Understanding the Printing Process

From Monitor to Printer

Hybrid Meeting (See Instructions/Get Zoom Link Emailed)

United Parish of Auburndale

64 Hancock Street

Auburndale, MA

Did you ever scream out in frustration when yet another photographic print came out too dark? Or too light? Or the colors didn’t match what you saw on your monitor? Did you ever calculate how much money your “bad” printer was costing you in wasted ink and paper, not to mention time? Did you ever give up on your old printer, only to find out that your new printer had the same problem?

The problem may not be your printer.

Unless you’ve got a chip implanted in your brain, you can’t actually see a digital photograph. No kidding. Digital images, on their own, are a gazillion ones and zeros. Bits and bytes. You can only see a digital photo as a print or on a display device, such as your monitor or on the back of your camera or phone. If you call up a photo on your computer and it doesn’t look right, how can you tell whether it’s the picture or the monitor that’s the problem? If the image on the monitor isn’t right – too light, too green, too contrasty – you correct what you see. But then the prints don’t look right. Is it the printer? The ink? The paper you got from Costco?

Yes, printers can malfunction. But more often than not, a bad print is caused by something else along the rocky road between the monitor and the printer. The monitor can be maladjusted, you can be using the wrong ICC profile for it, or none at all. Your profile for the printer can be for ink and paper you haven’t used in years. You can focus on a color management setting in your editing software when, in fact, your software is being bypassed by your printer’s software. Or vice versa. Or, well…you get the picture.

If it’s any consolation, it’s not your fault. Getting all this right is unnecessarily complicated and obscure. Every manufacturer along the way thinks you’ll only be using its machine, or paper and ink, and no other company’s stuff is ever on your shelf. And then there’s different operating systems, different software, changes in every version of software. Well, again…you get the picture.

This talk isn’t about whether you should use glossy or matte paper, which manufacturer is best, or how to connect your printer to your wi-fi. This is about what you should know after you’ve figured all that out.

In this session, Jeff takes you through the color management workflow that will lead to a print that matches what you see on your monitor. These steps include both monitor and printer calibration, choosing whether your software or your printer converts the monitor’s RGB display to the printer’s CMYK ink, choosing how your printer handles out-of-gamut colors, and calibrating for the ink and paper you actually use, not the official, expensive products your printer manufacturer wants to sell you. And more.