Because of the nature of event photography, and the way I sell my photos, I do not do any of the printing of these images using my own inkjet printers. With the amount of images that I need to print, and the number of different places that I need to send these, I outsource this task to professional photo labs. They have the expertise in doing this work, and they have the best in optical printing machines to create the best possible prints for my clients.
So, if you have come across this post because you have purchased prints from TimeLine Media before, please know that no changes will be made to how I create those photos. If I print using inkjets, it will only be for personal work for the near future. In this case it was the first experiment in printing on inkjets using this HDR photo from a recent walk in D.C.
Original File
This is an HDR image that was processed in HDR Efex Pro 2. It was subsequently converted to black and white in Silver Efex Pro 2. At this time, I wanted to try a monochrome image first. I thought it would be easier to see and fix any problems compared to adding color into the mix. Here is my first attempt with the default settings from my printer. Undoubtedly it is not pretty! To keep the changes to the images minimal, I kept the 4×6 aspect ratio. It was then printed onto 5×7 glossy paper:
Inkjet Print
Truth be told, I just hit print immediately, and did not even see a dialog box for printing settings. There is some serious banding problems in this attempt. In looking at the settings as the print was going through, the printer was using some of the color inks. It was not just using the black ink to create the print. For my second attempt, I made a few more changes in the dialog boxes prior to printing the next try.
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