The Perfect Print Pt.1 - Preparing photos for print

Whether a pro, enthusiast or someone that only prints occasionally this article is a must read to get the very best out of your printed photos. Be aware that this is not a ‘which printer is best’ article. Instead I am going to teach you how to prepare, choose the right paper and ink as well as the secrets rituals of making the perfect print, all in this three part series for the best result on any printer, whether you are printing at home or at a photo/print lab.

It is also the perfect article if you are someone that just wants to learn about the print process and to start to print for yourself.

I am approaching this from a fine art print perspective, after all I am calling this series, The Perfect Print. That said nothing is stopping you from applying what I will discuss to other types of printing, such as regular photo prints on your home printer.

So let’s start the making of the perfect print.

It all starts long before…

To make the perfect print it starts long before we click the print button or send the print-ready JPEG off to a photo/print lab. In fact it starts before we even press the shutter button on our cameras. So let’s review a few recommendations when it comes to capturing and developing the our photos.

Camera technique

Depending how large of print you may want to make, we need to ensure that we get the best possible capture we can get. This means we want to have tack-sharp photos with a near perfect exposure in-camera of our subject and shoot in RAW, with the largest colour space the camera allows. The larger we print the more amplified any camera shake or movement will be, resulting in blurry prints.

Developing

During development of the photo we want to work with the largest colour space the software allows us, usually this is ProPhoto RGB and from the RAW file, this will give us the most information to work with. We also want to ensure that our display is calibrated, so that we can trust that the colours and contrast we see on screen is correct. Always ensure you work in one of the three standard colour spaces, sRGB, AdobeRGB or ProPhoto RGB when developing your photos.

This is also the time to remove any dust spots and smaller objects that may appear as dust spots in the final print, as well as applying noise reduction which will produce a cleaner print.

If you are not caught up on display calibration see my article show your true colours to learn about the importance of calibrating your displays.

Sharpening

Sharpening photos for print is an important step, because when a photo is printed we loose a bit of sharpening. There are different approaches to this, you can either over-sharpen a version of the photo or, if printing via Lightroom, you can apply print output sharpening with low, standard or high amounts of sharpening at the time of print. 

In either approach start by sharpening the photo until it looks good, then go a bit further if using over-sharpening method. A tell-tell sign an image is over-sharpened is when you start to see halo’s around edges of transition on-screen, however the halo's should not be visible in the finished print.

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Over-sharpening example with halo's clearly visible around edges of transition. 

For those that print at a lab, you should when exporting the photo apply appropriate sharpening amounts, unless the lab applies sharpening of their own. Also labs normally do colour correction, if they are serious, but you still need to clean the photo up from dust and other undesired spots.

Print quality

Where will your print end up? Are you printing this for yourself to hang on your wall at home, or is this going into an art exhibition, perhaps you are planning on selling it as fine art, or is this commissioned work for a client?

Knowing who and where your print will end up will help you guide your way through the next decision for gaining optimal print quality.

Print size

If you know your audience (which can be yourself), you may want just a small print to have on your desk or a larger print hanging over you sofa, perhaps someone has contacted you and wish to purchase a print and have a size in mind. 

In order to be able to provide either yourself or someone else with a quality print you need to know how large a print you can make with what you have, or if you need to enlarge the photo to meet the requirements. If your camera technique was good you should have no issues printing large or enlarging your photo, however if it was not captured properly, you are likely to end up with a less than acceptable result.

Viewing distance

Once you have figured out how large of a print you wish to make you should then take into consideration the viewing distance. The viewing distance will govern the minimum acceptable print resolution you need in order to get a good result. You should also take into account where your print will be displayed, will the viewer be able to walk up to the print and pixel peep or will they be forced to view it from a distance away such in an art gallery or across your sofa and table.

Print resolution

The print size and viewing distance will result in the print resolution you need to get a quality print. You may have heard of 300 dpi being used as the gold standard for print, but this is not always the proper print resolution to get a quality print, it all comes down to how close or far away the print is being viewed.

You can calculate the minimum print resolution needed by dividing 3438 by the viewing distance in inches which will give you the minimum print resolution (dpi), needed for the print to look good at that distance. 

3438 ÷ viewing distance = minimum print resolution.

3438 is a constant for human vision and represents how much resolution a human eye can see. You can learn more about this in the visual acuity Wiki article. 

So let us assume that we want to make a print that is 305 x 381 mm (12 x 15 in), and for the viewer to take the print in, we assume that they will be standing 35 inches (88.9 cm) away from it. To get an acceptable print quality at that distance our print resolution will need to be 98.23 dpi.

3438 ÷ 35 = 98.228

However, that is only the minimum print resolution for this example, if the viewer walks up to the print any closer than 35” the print will start to look not as good. If the viewer would walk just 10” (25.4 cm) closer we now need to have a minimum print resolution of 137.52 dpi.

3438 ÷ 25 = 137.52

My recommendation is to calculate what you believe the minimum viewing distance to be, then add an extra 50-100 dpi for good measure, just in case people will be very close to the print, such as billboards at bus stops, train stations, airports or advertisements in stores and store windows.

I highly recommend reading my article how large can I print my photos in order to understand print quality and resolution.

The takeaway

Be sure to come back next week for the second part of the series where I will be discussing key decisions you need to keep in mind whether printing at a lab, your studio or at home in order to maximise the print quality and print permanence.

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Until next time, thank you for reading and see you soon!