Posts Tagged: Fine Art Printing

Post Production — No Comments
9
Jan 12

Chris’ Mini-Workshop on Fine Art Printing, in 5 Tweets

Yesterday’s session with my HP 8850 printer left me frustrated – First I struggled for 3 hours to get the printer’s special media tray load the newly purchased Hahnemühle Photo Rag 10×15 cm photo cards. The fact that they are a little smaller than 10×15 and have rounded corners seems to throw the paper detection off. Then the print came out with a slight green tint I didn’t understand. Profiling? Lighting? Lighting during profiling?

By chance I met Chris Marquardt of Tips from the Top Floor and HappyShooting podcasts on Twitter, and he kindly provided me with a mini-workshop on fine art printing in 5 tweets. For your enjoyment, here is my translation to English:

  1. Image Processing: Only do it using a properly color-profiled monitor.
  2. Sharpening: Keep your hands off! [The printer driver will take care of it, usually]
  3. Color casts: Profile the monitor, look at the prints at daylight, best in the shade
  4. If your images have a red cast after import [and your prints have a green cast!], your profile is wrong
  5. While profiling, avoid any extranous light [for example by covering the sensor with a blanket]

I love this guy. Honestly, #2 got me thinking, I think this is the best tip I heard for a while!

And I need to go back and try to check my monitor profile now.

 

Landscapes — No Comments
19
Jan 09

Image selection for alpine moods

You might have wondered by now why I didn’t comment further on my new printer – mostly, because I have not yet spent as much time with it as I wanted to. But as indicated earlier I had already one very productive and satisfying weekend with it.

What was the mission? To select a set of images suited to be hung in a one-room condo right in the alps. Now, there is not excessive wall space available, but still, as my largest print size was restricted by my printer to about 48 cm x 32 cm, I figured I could do something worthwhile.

Looking at the placement and type of furniture in the room, I quickly decided that I would need 6 prints. Three large ones, framed nicely, for each of the three walls (in a decidedly non-symmetric hanging!), and three small ones, maybe only A4 size, that are suited to be viewed at close range for the nice Alpine corner bench at the table.

Here is the result of my selection.

[svgallery name="chiemgau"]

  1. The first image features a traditional (but actually quite new) chapel. This place is in the Zahmer Kaiser mountain range in Austria close to the city of Kufstein at about 1200m altitude.
  2. The second image, and I am really fond of this one as it easily sends my imagination drifting into medieval times, is near the castle of Hochenaschau, in the Bavarian region of Chiemgau.
  3. The third one you know already from my blog’s introductory posts :-)
  4. The next one was taken on the same day and time as the chapel, from a vantage point about 10 meters into the opposite direction of the chapel. It shows the view of the Kaiser Valley with the Wilder Kaiser mountain range as backdrop.
  5. Part of the German Nationalpark Berchtesgaden is the Klausbachtal, a long narrow valley winding up to a pass into Austria. Conveniently, you can take a bus up there and walk down which is what we did last fall. Image number five shows a view of the Reiteralp mountain range.
  6. Back into Austria, here in Winter, I took this image in the wonderful region south of the Dachstein mountains near Ramsau.

The first three images, showing man-made structures somehow embedded in the scenery, were the ones I selected for the small image size and closer viewing, while the more scenic landscape images were printed in the large size.

For the first time, I also bought frames and high quality photo-mounts, and frames all six pictures myself. Phew! One weekend work, but I am absolutely positive about the result!

Gear — 2 Comments
18
Dec 08

Printer woe and joy

Last Friday, unpacking my new printer:

Uff. The first impression the HP 8850 I bought made was not a good one, I have to tell you. After having installed everything out of the box as instructed, including shaking of printer heads which gave me a quizzical look from my wife, I started to print and – ran into USB connection / offline problems. The printer would appear – in the midst of a print job – to go offline and come back immediately. Unnecessary to say that this screwed every print.

Now, my first reaction: Shit! This is exactly the behavior one sales guy in the store had told me about for the 8850, and this was why he recommended I get the 9180 with it’s Ethernet port. 150€ extra I didn’t want to spend. Should I have made a mistake? Well, I have grown up with computers (and my beloved Citizen 120d 8-needle dot matrix printer), so I persisted.

Despite the message from the HP updater tool that it looked and couldn’t find any updates for my product, I visited the HP support web page, and what do they have? A “critical update to enhance network and USB connectivity reliability”. Well. Never use the software they ship with the hardware, always get fresh one from the Internet. Sigh. If you are looking for it, it’s out there. So why did the damn HP updater software not find that one? That’s what it was meant to do, right?

Downloaded and installed the stand-alone driver suite and the USB patch. Installed both. Took a deep breath. Printed. Worked! Joy! Success! Triumph! Man wins over machine!

Then, shock: second problem! Now it’s printing, but the print had banding effects in the direction the print head is moving. Obviously, some nozzle / ink flow problem. Read through some forum entries, and figured that this can a) happen with any printer, even an Epson, b) sometimes depends on paper type, c) might be a clogged nozzle or whatever that can be removed by a cleansing cycle.

Hmm, I didn’t want to spend so much ink, but as I still have to decide whether I keep the printer or will send it back within the 14 day grace period (which is your right in Germany for online sales), I will bite the bullet and give it a thorough cleaning. Gosh! No toolbox, nor printer tool. The reinstallation of the printer driver had removed not only the obnoxious HP driver not working but also the printer tool box with all the maintenance tools.

Reinstall again. This time from the full blown file

100_230_PS_BSIZE_03_B8800_Full_NonNet_enu.exe.

Immediately applied that USB patch afterwards. Prepared to waste ink by running through this additional clean cycle. But wait, why bother. Let’s first try some more paper types.

And what happens? Banding problem gone without any doing. Seems I had cut short on shaking the print heads, and that problem cured itself after some A4 pages of printing :-)

So I happily printed all weekend…

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