Print Color Problems, The Joy Of Small Prints, & Local Exhibitions
Feb 2023 Wrap-Up
Helping A Reader With Color Issues
The first installment of the ”Color Can Be Tricky” series prompted one of our community members to reach out for help. He was struggling with a simple job where no matter what he tried the colors reproduced in print were flat-out wrong. Of course, we’ll help, that’s the point of this community dedicated to such esoteric things as producing prints.
I’ll share the succinct version of the problem and solution hoping it will be of help to others when you’ve tried everything else. Sometimes it’s not you, sometimes it’s the software you trust and has worked over and over again in the past. I have experienced this more times than I can count at this point. Yes, Adobe (which tends to be used by the majority of photographers to produce prints) updates break printing in a way that you can do nothing about. That’s what happened in this case. Our fellow printer painstakingly reviewed and retried all of the things one can check and retry -- same incorrect results.
When we’ve experienced this there are two distinct types of problems. The first can be fixed through all sorts of reinstallation of drivers etc. The second type cannot. Photoshop and Lightroom will not produce correct results until sometime in the future when Adobe notices and fixes it with another update. In this case, the easiest solution is to use different software to produce your print.
The best piece of advice I can give is to have an alternate software solution to make a print, know how to use it, and compare the print from Adobe to the other software if you think you are having an issue. The related advice is to have a couple of known prints you’ve produced before and are sure are absolutely correct in terms of color that you can measure against. If there is interest I’d be glad to write up what we do at LPFA and what we’ve run into given that we host workshops and in many cases have broken upgrades at the worst possible times.
The Joy Of Small Prints
A year ago I purchased a small cheap printer, the Canon Selphy CP1300. Obviously not a fine art print printer. The purchase was merely a means to produce small prints at an event I was attending. It worked fine and served its purpose.
That device has been sitting unused for almost a year now along with a partially used paper/ink kit. When I ran across it and the open supply pack I went a bit crazy and used the entire rest of that pack to make around 100 small black and white prints one after another. It was extremely fun and reminded me how much better editing and culling with a pile of small prints is compared to that same job on a computer screen.
I had a blast and wanted to restate how valuable small prints can be in curating your work for a book, an exhibition, or any other case where you have to make something to present out of a batch of related images.
The obstacle is usually cost. You don’t need to fire up your real printer and use real fine art paper to make a gaggle of small prints. That can be very expensive. One very inexpensive route is to ship the files to your local Walmart, Costco, or another producer that prints small prints for a few cents. I’ve done this before. I did a quick calculation and that Canon Selphy is almost as cheap at $0.29 (Walmart is $0.12). Last time I calculated a reasonable estimate it was about $0.36 using Canon photo paper (the cheapest 4x6) and the Canon 1000 but that’s probably not really including the ink that is spent turning the Canon 1000 on which cleans the heads and fills up the “maintenance” cartridge.
I am not necessarily endorsing the Canon Selphy but rather the use of some alternate method of producing inexpensive small prints and using it as I did recently. It really is fun and invaluable after you’ve culled all the stuff that was easy to cull. You don’t have to use expensive materials for everything. You may even like a few of those small cheap prints. What’s even better is the ability to write on them, make notes, etc. Just like I used to use a grease pencil on contact sheets!!!
Local Pilgrimages
A member of the community wrote up an essay regarding his entry to Fringe Arts Bath Festival in the UK. Take a look at his write-up and that festival if you’re interested.
I’d love to keep a calendar of all events and opportunities that members are participating in or small local exhibitions that all of you are a part of. The goal is that everyone able and interested have an opportunity to attend, participate, or support these public exhibitions. Personally, I love mini-pilgrimages to photo festivals or local exhibitions both where I live and where I happen to be when traveling.
Let us know if you’d like us to keep a calendar of upcoming events that all of you submit.
The latest version of LR running on the last MacOS Print module crashes regularly when I try to change the paper size (seriously? Thought they had that figured out in 1992). So I used this as an opportunity to download and learn Canon’s ‘Professional Print and Layout’ for my Pro-1000. Used as a LR plug-in it solved the problem and gave me some new options. As with all software there is a learning curve based on time and 4x6 test prints. Thinking of getting and learning Qimage for the same reason. Thanks for the great advice - as a field engineer and trainer working in the field I learned to ALWAYS have an alternative in my pocket. Sounds like you’ve been there too.
Thank You. I get a lot of practical value from your publication. Please keep it up. I am making a book on Khadi paper using Awagami kozo paper similar to what was discussed on your newsletter. Will let you know how it goes.