Chapter 3, "Color Management for Printing," looks at what it takes to bring the proper colors from the screen to the print. When producing color images, color management is one of the most demanding topics, and it is frequently one of the hardest to get right without the use of the proper tools. This chapter focuses on those parts in a workflow that are needed to get it right. These include the understanding of the different color models, learning about color management ICC's, color space mapping, and device profiling.
Chapter 4, "Fine Art Printing Workflow," now turns to preparing an image for printing. Up until now everything has focused on the materials and setting up your equipment; now you will look at how to get your image ready for printing by optimizing, scaling, and sharpening the image in Photoshop. Here you begin by focusing on the workflow beginning with basic steps of working in Photoshop to adjust brightness, working with curves, layers, and masks. Finally there is the fixing of colors, casts, and contrasts, as well as further preparations for printing.
Chapters 5, "Fine Art Printers in Practical Use," gets down to the reality that not all of the features your printer has available to you are needed, and in fact, many times, they can cause your final images to be less than stellar. By learning how to set things up correctly, you will find it much easier to experiment to find out exactly what works for you. This chapter gives a general overview of how to set up your print settings in your application (Photoshop or Lightroom), and in your printer driver (using Epson with Mac and Windows). One of the changes in this edition of the book is that the authors offload the specific printer details to the appendix and online. This way, as printers change, so can the details.
Chapter 6, "Printing Packages and RIP's," shows that although you may get great results from Photoshop or other application using the standard printer driver, there may be times where you want more control on your output. This is where Raster Image Processor's (RIP's) come in. A RIP takes the input, and from it, produces the raster image that can be sent directly to a printer. Here you will learn when to use a RIP, what kind of RIP's there are, when they should be used, and in general, how to use a RIP package.
Article comments
1 - Damien Franco
Having read the first edition only, I can say that the book does help amatuer Fine Art Photographers get through the steep learning curb that is gallery printing. As artists, photographers in particular seem to have a unique desire to reproduce, in every minute detail of color and clarity, the nuances of their images. Perhaps the fault lies with having too many tools to manipulate and enhance images in multitude that we just never seem to be satisfied with results. Especially if you're just starting out and have no idea the technical difficulties that can arise from trying to print your own work.