photo cropping and print ready software
- Thread starter monkey101
- Start date
Whatever software you're comfortable with will work, but that's not the hard part so let me enlighten you to the challenges ahead that will at times cause you to rip you hair out.
1. Find a shop, a real photography shop that doesn't auto correct your images. You'd be amazed at how bad a local convenience store can do to screw up a really great shot.
2. How bright is your computer monitor? People tend to have their monitor too bright and then get an image printed and wonder why it's so dark. My screen goes ten clicks up in intensity; I turn it up three clicks from its darkest and that is pretty close to print output.
3. Is your monitor color calibrated? If not through a few test photos you will figure out towards which color(s) your monitor has a bias and have to adjust when editing.
4. Star photography, Milky Way, and black and white photos will have a certain illumination because your monitor is a glowing screen. I have found for print that stars and Milky Way shots I need to crank up the intensity of the stars a bit so that they don't disappear on the non glowing photo paper. Black and whites when printed turn out a bit darker than my screen again because of the glow. Through trial and error I have learned exactly how much lighter I need to make them on my computer screen so that the output at the photoshop matches what I want.
5. Find out from the local photo shop what file format they like best, most likely a jpeg. Then, once you get a shop that you like, stick with them since you know how your work will output. From there you can make the little adjustments you need to dial in a homerun when you have pictures printed.
It can be a frustrating learning process, but once you learn it you will be rewarded.
1. Find a shop, a real photography shop that doesn't auto correct your images. You'd be amazed at how bad a local convenience store can do to screw up a really great shot.
2. How bright is your computer monitor? People tend to have their monitor too bright and then get an image printed and wonder why it's so dark. My screen goes ten clicks up in intensity; I turn it up three clicks from its darkest and that is pretty close to print output.
3. Is your monitor color calibrated? If not through a few test photos you will figure out towards which color(s) your monitor has a bias and have to adjust when editing.
4. Star photography, Milky Way, and black and white photos will have a certain illumination because your monitor is a glowing screen. I have found for print that stars and Milky Way shots I need to crank up the intensity of the stars a bit so that they don't disappear on the non glowing photo paper. Black and whites when printed turn out a bit darker than my screen again because of the glow. Through trial and error I have learned exactly how much lighter I need to make them on my computer screen so that the output at the photoshop matches what I want.
5. Find out from the local photo shop what file format they like best, most likely a jpeg. Then, once you get a shop that you like, stick with them since you know how your work will output. From there you can make the little adjustments you need to dial in a homerun when you have pictures printed.
It can be a frustrating learning process, but once you learn it you will be rewarded.
Horoscope Fish
Senior Member
Well if by "ready to print" you mean "post processing" (e.g. correcting things like color and exposure and tweaking things like sharpening, cropping and resizing) then there are two applications I use. A freebie called IRFanview (be sure to install all the plugins available on the site as well if you install this) and Adobe Photoshop. IRFanview is great for simple things but does not have the raw horsepower of Photoshop.
There are the cheaper alternatives to Photoshop such as Adobe Lightroom, GIMP (also free) or ACDSee.
Fred Kingston
Senior Member
Get this book first, so you know what the variable are to printing... If you don't understand the printer/resources available and what their requirements are... it does no good to start looking for software... His book walks you through all the printing end so you can make the software adjustments to accommodate the various printer resources...
Amazon.com: The Digital Print: Preparing Images in Lightroom and Photoshop for Printing eBook: Jeff Schewe: Books
thanks for the info..i use photoshop and lightroom and have taught myself them but not really sure how to make the pictures look good printed...some come out grainy...they look great on the computer screen but not printed....i not sure what i am doing wrong and thought that maybe there was another program i had to use to put the pics on a disc sized for say 8x10 for me to take to a place for printing..i have taken some other peoples photos that would like a copy to print....any pointing in the right direction would be great
Fred Kingston
Senior Member
That's exactly what this book is about. There are settings in both LR and PS that maximize printing to different printers as well as for computer screens. Understanding the differences can turn average output to museum quality...
Are you getting them printed at a photography shop? What you describe sounds exactly like photos I have had done ant Wal-mart, Walgreens, Wallie World, etc... where their system tried to auto correct and ruined them. It was hit or miss.