1.1 The Beginning

The best place to start is the beginning! We discuss just what the Fine Print is, how we can move towards achieving really beautiful prints, and talk about the rules for making a fine print (and when they can be broken!).

We then really kick things off by moving on to the most critical step of Digital Fine Print production - creating an accurate and suitable print production environment, including notes on your work area, screen and video card, and of course, the essential process of monitor calibration.

An Introduction:

Getting The Ball Rolling:

What is the Digital Fine Print?

Defining the 'digital' part is easy - it means, of course, a print made using modern digital tools (i.e. the computer), rather than a traditional analogue based process (i.e. chemistry based prints). Hybrid techniques are certainly included, for example prints made using a digital negative which is then printed traditionally.

Defining the photographic fine print, however, proves quite a challenge. 

Perhaps as a starting point, it is easier to define what a fine print is not.  One thing a Fine Art Photographic print is not is whatever grubby bit of lustre paper you get back from your local lab on a Thursday afternoon.  Another thing a fine print isn’t is whatever your untamed inkjet printer spits out on a piece of paper designed to last ten minutes on a sunny day before it disappears in a puff of smoke.

An actual definition of a fine print may be impossible as it almost certainly means different things to different people.  But there are some basic qualities I think a print must possess to be termed a Fine Art Print:

If a Fine Print has these qualities the result is a print that:

My personal thoughts on the issue are that a Fine Print is your chance to respectfully request from other people the most valuable thing of all – some of their time.  This is a real privilege, not to be taken lightly, and shouldn’t be forgotten.  You are asking someone to spend some of their short lives in contemplation of your work and it is your responsibility to create something that is worthy of that time.  They don’t necessarily have to like it, they don’t have to agree with it, but it should be worth the time they spend looking at it.  Anything less is an insult.  Life is simply too short for bad, sloppy, poorly thought out art.

That’s how I separate a Fine Print from an everyday print, and it works for me.  (YMMV).

Achieving the Fine Print

For me, I like to consider the print as whole.  A print is much more than just the image itself.  Obviously content is of paramount importance, and if you stuff that up, no amount of good printing technique will save you.  Ansel Adams perhaps said it best when he said a sharp print of a fuzzy concept is still a fuzzy concept.  So a Fine Print starts right at the beginning – with a clear concept, and with image capture technique to realise that concept. 

90% of all print failures occur at this starting point - because the starting image is simply not good enough.

However, this book is not about that stage - improving your image capture abilities is of course a life long journey.

This book is about the secondary stages of taking a great image and making from it the best possible print.

Once you have the image content nailed, it is good craft (and also good business practice) to present that content in the best possible way.  This is what can lift your work from merely competent workman-like photographs to Art, to Beauty, to Feeling - to all those wonderful things a great print can achieve.  That is what this book is all about.  Almost every print in the world can be improved upon in some way through the application of better and/or more appropriate printing technique and selection of materials – with the goal of creating a better, more beautiful, more meaningful image. 

Clear thinking on their concepts, and mastery of their craft, are the two main things that make the great ones great.

It is one of the strange things about the photographers that, amongst all artists, they are the only ones who seem to consider the medium of delivery almost irrelevant.  It’s either ‘lustre’ or ‘gloss’ and that is as far as most photographer's thinking goes.  This is phenomenally short sighted – there is a world of materials out there suitable for photographic reproduction to be explored, and each different medium brings something different to the table.  And in a world where photography is increasingly seen as an unskilled trade at worst, or a simple, Uncle-Joe-can-do-it craft at best, we as Photographers must explore anything we can use to make our images more expressive, more meaningful, and more beautiful, or we risk extinction.  It’s as simple as that.

While a few savant types can apparently break wind and achieve artistic greatness, the rest of us have only one realistic chance of fundamentally improving the art that we create.  Above and beyond all the technical material that is to follow, there is a greater goal here – to get you thinking about HOW you make art, so that you can make better art! 

Contrary to popular myth, creativity does not well up from the inner psyche and burst forth in a fully completed, realised, and saleable form.  It takes good craft to be able to create important, valuable, and expressive works of art.  Good craft (and years and years of practice) is what separated Jimi Hendrix from that guy who won the air guitar competition.  The point isn’t whether you like Jimi Hendrix, but there’s no denying he was exceptionally good at his craft, and he used that craft to get his message across successfully.  (The fact that he was sometimes confused about what his message actually was is a topic for another’s day discussion).

So for me, it works to think of the Fine Print as an extended journey from capture to output, with each stage of that journey requiring careful consideration. 

It starts with an output driven approach to capture – I will specifically light things, and alter my capture technique, where possible, with an eye to achieving the best final print.  The initial capture is just the first step on a much longer journey.  I then use careful editing, with accurate tools for visualising what I am working on and how the final output process will affect the final image – and in determining that output process I have given careful consideration of the best and most suitable output materials/forms for that specific image (where I am given a choice, obviously commercial work is often less flexible than this!).  Finally, I use the best possible output techniques available to produce the final image.

At all stages during the process, I give consideration to both the initial impact AND the longevity of the image – that is, I try and keep my eye on both how my image initially effects the observer, and how the perception of that image changes over time. Obviously sacrificing initial impact is a disadvantage, but it is often worthwhile in achieving a print that stands up to extended and repeated viewing. 

Much more on this later when we talk about how the eye works and what it wants, versus how the brain works and what it wants!

On the Rules of Fine Printing

There are no rules.  Well, actually there a lot of rules, but one rule rules them all.  And that is:

If it looks good, it looks good.

Tautology, yes, but worth stating. 

Everything else I talk about is all designed to help you make beautiful prints, prints that make people really want to look at (and potentially buy) your work.  But there are no absolutes in this stuff when it comes finally to what you put on to paper (or even what you use as paper!).  It’s your call.  But simply saying ‘I like it’ isn’t good enough.   Unless you take pictures for the sole purpose of putting them in your shoe box and occasionally peeking at them and giving yourself a little pat on your back, then you have to acknowledge the goal is to get other people to like/appreciate/understand your work. 

So the other rules are really just rules of thumb that should be followed to make your work look good.  Because there are some near universally agreed principles as to what works in a print, and what doesn’t.   And those prints people nearly universally love and admire pretty much all follow a basic set of rules, almost all of the time.  To be perfectly clear, I am talking here about the technical aspects of the print, and NOT the actual image content.

Of course don’t take everything I (or anyone else) says as gospel.  Part of what makes you the artist you are will be the decisions you make on the path to achieving a beautiful, expressive print – and sometimes that means, even necessitates, breaking the rules.  But be prepared to argue your case – breaking the rules for an aesthetic purpose is great, doing it just because your technique was poor/your were hung-over/you ran out of money - not so great.  Beautiful prints take time, technique, and quality materials.  That’s just the way it is.

Getting the Ball Rolling

To get the ball rolling we’re going to cover the absolute basics, briefly, so that you can begin to work more accurately.

Your Working Environment

The state of your working environment - essentially made up by the colour of your walls, and the colour and brightness of your lighting, has a big effect on your ability (or lack of ability) to control colour accurately.  It’s important to minimise colour distractions in your field of vision, so that you can really concentrate just on the image you are working on and give your eyes the opportunity to accurately perceive colour.

Even wearing a very brightly coloured shirt can cause minor issues as this will reflect in your screen and alter how you see the screen colours!

As with all things, you will need to find your own balance between your wish to achieve accuracy and the lengths and expense you're will to go to achieve this accuracy. For most people a happy balance it not too hard, or too expensive, to find. Below are some tips on both ideal scenarios and scenarios that are more realistic for most of us!

Your Work Room

Ideally your environment should be as neutral as possible.  The ideal is a room painted neutral grey (a neutral grey with a defined spectral output across the visible spectrum being better yet).

Of course not everyone wants to paint their work room neutral grey. It's worth being aware, though, that strongly coloured walls can have a fairly big effect on how you will perceive your screen and print colours. For example, if you have warm yellow walls, it is likely this will cause you too create images with a bias towards cool as you will, subconsciously, compensate for this overly warm light.

To overcome this, rather than paint your walls, you could alternatively consider using equipment like a monitor hood and a print viewing box to control the light more directly in the relevant areas of your work room.

If you do want to paint your walls, here are some popular paint companies in Australia and their formulas for neutral grey - please note these figures are just a good starting point and you should test small quantities yourself (preferably using a spectrophotometer) before committing to any substantial order:

Dulux

Use the following formulas for one litre (and choose a low gloss level paint):

 

Taubmans

Use the following formulas for one litre (and choose a low gloss level paint):

 

Watyl

Use the following formulas for one litre (and choose a low gloss level paint):

 

Lighting

Perhaps the easiest and most important change you can make is to change the colour and brightness of the lighting in your work area.  You can either change all the lighting in your work area using your existing fittings, or buy a print viewing box, or indeed build your own print viewing box or area.

Most lighting in most homes is a long way off the ideal light for digital imaging work, but there are often inexpensive and very effective solutions available that can drastically improve the situation. You may well be quite stunned at how good well made prints can look under really good lighting!

First, the colour of your lights

First, remove any strongly coloured lighting – that means absolutely no normal flouros (the daylight balanced tri-phosphor types are better but still not wonderful).  If you have tungsten lights, try swapping them for ‘cool white’ versions balanced to 5000K, and the same goes for 'down lights'.  The idea is to make sure the lights are not adversely affecting your perception of your screens colours by outputting light of fundamentally the wrong colour (i.e. far too warm or too cool).

5000 Kelvin is chosen as the ideal colour temperature for print viewing as it is a happy average between indoor (typically 3000 to 4000K) and outdoor lighting - (can be anything from maybe 4000 to 9000K depending on the weather and the time of day).

5000 Kelvin is representative of a mix of indoor and outdoor light, or the light typically found in most homes and offices during a large part of the day - the sorts of places where people will actually be looking at your prints! At night, when daylight is no longer part of the light mix, the light will typically be warmer than 5000K indoors, but the eye is quite tolerant of shifts to warmth, and this is not typically a problem.

If you want to go a step further, then look specifically for lights that have a high CRI value - CRI stands for colour rendering index. The idea is to get a light source that is as close as possible to the D50 lighting standard (5000 Kelvin with a defined spectral output curve). A CRI of 100 is perfect. High quality lights can achieve a CRI of 98 or 99.

If your work or print display area has down-lights (i.e. halogen lights) It is generally recognised that Solux make the best bulbs (of any type) that are currently available. These are the bulbs that serious museums use - places like the Guggenheim and the Van Gogh museum. They can be purchased from the Image Science Solux globes page. Generally the 4700K bulbs are regarded as having the best match to D50, but there is quite a lot of information on their website that you may mind useful. The CRI of these bulbs is over 99.

If your work area has fluorescent lighting, then a well regarded tube is the Philips TLD95 fluorescent tube (ask your lighting store to order product code TL-D 90 DeLuxe 36 watt /950 SLV. They are available also available in an 18 watt version). These have a CRI value of 98, but suffer somewhat from a spiky spectral output - overall they're still very good, but not quite in the same league as the Solux bulbs.

I am not currently aware of any lights for standard fittings that are particularly good. This does not necessarily mean they don't exist, just that I am not aware of them. If you have information on any this, I'd be very happy to hear about it.

The brightness of your lights (around your monitor and for viewing prints)

Secondly, the level of lighting should be considered.  Colour management systems for screens are based around your screen being the brightest element in your field of vision.  This means the ambient lighting level in your room (and specifically around your monitor) should be below that of your screen (generally around 30 to 50% below).  This is one big advantage of LCDs – they easily go much brighter than CRTs and therefore you can work in a more comfortably lit room.

However, when viewing prints, there is no one standard for brightness. Generally, colour management systems are built around scenarios where prints are viewed under strong, bright lighting (D50 at 2000 lux). Print viewing boxes typically have dimmer controls so that they can simulate different lighting levels. However, lighting levels within buildings (and of course outside!) can vary dramatically. A typical room in Australia during the daytime is about 500 lux in brightness, but many with large windows will be significantly brighter than this (as much as 2000 lux), while at night under artificial light the level may be as low as 200 to 300 lux.

How do you decide? Well, it depends on the context you're aiming for - 500 lux is probably a nice average for most scenarios, but exhibitions and galleries (and photographic competition judgings!) are generally significantly above this level. Obviously you can't control the final environment your prints will end up in (unless it is your own home), so the best approach is to print for a reasonable average and accept that this is fundamentally out of your control.

A very effective print viewing area for not too much money...

Print viewing boxes are very nice, and very professional looking, but certainly expensive (you won't get much change on $1000 for a small, basic unit with many being a LOT more than this). You can, however, build your own print viewing box/area for a lot less money quite easily.

If you choose to build a print viewing box, then build a box with white or neutral grey walls (from something like MDF, and using the paint formulas above, perhaps). Then install in this box some 12 volt, 35 watt halogen fixtures (available from any lighting store or even Ikea!). Add Solux bulbs and you're done. Total expense should come in under $300.

Or, for something a little more attractive and convenient than a box, you could perhaps paint a feature wall in your home in light grey (formula above) and install a track based lighting system, again with 12 volt and either 35 or 50 watt halogen fixtures. Add Solux bulbs, and a gallery hanging rail system, and you're got yourself a gallery quality print display area (better in fact than 99% of galleries in this country!).

Remember, all electricity work involving 240 volt power must be performed by a licensed electrician!

A Note On Your Computer’s Desktop...

One of the cheapest and most effective things you can do to improve your colour perception is to get rid of background images, gradients etc. on your computer's desktop.  Just set your desktop to black or a neutral grey (I wouldn't recommend white, it is simply too tiring on the eyes). 

Looking at anything colourful around your Photoshop window, or immediately before you start using Photoshop, will have a big effect on your ability to see colour accurately.

Screens and Video Cards - What to buy etc.

Just remember a moderately priced screen, properly calibrated, is probably going to be more useful to you than an expensive screen set to crazy colours.  So think about getting a calibrator before you lash out on a pricey screen.  That said, good screens are amazingly nice to use and should you find yourself in the position of owning a really top LCD screen AND a calibrator, you’ll never regret it.  You’ll get about 5 years life (or more) out of a top quality LCD if you look after it, so the per year cost is actually pretty low.

Anyway, what screen to buy all depends on your budget.

I’d avoid those cheap Dell screens.  Apple cinema displays are mediocre for colour work at best, and very overpriced.

From the bottom up:

Should I buy two smaller screens or one really big one?

Two screens is probably a better and more cost effective solution that one very large screen. That said a very large screen can be impressive and give you a much better impression of how a large print will look.  

A cheap 15” panel next to a properly calibrated, decent quality 19” or bigger screen is a pretty fantastic and efficient way to work.  All the Photoshop palettes go on the second screen, so colour on that is irrelevant, and the entire area of the bigger screen is used to display your image.  For critical colour judgment, the second screen is simply switched off so as not to effect perception. Or of course you can calibrate both screens (see notes at the bottom of this page).

Does my video card affect my calibration?

Yes. 

In this day and age, and with LCD monitors in particular, it is important that you are using a digital connection to your monitor (DVI or HDMI).

The best brand for colour and video work is traditionally Matrox but NVIDIA/ATI based cards are now very good too as long as they are decent quality - and Matrox cards are useless at 3D. The 3D abilities of the card are totally irrelevant for Photoshop work, but are increasingly relevant from an operating system perspective (i.e. Vista and Mac OS X use your video card's GPU directly to draw their pretty pictures to your screen).

Usually the best value versus quality ratio is found in the mid-range cards - typically around the $200 mark. Make sure any card you buy has twin DVI outputs so you can connect both of your monitors digitally should you decide on a two monitor setup. If you buy any NVidia/ATI based card around the $200 mark with dual DVI outputs, you should be able to use it happily for many years to come in most scenarios.

If you change your video card, you must of course re-calibrate your system.

Anything else to know about screens and setting them up?

If you're on a PC, or Mac OS X 10.5 or greater, you should tell your operating system the actual PPI of your screen. More information on this here (see Jeremy's Corner at the bottom). This will allow you to get accurately sized previews from Photoshop, which is very handy for judging both the feel of your photograph at certain sizes, as well as print sharpening etc.

Monitor Calibration

The first thing you should do before doing anything at all in digital imaging is to calibrate your monitor. Calibrating your monitor is the most important step in any digital imaging workflow - how can you produce beautiful images if you can't see the images accurately on your screen? It's true all monitors vary, but monitor calibration is not a subjective process - all digital imaging revolves around viewing images on a properly calibrated monitor. Calibrating your monitor to an objective standard, and then building an accurate profile of your individual monitor's idiosyncrasies of display, is the only accurate way of working with digital images.

Rather than repeat content on the website, I refer you to:

You simply can not hope to achieve high quality results with digital printing over the long term without calibrating your monitor.