem to expire more quickly, so I keep some extra spares available.
Thus far I’ve ordered my ink directly from the online Canon site. It is very easy and quick to change out an ink cartridge. You can purchase a complete set of all the required colors or buy them independently. I’ve done it both ways because I want some extra black and gray available. I considered making the purchase through Amazon out of habit; however, all the ink that was available was from aftermarket suppliers, and everything I’ve read suggests staying away from non-Canon inks. It’s pennywise and pound poor as the non-Canon inks appear not to perform as well according to general user experience, particularly from a color accuracy standpoint.
There are multiple paper sizes and finish types available for photographic printers. Further, there are multiple companies producing varying qualities of paper. The choices can be overwhelming, so in response, as I learn the ropes of photo printing, I’ve started with a basic Canon Pro Luster paper which is a nice neutral cross between a matte and low gloss finish. I’ve been very satisfied with the print outcomes and am not in a huge hurry to switch to other finishes yet; however, with a recent purchase of fresh inks, Canon threw in a sample pack of 4 different types of paper and I am looking forward to experimentation.
After Print Action
Shortly after I started printing photographs, I realized I was going to need some method for trimming the output. For example, I was printing 8 X 10″ photographs on 8.5 X 11″ paper and needed some way for neatly trimming off the excess margins. My old frat brother John Gellman advised me that the best trimmer for photographs was the Rotatrim Pro and insisted that I get the 24 inch model. He said “it’s the best and accept no substitute!” So, I followed his instructions. The Rotatrim was expensive but it is an extremely precise tool. Since it is self sharpening, it should require very little maintenance too, which I like. Below you can see the finished Captain Mike photograph after trimming:
Storing Prints
It’s very exciting seeing one of your images delivered by the printer. The question now is what do you do with the print? I’ve given some away to neighbors if I’ve photographed them, or stuck some on the refrigerator with a magnet, and framed one for the wall in my home. Too often, I found myself accumulating prints and stuffing them in a drawer to keep them safe which was not particularly satisfying!
So, after giving it some thought, I began a search for a portfolio type contrivance to hold the prints that I thought represented the best of my work. After scrambling around in Amazon, I found a line of photograph oriented portfolios by Itoya sized for 8.5 X 11″ prints. It will hold as many as 100 prints, which I thought would be a perfect way to archive images in an easy to show format. If I chose to archive the larger 13 X 19″ prints that the Canon is capable of producing, Itoya makes a portfolio large enough to hold them!
Completing the printer set-up
When I first purchased the Canon printer, I knew where I wanted to place it. We have a location in our home called the resource room, where my guitars are stored, as well as Annette’s writing and weaving space. There’s also a day bed in this ” third bedroom” for a guest if our second bedroom is occupied. At any rate, spare space in our home has its limits, but I determined that the printer would fit perfectly at the foot end of the day bed and located it there. The printer rested on the carpet floor and I wanted to get it onto a platform. The problem in finding a platform is that photographic printers are much larger than home document ones. In other words, the preponderance of home printer stands available were too small for the Canon. Eventually, I found a shelving company that offered a nice platform that the printer would fit on and now the set-up is complete.
Final Thoughts
If you subscribe to the notion that the photographic process is not complete until you hold a tangible print in your hands, then acquiring a printer that can produce a quality image may be for you. There is an upfront capital cost to set up a printer, but I’ve spent more money on a camera lens. In my judgement the cost of ink and paper are not out of line for a serious avocation or hobby. Mastering the printing process is fun, but you should enjoy working with a somewhat fiddly technology before you venture down this path.
