How To Get Great Online Prints

[@macmcmillen6282]

This was very helpful. Thanks for taking the time to create this video. Getting prints that look like what's on the monitor is the hardest and most frustrating part of the photography workflow, IMO.

[@CARLA19822]

You’re an excellent teacher. Thank you.

[@juancorderoxuancor738]

Thank you very much, Sean. Your photographing skills are really incredible. I'm from Spain and I hardly speak some English. But your English is so clear that I can follow your lessons. I,ve bought some of your videotutorials and are really amazing. Thank you very much for teaching us a lot.

[@SeanBagshaw]

Juan Cordero my pleasure!

[@zolte]

Amazing art piece...

[@AndrewEndean]

very helpful video, answered a few issues i had been having with prints

[@rlfisher]

Great video, Sean. I find in LR, with my calibrated monitor, I need to add about 0.3 stops of exposure to avoid a dark print. In your example, how much pre-sharpening had you done in LR before exporting or shipping to PS?

[@chrisdeantonio1498]

Super helpful and I am going to give this workflow a shot. Question on the Output Sharpener Pro settings: you selected the printer resolution of 2880 x 1440. How did you what to select there?

[@SeanBagshaw]

Christopher DeAntonio good question. This is another question you could ask your lab to be most accurate but the differences will be slight. On my own printer that is the ink dot resolution I print with. I didn't ask Artmill what printer resolution they use so I went with that to be safe. Choosing a lower resolution in Sharpener Pro adds more sharpening to compensate for fewer dots of ink. If I don't know the ink dot resolution the printer will put down on paper I feel it is better to err on the side of under sharpening than over sharpening .

[@mikerobinson7694]

Really useful information here again Sean. I've been meaning to acquire Sharpener Pro 3 for a while now and have just realised it is actually available free from Google, along the Complete Collection of other Nik plug-ins. Many thanks for the recent update and videos for Tony's V6 panel too. Great stuff matey!! 👍👍

[@SeanBagshaw]

Are the Nik/Google plug-ins still available? It was great when Google made them free...but then I heard they were going to stop offering them. If they are still available then people should grab them while they can. If not, there are other options as well, including PhotoKit Sharpener 2.0 by PixelGenius, Topaz and others.

[@mikerobinson7694]

Yes still available at the moment Sean, I downloaded the collection yesterday. I agree, grab them while you can!

[@henriquecristo]

Great video Sean! I have one question though... How did you know the printer resolution to put on Sharpener Pro 3?

[@SeanBagshaw]

I don't remember specifically now. I haven't used Sharpener Pro for a few years so I'm not recalling the exact settings it has without rewatching the video. Currently, I use either Ps Smart Sharpen or Topaz Sharpen AI for my print sharpening and they have different controls.

[@henriquecristo]

@@SeanBagshaw I just realized how old this video is 😊. In any case many thanks for your reply. Have a great day!

[@SeanBagshaw]

@@henriquecristo you got me curious to see what I did so I re-watched to refresh my memory. The 2880x1440 print resolution is for dots of ink from an inkjet printer. That's the ink dot resolution I use with my Epson in my office. I didn't have information on what printer resolution the lab was using and it doesn't really connect with the aluminum dye transfer process anyway...so I just stuck with those settings and it came out fine.

[@henriquecristo]

@@SeanBagshaw I see... so in theory I should try and get that info from the print lab. I've been working with PS for more than 15 years but I must confess that I have never touched the Smart Sharpen filter. I'm considering purchasing the Topaz Labs products as I tried a few of their products as really liked the results, a bit pricy though... So just to be clear, if I use this method the lab should not add any enhancement settings from the printer's driver? And again, thank you very much for clarifying!

[@SeanBagshaw]

@@henriquecristo Glad to help. How the printing is done varies from lab to lab, so it can be good to communicate with a lab and find out how to best accomplish what you are trying to do. The lab I worked with in this particular video does a great job but doesn't provide many options. Other labs allow you to designate much of the print workflow. Bay Photo, for example, has a place on their order form where you indicate you do not want them to do any color corrections or other alterations to the image before printing. Many labs provide their icc profiles which you can use for soft proofing to get your image ready to print. Sharpening is always challenging because different types of printers and print papers all have different amounts of ink spread (dot gain) or other factors that affect image detail. Until you print and view a full size image it is hard to predict how the sharpness will look. For very large prints it is too expensive to do full sized test prints so I often crop a piece out of the full size print file and just do a test print of that to evaluate sharpness. I demo that concept in this video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/Y56TaKh6d82YipI

[@sandyfox2486]

I notice you have a printer in your studio. What kind is it and what is the brand name?

[@SeanBagshaw]

That one is an Epson Stylus Pro 4880. Check out Canon's printers as well.

[@peterelliston]

Hey Sean, great video, thanks. When you were in Photoshop did you increase the size of the image? I always thought this would make it blurry and lose sharpness and detail. Thanks again.

[@SeanBagshaw]

Hi Peter. Yes, I did enlarge the image in the video...both in the Lightroom example and the Photoshop example. If you want to print a photo bigger than the size it comes out of your camera it must be enlarged somehow. You can either do it or the print lab will do it...but somebody is doing it. There are two ways that Photoshop can enlarge images for printing. It can either increase the number of pixels in the image (interpolation) or it can increase the "size" of the pixels (decrease the pixels per inch). Taken far enough, both of these methods will eventually lead to decreased image sharpness and detail. But Lightroom/Photoshop now do an excellent job enlarging. I find that I can at least double the output size of my original image file and still get excellent results. For example, without any enlarging an image from my 30.4 megapixels Canon 5D4 will print at roughly 15 x 22.5 inches at 300 ppi. This means that I can enlarge up to 30x45 at 300 ppi with very good detail and even up to 40x60 or larger if the image is very clean or when printing on textured paper or canvas, which doesn't show as much fine detail anyway. Depending on the viewing distance, you could potentially go even larger. I have printed wall murals 15 feet high that look great because you have to stand back several feet to view them. They are not as sharp up close, but that's not how they are meant to be viewed. So, if you want to print images larger than they come out of your camera I say go for it! :-D

[@peterelliston]

Sean Bagshaw Thanks so much for replying, Sean. Really appreciate you taking the time to explain this to me. I've been a follower for years, keep up the good work!

[@davidhowe1069]

Hi Sean, great video. What would you do differently if you were having a photo printed on canvas?

[@SeanBagshaw]

David Howe Thanks! I’d soft proof with the canvas icc profile if it was available. Then I’d sharpen for canvas which requires more sharpening because of ink spread or “dot gain”.

[@davidhowe1069]

Sean Bagshaw Thanks for your reply Sean. I'll contact the lab I use and request their ICC profiles, if they have them I'll follow your steps in the video and sharpen more for canvas.

[@SeanBagshaw]

Depending on the lab they often have the profile available for download somewhere on the website. If you have NIK sharpener pro there is a canvas option.

[@henriquecristo]

Hello Sean, hope you are doing great! I have a doubt that made me come back to this video :) I noticed that you converted the image to the printer's profile, in this case Adobe RGB, after having made the necessary enhancements. I never really thought about this but wouldn't it be better to convert to the intended profile before making the enhancements (except for output sharpening, which would still be the last step)? I am currently preparing some images to produce a photo. book that a company here in the UK kindly offered me in exchange for a review. They require the images to be sent in sRGB. I have the custom ICC profiles but after simulating it I don't really see any major differences that justify soft proofing... so I will give this method (your method) a go! Just not sure if I should be converting the images to sRGB first and then add the enhancements... what do you think?

[@SeanBagshaw]

My approach has always been to make all adjustments with as much image information as possible and only downsample color space and bit depth at the very end of the process once no more adjusting is necessary. It is definitely best to maintain 16-bit for all adjustments I would think. In practice, I'm not sure if waiting to downsample the color space will make a visible difference or not. sRGB only contains the colors it contains...so whether you adjust first and then downsample or downsample first and then adjust it seems like you might end up at the same place?

[@henriquecristo]

​@@SeanBagshaw Thank you so much for the advice. Yes, I think this seems to be the best practice... it actually explains why in Lr, for example, you can only downsample colour space and bit depth (alongside output sharpening) during export, which suggests that this should be done post soft-proofing and in the end of the workflow. This has always been my approach as well, but I started questioning it for some reason... might have been my OCD kicking in :) One thing is for sure, If I spend another Sunday roast with a vacant look in my eyes thinking about colour profiles, bit depths and render intent, my wife might start thinking I'm having an affair!

[@SeanBagshaw]

@@henriquecristo Haha! Oh man I feel you...yeah, photography and printing can be like that.

[@tonicanabate6232]

Very useful tutorial. Thanks. I would like to know what color space do you use in LR and PS and is you are using an Adobe or sRGB monitor.

[@SeanBagshaw]

I always work on my master files in ProPhoto RGB because it is the largest color space. I then convert my output files to different color spaces as needed. Some print labs support ProPhoto RGB so no conversion needed there. If they specify Adobe RGB I convert to that. A few labs still want sRGB and any web-based output needs to be converted to sRGB.

[@carlyleellis6984]

Hey Sean, I don't see a link to the soft proofing video you mentioned in the video.

[@SeanBagshaw]

It pops up at the very end of the video and it is also in the description under the video...but you have to click "Show More" to see it. It's also right here kzbin.info/www/bejne/hHXCeK15qsqLatU :-D

[@cartmanbruh23]

what if I don't have nik collection?