Open Mike: Learning to Print

A reader contacted me the other day wanting a recommendation of a book, PDF, video or online course to learn about photo printing. It's been so long since I recommended one that I really don't feel I know the landscape any more...apart from Ctein's columns on the subject, which can be found under "Ctein" in the Categories list in the right-hand sidebar. Most notably (going from most recent to least), "Photoshop vs. Printer-Managed Color Printing,"Product Review: Epson SureColor P800 Printer," and "Are Profiles Obsolete?" Oh, and there's a piece called "About Printers," but it's an overview of the state of printmaking, not a guide to machines.

Can anyone who's been through the learning process recently recommend other good learning resources?

(Please, don't just make random suggestions just based on a searches—we can all do that. Let's hear from people who actually used the book or materials in question.) I'll post the best answers here.

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Peter Wright: "I found Jeff Schewe's two book set: The Digital Negative and The Digital Print to be very helpful. They covered a lot of ground aimed at producing a good print. But read Ctein's columns as well (especially 'Are Profiles Obsolete?') for a well-rounded education."

Chuq Von Rospach: "Martin Bailey's Making the Print from Craft and Vision is a good resources, and Martin's site and podcast are worth digging into."

Jeff: "LuLa, a.k.a. The Luminous-Landscape, which now costs $12 per year to subscribe, provides full access to their video archives, including various educational videos. There is one extensive tutorial (12 hours) on 'Camera to Screen to Print,' with Jeff Schewe and Michael Reichmann, that is very informative. I also recommend Jeff Schewe's two books, The Digital Negative and The Digital Print, for folks who prefer books to videos.

"I think, however, that the best learning comes from doing, and workshops can really provide a great jumpstart, provided of course that the leader is a good teacher, not just a good photographer."

Kenneth Tanaka: "The late Uwe Steinmueller's book Fine Art Printing for Photographers: Exhibition Quality Prints with Inkjet Printers, now in its third edition, is perhaps the best all-around reference for digital printing that I've seen. I recently updated my copy of the first edition to the Kindle version of this third edition."

Eric Erickson: "I used to struggle with printing. In the past I used both Lightroom and Photoshop with little success. The difference came with the most recent edition of Lightroom via the Creative Cloud. That in addition to Scott Kelby's book on Lightroom CC. [Currently the #1 bestselling book in the Darkroom and Photo Processing category —Ed.] Kelby makes it very easy and understandable. I use a Canon 9500 and find it much better than my old Epson. I am sure the new Epsons are fine but the old ones where somewhat of a challenge to use.

"I generally print all my work through LR and start with a 4x6 print to test the lightness/darkness and colors. I then print bigger, generally 11x14. Just remember to feed the larger paper through the bottom feeder and not the top feeder. The other thing I use a lot is YouTube. Whether it is printing or changing out a light switch, YouTube has a video on it and it helps a lot. I am a big fan. Hope this helps."

Andre Y: "I like Ben Long's two printing videos on Lynda.com. They start you out at the beginning and take you very far with a small set of tools (mostly levels adjustment layers with masking in Photoshop). He starts off explaining how to get B&W prints to look good and what that means, and then links that to color. His main adjustment is contrast, which to me is the main post-processing adjustment all of us (ought to?) do. It's also a photo-oriented teaching video instead of a technique-oriented video. That is, you're given photos with a number of real-world problems that you work on, and he also shows you his solutions. You may not like how he processes his photos (they're quite punchy), but he teaches you how to use the tools well enough that you can process and print to your personal tastes, and you can figure out how to progress yourself in the future. The videos are detailed and extensive, but short enough that you could watch them in Lynda's trial period. If you like them, you should sign up for the service."

 

Comments

[rusty]

Jeff Schewe's Digital Negative and Digital Print, both in my library, both very useful

[Alan Fairley]

Not a book, and a version to two behind in the software, but the Luminous Landscape video tutorial From Camera to Print is an excellent tutorial on the basic and advanced techniques on printing. And I'm sure you'll also get lots of mentions of Jeff Schewe's book The Digital Print (which really should be read with The Digital Negative, since post-processing is an integral part of printing).

[chap achen]

An excellent book on the subject is Jeff Schewe's book, The Digital Print, now in 2nd edition, a great companion is his other book the Digital Negative. These are excellent resources for the first time printers or those who have had previous experience.

[psu]

This suggestion is a little bit out of left field, so do with it what you wish...

But, if you can find them David Vestal's books on B&W Darkroom have a lot of lessons to teach you that are independent of the particulars of darkroom technique. IMHO. The important things to learn here are what a good print looks like and then secondarily how to make your print look that way with the tools you have (assuming it's possible).

[ShadZee]

In one word: Costco

We've got a 50 lbs printer sitting in the corner collecting dust. Almost $2,000 down the drain.
It's way to hard to master, and too expensive to operate... if you don't use it almost every other day. Ink cartridges, clogged printing heads... just a big expensive dead weight that nobody wants now ;-(

Again; keep your sanity and use online printers !!

[Michael Trupiano]

Two reference books that have remained on my active bookshelf are "The Digital Print" and "The Digital Negative" both by Jeff Schewe. While the former goes into great detail on preparing to print (unique requirements in making the physical object separate from processing the image) as well as the actual making of the print using Lightroom and Photoshop; the latter, companion book (albeit in reverse order to ones workflow) details raw image processing (using LR, PS, and Camera Raw). Anyone who has visited the Luminous Landscape website in the last ten years knows Mr. Schewe's work and teaching skills. Highly recommended!

[Fazal Majid]

Hopefully Ctein will get to do a digital version of his magisterial "Post Exposure". I'd also love to see Bill Atkinson write up his techniques.

[Stephen Scharf]

I'd recommend The Digital Print by Jeff Schewe, one of the leading pros in the country, a key opinion leader for Adobe regarding Photoshop and Lightroom, and author of another seminal book on digital photography, The Digital Negative.

[Robert]

George DeWolfe's "B&W Printing" taught me a lot, if B&W is your thing.

[Larry Gebhardt]

The single biggest hurdle for me has been knowing what I wanted the print to look like. This applies to both darkroom and inkjet work. Looking at good prints has probably taught me the most. Going from screen to print is the easy part - just throw money at it in the form of printer, quality monitor, print and screen calibration tools, ink and paper ;-)

[Andrew Molitor]

I'm going to chime in to prop up the other side of the equation as well, here.

I use online printers myself. The local Fred Meyer. Walgreen's. Seriously. Using an iMac with a standard display and no calibration or color management beyond whatever the defaults are, by golly, the prints look a heck of a lot like what I am seeing on the screen. We've come a long, long way.

My pictures don't rely on precise placements of tone, or precise color rendering. If blacks look pretty much like black, whites like white, and skin like skin, I'm happy. I have met my artistic goals. And we're there, pretty broadly, at least in the USA.

"Printing" to me means applying my darkroom skills to the image file until it looks the way I want it to on screen, and that's merely a matter of knowing what the various sliders do, and having some experience with looking at photographs. I think?

My references are, therefore, still Ansel Adams. The chemistry parts are irrelevant, of course, and the digital equivalents of chemistry are "good enough" in the defaults to be invisible to me. The only part that's left, for me, is the seeing, the noticing of essentially photographic properties of the print, and Adams still gives us an excellent course in that.

[Jim McKinley]

I struggled for many years to get my prints to match what I was seeing on my monitor. It wasn't until I bit the bullet and spent some serious cash that I was happy with my prints. I now use an Ezio monitor and Imageprint software with my Epson 3880 and I'm throwing away a lot less paper and ink.

[Timprov]

When I was starting I got a lot out of reading the completely free archives of the Luminous Landscape forum "Printing: Printers, Papers and Inks" which can be found at http://forum.luminous-landscape.com/

[MHMG]

I have read a lot of the highly recommended books and seen a lot of highly recommended video tutorials on digital printmaking. Many are good, but I've never encountered one that knocked it out of the park. The published works usually leave the reader with even more questions than what he or she started out with.

I should quit whining and throw my hat in the ring, i.e. produce a definitive work on the subject of digital fine art printmaking. In this modern all-internet-all-the time era, it's really hard to sort noise from signal, and it's even harder to believe that one's audience will be patient enough to read or otherwise view any discussion that isn't quick to the chase, filled with recipes rather than fundamentals, and ignores the critical details lest it bore the audience to death.

That said, I think I'm going to give it try very soon.

cheers,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com

[Dean Johnston]

Zounds!

Slightly off topic (but maybe not, since we are talking about means of educating ourselves), but this is starting to annoy me - due to its frequency.

I see Ken's recommendation is actually US$10 more in electronic form (i.e. the Kindle version) than in paperback. Here in Japan at least, the Kindle version is US$4-ish cheaper (US$41 vs US$44.81) - but I still think that is odd and too expensive.

A while back in New Zealand in a major investigative journalistic report questioning why the cost of living was so high, major domestic producers and suppliers responded to questions asking why their products cost more in their home market and less after being exported to foreign markets with variants of a universal 'it's complicated, you wouldn't understand.'

Perhaps that's what is happening here? Maybe I wouldn't understand why pixels cost more than paper to make & ship?

(this probably doesn't need to be said, but I'll say it anyway - this has nothing to do with Ken. I'm very pleased he mentioned this title and I'm also now very interested in buying it - possibly from the Book Depository, which I see is 1 yen cheaper than Amazon).

[Graham Byrnes]

Learn to print? Really?
Read some articles about screen calibration, like this one:
http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/article_pages/colour_management/prints_too_dark.html

Buy some decent RC paper.

Then make the image look good on screen, be sure to select an adequtely wide margin, and hit "print"

I arrogantly submit that most of what is written about getting great prints is either print-mavens exaggerating the importance of their niche-knowledge, or attempting to compensate for mediocre photograpy.

[Nico.]

There’s a video tutorial on the Luminous Landscape website: Camera to Print and Screen by Michael Reichmann & Jeff Schewe. It covers the same ground as Jeff Schewe’s books (The Digital Negative & The Digital Print).
I have found it useful to have both. All the info is in the books, but seeing these accomplished gentlemen at work is very instructive too.

[Stan Rogers]

John Paul Caponigro's advice runs from free (YouTube videos at about an hour each and text on his site) through moderately-priced (DVD on his site) to "would be eye-wateringly pricey if the word 'photo' didn't appear in the product description" workshops. There's nothing to lose but time at the YouTube end of the scale (just remember to include "printing" in the search terms).

[c.d.embrey]

The last time I made a print was in the mid 1960s, during a college Darkroom class. The main things I learned in that class is that I'm not good at printing and I despise the process.

Many photographers think that they have to master everything from start to finish. Not me! Doing things I dislike and aren't good at is a waste of valuable time. Doing things that I like and are good at is much more productive — and helps in preserving what little sanity I have left.

I use Costco for casual prints and a Pro Printer for the important stuff. BTW I've never had an inkjet print made.

[Sam Grover]

I've watched online video tutorials, on YouTube and Lynda.com. I will check out another commenter's suggestion of a video on Luminous Landscape. Those are easy and accessible.

However, I would also like to recommend an in-person class, if possible. Here in Portland, a local photography non-profit named Newspace hosts all kinds of classes. I took a comprehensive five module class in digital printing there recently. We made actual prints on large printers, tried out various kinds of papers, learnt about calibration, etc. It was great. I encourage your readers to look for such options in their communities.