in association with Getting to Grips with Printing

in association with Getting to Grips with Printing

Managing Colour

Custom profiles - why you should use them

Raw files are not colour managed

Should I set my camera to srgb or Adobe RGB?

What happens to a file if you change from one colour space to another? Assign a profile Convert to profile

Studio setup & Calibration

Monitor Calibration Settings 1. Only a guide - you need to experiment. 2. Luminance 100 to 120 cd/m2 (I more often use 80 or 90 cd/m2 - I find it matches paper better) 3. Gamma 2.2 4. White point 5000 to 6500k (Lower number reflects warmer papers, higher number for bluer/ whiter papers) The white point can be used to reflect the whiteness of the paper you are printing to and some calibration software allows multiple profiles with different sets of settings for different papers (white points) and other preferences in the settings above.

Rendering Intents Remember - There are no rules - personal choice Perceptual - For most, the intent of choice. Looks good in isolation but may differ compared to the screen more than Relative. Colours maintain their relationships to each other. Better for smooth gradations of colour, but colour shifts are bigger. Good at shadow detail. Squeezes colours into gamut. In gamut colours shift as well as out of gamut colours. Is reversible as no colour information is lost (but not easily reversible) Relative - Clips colours to nearest possible in gamut colour. Only out of gamut colours shifted - in gamut colours remain unchanged. Always use for mono images as based on tonal information. Better if you sell prints from your website (works well with srgb viewed images). Tonal relationships can change and colours can become blocky, losing pure gradations somewhat. Often delivers punchier results. Slight loss of shadow detail. Discards colours - not reversible.

Perceptual Rendering Intent Relative Rendering Intent

Soft and Hard Proofing

Sharpening

Three stage process 1. Raw pre-sharpening 2. Creative sharpening 3. Output sharpening

Try holding down the alt key as you move each slider below. Amount = Intensity of sharpening Radius = Looks for edges & how much to compress them Detail = Looks for details & brings them back after above. Masking = Removes sharpening from solid areas to reduce artefacts Remember - only white areas sharpened.

Creative Sharpening

Sharpening in Lightroom for Fuji X-Trans Sensor Users http://petebridgwood.com/wp/2014/10/x-trans-sharpening/

Why is Smart Sharpen so smart? 1. It lets you sharpen and then fade the sharpening separately in the shadow and highlight areas of an image 2. It detects edges and tends to produce fewer halos than Unsharp Mask 3. It has a reduce noise option, so it sharpens edges without tending to sharpen the noise in an image 4. It corrects three types of unsharp issues - Gaussian blur, lens blur and motion blur. Unsharp mask only works on Gaussian blur 5. It lets you save your settings which can speed up your workflow

Suggested settings for Smart Sharpen (only a starting point) 1. Ctrl-J (Windows) or cmd-j (Mac) on background layer. 2. Click Filter menu >> Sharpen >> Smart Sharpen 3. View image at 100% 4. In Preset menu select Default 5. Lower the Reduce Noise slider to about 5% to see the sharpening effect 6. Choose an Amount, for example at 300ppi use around 250 to 350% 7. Increase Radius until you see halos appear on edges and then move slider back to where they just disappear. 8. In the remove menu select the type of blur to correct - Gaussian is a good choice. Lens blur is good for sharpening fine detail with fewer halo issues. Motion blur is used if you have moved the camera slightly but you do need to enter the angle of movement. 9. Increase the Reduce noise value - 10 to 20% is about right generally - much further and the image softens 10. Expand the Shadows/highlights section - move the preview first to a shadow & midtone area and make adjustments. Aim for a Radius between about 10 & 25 (controls how many pixels beside each other will be compared to each adjusted pixel - the higher the figure, the larger the area compared. 11. Move the Fade Amount slider until you are happy with the reduction in over sharpening in the shadows 12. Chose a Tonal Width to control the range of midtones affected by the Fade Amount. The higher the figure the wider the range of midtones are affected and the more gradually the sharpening is faded into the shadows. So at 5 to 20% only very dark shadows will be sharpened, for example. 13. Now move the preview to an area of highlights and midtones. Repeat as you did with the shadows.

Unsharp Mask Settings - (based on image of 2000 x 3000 pixels or larger) 1. Landscapes - Amount - 100 to 150% Radius - 1 to 1.5 Threshold - 6 to 10 2. Portraits - Amount 100 to 120% Radius - 1 to 2 Threshold - 4 to 6 3. Architecture etc - Amount 150 to 200% (or higher) Radius - 1.5 to 3 Threshold 0 to 3 4. Duplicate background layer as before 5. Filter >> Sharpen >> Unsharp Mask 6. Amount controls the increase in contrast on the edges 7. Radius controls how many pixels out from edges the filter will affect (The higher the number of pixels in an image the higher this should be set. Another tip is that for low contrast images with large simple objects and simple transitions try a radius of around 2. For images which are intricate, full of detail and high contrast go for a lower setting of 1. 8. Remember, if you raise the radius then lower the amount and vice versa as the effects they create are linked. 9. Threshold defines how different each area must be from an adjacent area. So 0 sharpens the entire image, at 5 to 10 high contrast areas are sharpened but lower contrast areas less so. Remember the masking tool in Lightroom - this is doing the same thing. If you increase the Threshold you can also increase the amount and Radius to sharpen edges. 10.If you are getting colour halos on edges, change the blend mode of the sharpened layer to Luminosity in the Layers panel - this means only brightness values of pixels will be sharpened, not hue and saturation values (which is causing the problem.

High Pass Sharpening 1. This is an edge detection filter. 2. Duplicate the background layer 3. Filter>>Other>>High Pass 4. Set the radius by eye to between 1 and 5 generally (the more pixels in an image the higher you go) 5. Change the blend mode of the layer to Overlay in the Layers panel drop down box. 6. Overlay is good because it ignores neutral grey and works on contrast - which is what we want - edge contrast. 7. If it is too strong try Soft Light. If it is too weak, try Hard Light 8. You can also change the opacity of the layer if required.

Print Sharpening

Resizing Images

Understanding Pixels 5708 x 3805 px = 21,718,940 = 21.8mp 130.3mb tiff

Automatic (for the lazy amongst us) Photoshop chooses the resampling method based on the document type and whether the document is scaling up or down. Preserve Details (enlargement) (only use if noise is a real issue - maybe deal with noise first?) When this method is chosen, a Noise reduction slider becomes available for smoothing out noise as you upscale the image. Bicubic Smoother (enlargement) - (My enlargement method of choice usually) A good method for enlarging images based on Bicubic interpolation but designed to produce smoother results. Bicubic Sharper (reduction) - (I always use this if reducing the size of an image in PS) A good method for reducing the size of an image based on Bicubic interpolation with enhanced sharpening. This method maintains the detail in a resampled image. If Bicubic Sharper oversharpens some areas of an image, try using Bicubic. Bicubic (smoother gradients) - (I sometimes use this, but prefer Bicubic Smoother unless the gradients cause issues) A slower but more precise method based on an examination of the values of surrounding pixels. Using more complex calculations, Bicubic produces smoother tonal gradations than Nearest Neighbor or Bilinear. Nearest Neighbor (hard edges) - (don t even think about using this) A fast but less precise method that replicates the pixels in an image. This method preserves hard edges and produces a smaller file in illustrations containing edges that are not anti-aliased. However, this method can produce jagged effects, which become apparent when you distort or scale an image or perform multiple manipulations on a selection. Bilinear (use this if you are a medium quality kind of photographer) A method that adds pixels by averaging the color values of surrounding pixels. It produces medium-quality results.

Smaller images - A4/A3 etc - 300ppi is ideal if you have the resolution from your camera Larger images - above A3 - Experiment with/consider reducing ppi to 240 or 180. (or even lower) Compare with resampling and maintaining 300ppi. Remember - only photographers pixel peep View from the correct viewing distance. For the web - 72ppi (and embed srgb colour space)

Choosing the Right Paper for Your Print 1. One paper does not fit all 2. Paper choice is a crucial creative decision 3. Paper choice can hugely affect the colours your print can display. 4. Don t fixate on matt papers 5. Mono images often look MUCH better on Baryta papers (dmax) 6. Remember white paper is rarely white. The warmth of the paper will affect the colours of the print - get to know your papers whiteness. (Custom profiles will help a great deal with this). 7. Matt papers introduce a softness & subtlety to prints - they are nonreflective and good for fine detail as well as softer images. If not carefully soft and hard proofed they can suck the life out of images - reducing contrast. 8. Baryta papers have a sheen but behind glass this is not an issue. They allow more sharpening for fine detail and often give more intense, punchier results. Hold contrast well and breath life into images. 9. Matt papers much harder to print difficult colours to - they have a narrower gamut. Often a Baryta paper solves the issue.

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