April 2012 - Digital Group - Prints and Papers

Meeting Notes March 2009 to 2018.
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spb
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Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:04 pm

April 2012 - Digital Group - Prints and Papers

Post by spb » Sun Apr 01, 2012 11:35 am

NEWS

Photoshop CS6 Beta is available and promises more content-aware tools, photographic blurs, a re-designed interface (oh dear!), auto saves (at last) and improved corrections with wide angle lenses. It will not be compatible with 32 bit operating systems.

Nikon will no longer supply spares to independent repairers.

The IPad 3 has a great screen and is perfect for showing off your portfolio but beware of replacing your laptop with one - it is a highly proprietary interface with limited connectivity and expandability.

Lightroom 4 is now competitively priced at about £95 or £60 for an upgrade from any previous version. Recommended for photographers who mostly take their pictures in-camera and don't need to do detailed manipulations or composite images.

The Epson Photo Stylus 2000 is an A3+ pigment ink printer with ethernet and wifi connectivity. It has 50% bigger cartridges and has a gloss optimiser and gloss and matte black inks onboard. Orange and red inks replace light cyan and light magenta for improved skin tones and colour saturation. This would be a good printer to consider for club members who are not interested in black and white. It retails for about £400.

CHRIS PALMER ARPS AFIAP DPAGB APAGB - 'THE PRINTS AND THE PAPER'

Chris has kindly provided these notes for his Fotospeed-sponsored talk;
A good picture will probably do well printed on anything, but paper choice influences how the viewer responds to an image, and also affects, colour, tonality, and mood. Paper choice is a personal thing, but I generally find that the subject matter and image style dictates the paper that I use. Artistic or creative images generally benefit from a matt surface.

Fotospeed produce a wealth of good papers, - I primarily print on just a few:
PF Lustre – an inexpensive but award winning general purpose resin paper.
Platinum Gloss – a wonderful fibre based unglazed gloss surfaced paper with a very slight texture. Superb for monochrome and provides just a fraction more depth when printing in colour.
Platinum Baryta – a newer paper with a warmer base than Platinum Gloss. Great for monochrome toned images, and for those needing a slightly warmer overall feel.
Matt Ultra – a good general purpose matt surfaced paper.
NT Bright White – a lightly textured art paper with a white base.

There are 2 types of profiles that can be used when printing. A generic profile is often downloaded from a manufacturers website, and is a ‘one size fits all’ general profile. A custom profile is one generated specifically for your printer, (they’re all slightly different), and remains the preferable option. When using Fotospeed paper custom profiles are free from Fotospeed. Email them for a profiling pack. You have to print out a single A4 coloured target (without any colour management). Once printed let it dry for 24 hours, then complete the included profile form, and send both to Fotospeed. By return they will email you a profile.

For each and every paper you use will require a different profile.

The size that an image is printed is important too, and can play an important part in the success of a picture. Just because you own an A3+ printer is no reason to suppose that all your prints should be made at the maximum size possible. Some big landscapes can suffer from being printed too small, while a delicate flower study might well be better printed intimately on an A4 sheet of paper. However all images benefit from a decent sized mount to show off the print to best advantage.

Members might like to visit the Fotospeed website
There is an article on printing on my own website.
There are instructional videos on You Tube provided by Fotospeed about colour management when printing targets.

When purchasing paper direct from Fotospeed just mention my name and they will normally allow a 10% discount. However if there is sufficient demand I might be able to order paper on behalf of members for an even better price. If buying from other retailers it’s always worth looking out for A2 paper deals. (You just cut a sheet of A2 paper in half to provide 2 x A3 sheets.)
It’s invariably cheaper to do this than buy A3 boxes.

NEXT MEETING

Our last meeting before the summer break will be on 9th May - one week later than usual.

Cheers, Steve.

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