Recipe: Fine Art Giclée Printing
- Bruce Wolfe
- Sep 4, 2018
- 5 min read
The final output of photography is the print. A well done print using archival methods is immune to hard drive crashes, changes in technology, or dropping your phone overboard into the ocean. Using a pigment ink set, and depending on the paper choice, may last for 200 years. It may well outlast the wall for which it hangs. The most accessible to all, cost effective method of printing these days is Giclée. Giclée is just a fancy way of saying ink jet. Well, kind-of. Giclée is typically more that just printing a document at home from Word. it is a more controlled, artful, "on-purpose" way of doing it using a professional class printer. This blog will give you an intro to that process.
Before we make something that lasts for the next 4 generations, we must learn how prepare and image for printing. We are converting data from the pixel world of a computer image to a physical medium. I do most of my printing from Photoshop which gives you finer control over all the parameters and allows you to see all the steps. Following all these steps to the letter is not necessary to get a print but just like everything else in life, the more effort you put into something the better the result.
1. Cropping: This should be done as early in the image editing process. Cropping can make or break an image composition. Ideally, an image should be shot with the final print aspect ratio in mind or shot with enough negative space around the image to give you the flexibility of deciding on an 8x10 or a 5x7 later. Clients make the decision of an 8x10 or some other aspect ration regardless of how you shot the image so give yourself plenty of negative space!
I use the marquee tool in Photoshop to crop images. For an image to be resize to 12x15 (4x5 aspect) I will set the tool to a width of 5 and height of 4. This can be set to 15 and 12. It doesn't matter because it is the same aspect.
Crop to the desired composition. (This is where you the artist comes in!) After cropping, it would be good to do a "save as" to the file to preserve the ability to re-crop and print later. I like to use the naming convention of XXXXX-12x15.psd for my printed images. On to sizing!
2. Image Sizing: The dimensions of the image can be anything due to cropping, number of pixels from the camera or whatever. This needs to be up-sized or downsized to match the size of the print. The goal here is to map a pixel of the image to a dot on the paper. First we must know the physical native resolution of the printer. This is usually around 300 dots per inch but it is good to know the actual number. The Epson printer i use is 360 dots per inch. That number is common to most Epson printers. Others may be different.
Open the Image Size dialog from the menu under /Image/Image Size and make sure you aspect has been locked. Set your unit of measure to Inches and set your width and height to the dimensions of your print. In this case it is 12x15. Set the Resolution to the native resolution of your printer. In my case it is 360. Yours may be different. Check the Resample checkbox and choose the resample algorithm. If your enlarging, it should be Bicubic Smoother (enlargement). If you are making it smaller it should be Bicubic Sharper (reduction). The reason we resize in Photoshop so the printer can avoid doing any resamping. The printer will use the fastest algorithm which is Nearest Neighbor. Quick and dirty is not what we want.
3. Sharpening: You should always sharpen the image AFTER resizing. Resizing doesn't work well with hard edges so the very last step before printing in sharpening. Actually, you can size the image before doing any other adjustments. Just make sure sharpening is AFTER sizing. Sharpening can be a big can of worms. (Sounds like a good topic for a separate article.) Just be careful not to over sharpen. Reducing an image always adds some sharpening so always consider this when sharpening.
4. Printing: Up to this point, we have cropped to the aspect ratio we want, resized the image to match the DPI of the printer and sharpened. We are ready to move on to the actual printing. Let's first do a Save. I always save printed images under the file name scheme mentioned above (XXXXX-12x15.psd) so the dimensions of the image is in the file name.
Open the main print dialog from the menu under File/Print.
Select the printer you'll be using. In this case it is an Epson 3880 that has a 17" wide print width. You will want to open the Print Settings Dialog by clicking Print Settings...
The print will already be selected. Select the paper size to 13x19 or whatever you will be using. This example is 12x15 so I will be using a paper size of 13x19. When you have all of these setting complete you may create a preset to make this process quicker the next time.
You will see an unlabeled drop down under the Paper Size drop down. It will probably say "Layout" when you first open the dialog. Select Printer Settings from that drop down. This will give you all the options that you need to set.
Page setup will be set to Manual-Rear. This is because the Epson 3880 accepts the thicker fine art papers from the rear paper feed only.
Select the media type. In this case it matches the paper which is Cold Pressed Bright. The specific paper you are using might be different so change it to the paper you are using.
The Ink will be automatically selected based on the media type.
Always check the 16 Bit Output checkbox.
Output resolution is always set to SuperPhoto -2880 dpi
High Speed is optional. Selecting High Speed means the print head prints bidirectionally. Epson states there is no difference in quality when printing in highspeed mode.
Ignore the print quality message.
Hit the save button to return to the main print dialog.
Hit the Layout buttons so that your image lays on the paper correctly. (It's vertical vs. landscape). Under color management, you always want to use Photoshop Manages Colors. Always. You need to select the printer profile that matches the paper you are using. All of the profiles listed under this drop down are the profiles installed on your computer. You need to find and select the profile for the paper you are using. Always check Send 16-bit Data and select Normal Printing. For Rendering Intent, You probably want to use Relative Colorimetric. This gives the printer the instructions on what to do with out of gamut colors. Relative is usually the best way to go. Click Black Point Compensation. Leave everything else at the defaults. Hit the print button. Finally. And see what you get. Good luck.
