Introduction

Hi guys,

welcome back to the blog and a new series about fine art digital printing in collaboration with my friends over at MOAB Paper. Together we had the idea of providing you with a step-by-step guide about everything you need to know, in order to print your own photographs. On top of that, MOAB provides you with a free eBook for download, which covers everything you could ever ask for when it comes to printing your own work in a professional manner. Make sure to download your copy here. It’s a great resource for everything related to digital fine art printing and photography in general and the best is: It comes at no cost. All you need to provide is your email address for receiving the download link.

We live in a fast-paced, digital world, highly influenced by Social Media, which in fact changed a whole generation’s behaviour in how they consume photographic content. For us photographers, this means that the endless hours of work we put in to capture a unique moment gets rewarded with maybe 3 seconds of somebody viewing that final image on his Smartphone screen, before swiping to the next one. Great photography always has stood the test of time though and the perfect medium to ensure its transformation into something tangible with incomparable depth of color and details has been the Digital Fine Art Print. There’re plenty of good reasons to print your own work and I’ll make sure to cover some of them throughout this new series.

So without further ado, let’s have a closer look at our first topic, which probably is one of the most important ones, when considering to professionally print your own work: Color Management.

Color Management explains a set of standards and systems for translating real world color, when capturing an image with your camera, all the way to displaying it on an output media, such as a screen or a print on paper. This is done by software algorithms, which try to translate color as accurate as possible throughout your creative process. Staying on the digital side of things, there’s not a lot to worry about as a photographer these days. Most of the translation happens in the background and is done by software like Adobe Lightroom or your computer’s operating system. However, when it comes to digital fine art prints, you should be aware of a couple of things that could have quite a big impact on the final result. In the following chapters, we’ll have a closer look on what the topic of Color Management covers and which aspects are important for you.

Color Spaces

The process of fine art digital printing is quite extensive and in fact can be a bit overwhelming for beginners. One could also say, it starts right when taking the actual picture, as edge-to-edge sharpness and image resolution can already have a big impact on the final result. For the sake of this series though, let’s assume you’re familiar with operating your camera and Adobe Lightroom, to achieve high-quality digital images, which will be the foundation for all the following steps explained.

Apart from that, the very first thing to consider is understanding and working within the right color space. A color space is a specific range of all the colors, which can be reproduced by your output device, such as your screen or printer/paper combination. Let’s have a closer look on which color spaces are the most common ones and how they can be used to your advantage.

Adobe RGB vs sRGB

I think it’s fair to say, that sRGB and Adobe RGB are the most common color spaces, at least when it comes to photography. Most of you should have heard about one or the other at some point in time. In fact, you can also set these color spaces within most of today’s digital cameras. That being said, you should always shoot in RAW format and setting the color space in camera won’t have any impact on your RAW files. This only happens when shooting in JPEG formats, which for the reason of quality loss should be avoided at all times.

But what is the actual difference between the both and which one should be used within your creative process?

The above screenshot actually shows both, the Adobe RGB space (greyed-out) and the sRGB space (coloured), in a 3D representation. To be more specific, it simply shows you, that the Adobe RGB color space can represent much more colors, compared to sRGB. Technically, this makes Adobe RGB the more advanced space to work with, but the story isn’t as easy as it may seem.

In order to make a decision, you have to be aware of the output devices used within your process. sRGB was designed to represent the capabilities of most monitors used back then and even today, quite a lot of screens, including televisions, as well as online services expect content to be in sRGB. Furthermore, sRGB is the common color space for most web-based scenarios, like websites and so on. Using Adobe RGB, could lead to a conversion issues and a wrong mapping of colours, hence you could degrease the overall quality of your final result.

Adobe RGB vs BenQ SW 271 Monitor Profile

Adobe RGB vs Canon Pro-1000 & MOAB Juniper Baryta Rag

That being said, if you own a monitor, which is able to represent a color space like Adobe RGB, it makes sense to make usage of the wider range. Especially, when your final output isn’t for web usage only but for something like a print. The first of the above screenshots shows Adobe RGB compared to the monitor profile of my BenQ SW271, which is capable of representing 99% of the Adobe RBG space. As you can see, there’s only a tiny bit missing in the upper right corner.

A monitor like this isn’t an essential tool to get good print results, yet it helps a lot when it comes to judging the real colors of an image and provides more accuracy on how it might look on paper. The second screenshot above clarifies this even more, showing the Adobe RGB color space versus the color space of a typical fine art paper, like MOAB Juniper Baryta Rag, printed on a Canon imagePROGRAF Pro-1000. You can see, that a high-quality paper is only able to represent a certain amount of colors represented by Adobe RGB, while on the other hand Adobe RGB also misses out on some colors, represented by the printer/paper combination. Though this combination still allows for much better judgment when printing, than using the sRGB color space.

But guess what, this isn’t the end of the story and there’s yet another important color space when it comes to photography, especially when talking about fine art digital printing.

ProPhoto RGB

The ProPhoto RGB color space is the most extended one and contains not only all colors represented by modern monitors but also all of the ones being represented by high quality paper/printer combinations. Even though there’s no monitor available on the market, which is capable of displaying the whole PhotoPro RGB color space, it clearly comes with the advantage of eliminating the mismatch between what monitors vs. printer/paper combinations are able to represent. It is a representation of what modern cameras are able of capturing, what today’s screens are able of displaying and what papers and printers are capable of reproducing. In fact, ProPhoto RGB is the color space used by the Development Module of Adobe Lightroom as well.

The above illustration shows how much bigger the actual ProPhoto RGB color space is, compared to the ones mentioned previously. And even if you can’t see some of these colours on your monitor, it is key to understand that using this color space takes care of not loosing any information (color), which possibly could be displayed on a different output medium, like for example a fine art print.

Rendering Intent

Let’s imagine you own a camera, which is capable of capturing a specific color, that only can be represented by the PhotoPro RGB space, meaning Adobe RBG or sRGB wouldn’t be able to do so. This means, that even if you can’t see this specific color on your screen (remember, no screen can reproduce ProPhoto RGB as of this writing), working with ProPhoto RGB takes care of not loosing this information. If you’d be working with Adobe RGB instead, this specific color would be translated into something similar or close matching by the algorithm of the editing software. This could lead to serious color shifts or even a loss of some of the accurate color information, baked into the RAW file produced by your camera. This process of translating colors from one color space to another one is called Rendering Intent. And keep in mind, you wouldn’t recognise this loss when working on your screen or posting the final result on the web but most likely when printing the image for a client campaign or a gallery event. This is why working with ProPhoto RGB is important in order to stay true to the initially captured color information, especially so when the intention is to print your images in the best and most accurate way possible.

Monitor Profiles and Calibration

Understanding and right usage of color spaces is only the first step in mastering color management. Even if you take care of working with ProPhoto RGB, there’re still other things, which could lead to an incorrect representation of color. One of these possible obstacles to overcome is the inaccurate color display of monitors. While some monitors do a really bad job on representing correct colors, others are aimed towards professional creatives and arrive pre-calibrated right out the factory. Further parts involved are the built-in light panels and the environment the monitor is used in. No matter though how accurate the pre-calibration of your monitor has been done, the ageing of the actual hardware components themselves as well as changing environmental conditions lead to a decrease in accuracy over time. This is why it is key to use the right monitor profile and to calibrate your screen every now and then.

While there’s a great variety of tools to calibrate your monitor, ranging from operating system utilities to some supplied with Adobe products, most of these are far from being accurate to a professional standard. In order to really get a high-level calibration you can rely on, you’ll need to buy or rent a dedicated monitor profile device with an associated software. Personally, I use a SpyderX Elite from datacolor but there’s a great range of inexpensive devices to choose from and most of them are easy and straight-forward to use.

Calibration device attached to the monitor

Most of the monitor profiling devices are measuring different color levels from the screen, while the related software runs a calibration process. In case of the SpyderX Elite for example, the color is read via a lens interface, which gets attached directly onto the monitor panel. Some of the devices also run room light measurements in order to determine the perfect screen brightness, which allows for a more accurate judgement of the content you work on.

Once connected to the computer via USB, one can start the application, which navigates through the whole process and creates an individual calibration profile for your own setup.

Most of these devices only take a couple of minutes to do the measurements and provide you with a spot on calibration for your creative workflow. Some of the related applications also come with helpful features like reminding you when the next calibration is overdue and also allow for ad-hoc measurements in case you change your setup from let’s say image processing to consuming videos online. For the latter you’d usually prefer more vibrant colors, which wouldn’t need to be as accurate as for editing content. Owning one of these devices as a working professional, probably is one of the best investments to ensure color accuracy throughout your digital process.

Printer Paper Profiles

Alright guys, this has been quite a lot so far, right? We’ve already covered common color spaces and why some of them make more sense to use within your creative workflow compared to others. We’ve also talked about how important a regular calibration of your monitor is, in order to accurately judge colours of your final product. Some photographers have a truly digital workflow, which means they only publish their work online or on digital output medias, like eBooks or SmartPhones apps. And while this is a valid choice these days, I think as an artist it is important to study your own and the work of others in a physical form, such as a print. Printing images comes with a lot of things you can benefit from and in fact it opens up a complete new world to photography itself.

I think at this point it’s no surprise, that color management has a big impact on this part of the process as well. Creating a professional fine art print involves a lot of steps, which should be considered carefully. This not only includes the right color space and a correctly calibrated screen but furthermore means you need to calibrate your printer/paper setup as well, in order to mach the the rest of your creative process chain.

Let’s have a closer look on how this actually works.

My favourite setup: Canon imagePROGRAF Pro-1000 and MOAB Juniper Baryta Rag

Checking details on a print made with MOAB Slickrock Metallic Pearl 260

The first thing to invest in, when considering fine art digital printing, is a decent photographic printer. Personally, I use a Canon imagePROGRAF Pro-1000, which allows for stunning results up to size A2, especially when being used with the high-quality papers from MOAB.

Talking about paper, each printer/paper combination is distinct due to the different coatings, textures and materials each paper is made of. This is the number one reason, why you can’t use a single general profile for all of them. To really get the results you’re aiming for, you need to calibrate your printer for each of these different papers but no worries, this is as easy as it gets.

ICC Profiles

ICC Profiles (International Color Consortium) are digital files, describing a standardized mapping of the color spaces between different media devices, such as your printer and a specific paper type. In other words, you’ll need an ICC profile file for each printer/paper combination to keep your color management consistent from when you capture the actual image to the moment you create a fine art print.

MOAB ICC profiles within the printer software after installation

Most of the major paper manufacturers provide you with these ICC paper profiles. So does Moab and you’ll find their printer/paper ICC profiles directly on their website for download. Next to this, they also provide you with a step-by-step video, which walks you through the process of installing these profiles on your machine. You can find their profiles and the video here.

Once you have installed the the ICC profile for a certain printer/paper setup, the profile itself can be selected within your printing software of choice. The above screenshots for example, show the installed MOAB ICC profiles within Canon’s Professional Print & Layout application, which is my personal setup when printing. Choose your preferred media type, load the paper in the printer and click the “Print” button and you should receive pretty decent results already.

Loading the printer with a sheet of MOAB Juniper Baryta Rag

Setting up a recent image from Milan, Italy within the printer software

Spectrophotometer and tailored profiles

While the ICC profiles provided by the paper manufacture do a pretty good job already, there’s always room for some further improvement. This is because these ICC profiles are somewhat standardised for a general printer model used, like in my case Canon’s Pro-1000. This on the other hand means, that these profiles are not tailored to the specific printer you’re using. These profiles don’t measure the age of your hardware or the given room temperature at your home or work place. These and other factors though can have an influence on the print results as well. This might not be visible to the general person but when talking about professional results, this last bit of quality improvement might be of high importance to you.

Without going too much into detail here, there’re two ways you’d be able to receive tailor-made profiles for your workflow. One of them is using a Spectrophotometer, which somewhat works like the calibration device for your monitor and some devices in fact can do both calibrations, the one for your screen and your printer. Usually, you print a test page on your desired paper on the printer you wish to set it up for. This test page is created with a certain software and displays certain color and measurement graphics. Once that is done, you put the calibration device onto this test page and it measures these graphics and generates a personalized ICC profile out of it.

The other options works similar in a way that you have to print out a specific test page on your printer using the type of paper you wish the profile for. Once that is done, you send this page to a third party service and they create the customized ICC profiles for your very own workflow and setup.

Both of these ways can result in a more professional ICC profile, but they are either pretty labor intensive or require a significant investment to get them created from a third party service. In the end you have to decide if this is worth to you, based on your personal preferences and current business situation. In case you are interested in the opinion of a pro printmaker and if he thinks that customized printer-paper profiles are worth, see his blog post on the topic.

Common issues when starting

If you made it here, then I truly hope that you could take away some valuable information from the prior topics, to make proper decisions about your photography workflow, especially when it comes to fine art printing your images. Last but not least, I want to highlight some common issues when first starting to print. As a fun fact, most of these issues are not related to the lack of understanding color management. Absolute color accuracy is something, which should be striven for and surely sets you apart as a professional. When starting out though, lots of the first issues with print results are related to the missing experience or other parts within your process. Let’s have a look on some of them before we wrap things up with the first episode of this series.

Too Dark

This is the most common issue when starting to print your images as fine art and has to do with reflected vs. transmitted light image characteristics. Viewing an image on a monitor screen is a transmitted light scenario, which comes with a 1:1000 contrast ratio compared to the reflective light on a fine art print, which only has an around 1:100 contrast ratio, in terms of blackest black and whitest white. Judging these different tone layers and shadows will take some time but you’ll gain experience, with every print you do.

Next to this, we often tend to crank up the monitor brightness all the way up, as we’re just so used to consume digital content on screens these days, whether it might be a laptop, a television or our Smartphone. The result of this will be a way too dark print, as the image won’t be highlighted by an artificial light source from behind. Therefore, a good recommendation is to turn down your monitor brightness at all times. A good value is something between 50% to 70%, which also depends on your specific screen. Like mentioned earlier already, some calibration devices also measure the the brightness of the environment you’re working in and suggest you with the perfect setting.

Another good tip, which helped me a lot to better judge the brightness of an image is to set the background color of your editing application to pure white instead of the fancy, modern looking black we all love so much. In Adobe Lightroom for example, this is as easy as right-click next to the image and choose your favourite background color.

Too Warm / Too Cool

Another common issue is that a print turns out too warm or too cool, compared to what you actually see on screen. Yes, I know what you’re thinking: This sounds like a typical color management issue. Yes, it truly does and in fact it is but for different reasons than you might think…

Prints which turn out too warm, actually can ruin skin tones of a portrait or make the greens in landscape images look weird. The opposite case, of prints being too cool though, can ruin a whole scene if it wasn’t meant to be blue. It’s less common than prints turning out too warm though. This is because of most modern monitors run too blue, especially the ones on laptops which causes an over-correction towards orange/yellow when it comes to adjusting the white balance on your images. This is why it such an important step to calibrate your monitor with a dedicated tool on a regular.

This calibration isn’t a cure it all type of process and there’s even more to consider when aiming for a perfectly balanced fine art print. There’re a couple of environmental and situational factors, which can make a print appear too warm or too cold as well. Ambient viewing conditions are one of the reasons when it comes to miscast colours. Monitors which seem to display neutral or normal during the day can look very cool in the dark, especially in home light conditions. Walls and interior itself can also cause misperceptions when it comes to judging colours on a screen.

Another pretty common, situational factor, which I personally experienced a lot myself, is that your eyes get tired after long editing sessions. My vision becomes skewed and I start interpreting colours completely different than what I would do when starting fresh in the morning. This is why I always let images rest for a couple hours after editing and revisit them again, to make further adjustments. I almost never like the initial result of a first editing, after having a closer look a couple hours later.

You might ask yourself right now how to solve these issues? Well, of course you can invest a lot of money in a totally neutral illuminated working environment, without any distraction and whatsoever. But a lot of photographers, including myself, can’t always choose the environment they have to work in. And to be honest, this type of money is better spent otherwise, in a nice trip to a foreign country for example. You have to understand that you’ll gain a lot of experience on how to interpret these conditions and make your judgement based on that. Working on a calibrated screen and printing on a decent printer using high-quality paper by having the correct ICC profiles installed, most likely is all you will ever need in order to create professional digital fine art prints. The rest is about you and the time and passion you are willing to invest in order to take your photography to the next level.

Alright folks, that’s it for this episode. I truly appreciate your steady support and hope this post could help you in one way or the other.

In case you have additional questions, feel free to reach out to me at any time.

Thanks for reading and following along and if you haven’t already, make sure to download your free copy of THE ART OF FINE ART DIGITAL PRINTING eBook by Les Picker and MOAB Paper here.

In case you’re interested in purchasing any of my images as a Fine Art print, make sure to head over to the store, or feel free to contact me for additional inquiries of any kind.

Talk soon and stay tuned for the next episode of A Guide to Fine Art Digital Printing with MOAB,

Chris

@chrismartinscholl

Additional Information

Free eBook: The Art of Fine Art Digital Printing

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MOAB Paper USA

MOAB Paper Germany

A Guide to Fine Art Digital Printing with MOAB EP 01: Color Management