Digital Photo Printing for Amateurs
I've learned so much from the Photoshop Elements class I'm taking at Hithergreen, but it bugs me that I have to work so darn hard to get good prints. I've been studying books and online and now I know enough to be dangerous, but still struggling with consistency. I shared what I've learned yesterday with the Digital Photography Forum at the Center. Here's a chart I made. The prints are 10.5 x 8. The top row shows what happens when you use cheap paper and the wrong print setting--you waste a lot of ink that soaks into the paper. The middle row shows printer control on better paper. I oversaturated the one on the right to see what would happen. Eeek! On the bottom row I used Photoshop Elements color controls on Office Depot Laser/injet Presentation Paper and Epson Ultra Premium Luster Paper, my favorites. The last print is the best and shows more detail than any of the others.
Labels: color printing, digital photography, hithergreen, photoshop elements
posted by Nita at 6:27 PM
4 Comments:
appreciate your sharing your hard won knowledge, thanks!
Hi! Very interesting info. It is enough to learn the use of Photoshop. The programs must do it in Adobe, that 90 percent of resemble each other. If you use Photoshop, you can use everything. But I would have written the specificity of the color correction in Adobe products. Ctrl + Shift + B This sets the optimal color images. Sometimes you can get very ugly results. The pale colors but well enough to rescue. I recommend you this book: http://www.konyv-konyvek.hu/book_images/25a/999631925a.jpg
Thanks for the comment. Just to clarify, I was speaking of Photoshop Elements 8, not Photoshop CS3. The full Photoshop is, in my opinion, way too complicated and expensive for amateurs. Control+Shift+B is Automatic Color Correction and I rarely get the results I want with this or any of the other Automatic settings. I prefer to start with Enhance->Adjust Color->Remove Color Cast or Adjust Hue/Saturation, followed by Adjust Lighting. Of the 3 lighting choices, I like Levels best, but Shadows and Highlights sometimes does a quick fix and nothing else is needed, except maybe to tweak the Brightness/contrast. It takes a while to discover the settings you like best, but once you do, you can work fairly quickly.
I actually viewed your photos, and I can tell which pictures are of low quality and high quality. It's a good demonstration on what type of paper is best used on certain printers and settings. If you want to have the best digital print, use synthetic paper. Your pictures would have sharper details, because there wouldn't be any excess ink as the sheets come out dry.
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