 BetterPhoto Member |
Which Software and Printer Works? I am no professional photographer but love taking pictures and have recently purchased what I thought would be a good combination for developing digital photos. I use a Canon Digital Rebel, a Kodak professional 8500 digital printer, and Adobe Photoshop 7. When printing my pictures, it's like a roll of the dice. Sometimes I get beautiful pictures, sometimes they're so grainy and dark. Can someone offer any advice? Thanks in advance.
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Lewis Kemper |
The only way to avoid printing on a trial-and-error basis is to spend the time and money to establish an ICC workflow, where all of your devices are calibrated. For printing, it is the monitor and printer that need to be profiled. Once you have done that, then you eliminate the need for test prints because what you see on your monitor and what comes out of the printer are a match. The least expensive and easiest way to get started on this path is o purchase Monaco EZ Color 2.6 with the Optix Colorimeter. The Monaco package does an excellent job of calibrating your monitor and a reasonable job of calibrating your printer. If you do not want to hassle with making printer profiles you can have them done for you at www.Profilecity.com, but you will need to hardware calibrate your monitor!
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Doug Elliott |
There are two additional pieces of equipments that will give you the results you want. Go to Inkjetmall.com and get ICC / ICM color printer profiles. You can buy the library or individual profiles. I use only two and therefore I didn’t spend the money to get the library since I don’t use all the different types of paper. I would like to suggest that you also get the Color Vision Spider Pro. These profiles and monitor calibration units are valuable in keeping your monitor calibrated and your printer printing what you see. Good luck. Doug
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Gregg Vieregge |
Calibrate your monitor. Adobe gives a gamma adjustment. Go to control panel, appearance and you should see a gamma icon. Send that to your desktop for future reference. Open an image of a person in photoshop and minimize the screen so your can open the gamma adjustment next to it. It will ask to set your contrast to the highest level and adjust the brightness to make the little square do dark but not black. In the nest steo it will have you adjust the grey sqaure to make it blend to the background. As you move forward it will save your adjustment. This is a good start. When printing with the 8500 go to properties and click off the extrelife button. This eliminates the 4th lamentate layer. Your prints will have a really cool high gloss appearand, much like metallic 3-d paper. Unfortuneately Kodak never made an a good owners manual with that printer. Instaed they keep you buying extented waranties for support.
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Cookie Serletic |
AN easier way would be sell you kodak printer and get a nice canon printer. I got a canon I 475D AND I LOVE IT! It comes with a canon software for easy print. various sizes, paper options I can print on glossy, pro glossy ,reg paper, even canvas. I never print out of my photoshop programs , colors are never right. I shoot withthe D30 and the prints come out great with this printer and software. I have never calibrater my monitor. No fancy one either. but the colors are pretty close for me. If I am selling photos they still go to the pro lab. :) AFTER ANY EDITING.
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