Is there a good way to physically clean prints if they get gunk on them?

Question

Cry for Help

I have just mounted a large (24" x 16") print onto mounting board using a spray adhesive. This is for an exhibition in 3 days' time.

Some of the adhesive got on the front of the print.
This should not have been unexpected, as I am a complete clutz!
Is there a way to clean the glue off the print?

To make this question more generally useful: is there a good way to clean general dirt off a print?

Many thanks for any help!

Asked by AJ Finch

Answer

It would depend what the print was created with. If the print was created with some kind of ink jet system, there is no way to clean it. The inks are soluble, and pretty much any cleaning agent will ruin the ink. The adhesive itself has also likely bonded to the ink particles, so trying to remove the adhesive will damage the print.

Some forms of print are more resilient, such as laser or possibly dye sublimation. Generally speaking, I would assume that there are few cleaning agents that would allow you to remove the adhesive without also removing the ink or ruining the paper substrate.

When it comes to board-mounted prints, usually after bonding the print to the base, you seal the print with some kind of spray-on sealant or laminate. If you use a print sealer, it might help mitigate the effects of the adhesive, as well as make your print resilient to any future damage.

Answered by jrista

Check more discussion of this question.

Converting RAW images to lossless jpeg using GIMP?

Question

I have a Raw image which I want to get printed. I need to upload this to a website which expects to be in jpeg format.

I use GIMP for photo editing and used UFRaw to view RAW images.

GIMP cannot read Raw files directly, so I used UFRaw to view RAW image and save option saved it in ppm format, then I opened it in GIMP, did some editing and wanted to save the image. Saving in jpeg format compressed size from 10Mb to 3.6Mb

I did not want any compression of the image, I had option of saving in png, but I want lossless jpeg. How one can save in lossless jpeg format.

I use Ubuntu, GIMP, have UFRaw.

Asked by sat

Answer

Almost nobody uses lossless JPEG -- it's used within the DNG file format, and for some medical imaging applications, but that's about it. The probability that a file created with a JPG or JPEG extension in lossless JPEG format will be readable at the other end approaches 0 with a high degree of confidence. As for compression, well, almost all image file formats other than uncompressed TIFF will exhibit file size compression.

Unless all of your details are 1 pixel in size, a superfine JPEG compression (the highest quality the editor will permit -- that would be "quality level 12" in Photoshop, quality level 100 in the GIMP would be similar) will have so little loss that you wouldn't notice it without doing a pixel-by-pixel mathematical comparison (image subtraction). The alternative, if your service permits it, would be TIFF, but you'd want to compress that with the LZW option (lossless compression) to make the file size manageable. (It will still be much larger than a JPEG.)

Answered by Stan Rogers

Check more discussion of this question.

Is there a printing lab that post prints direct to customer without the invoice?

Question

Is there an online printing service, (like photobox) that I can use to print and ship prints directly to customers so that I don't even handle them. If I use a normal online printing service, they will send an invoice. Since I will be charging the customers more than I pay for the prints, is there a service that doesn't send the invoice?

Bonus points if they send the prints with my branding instead of theirs.

Bonus bonus points if they have labs in multiple major countries (USA, UK etc). Otherwise, just listing a companies in each country is fine

This isn't for printing wedding photos or anything important like that, just general quality, mass market snaps.

Asked by matt burns

Answer

Have a look at http://www.pwinty.com

This in an API for printing and shipping photos, and offers worldwide shipping.

They let you specify your own custom branding, and invoices to be included within the package- sounds like exactly what you are after.

Answered by user9021

Check more discussion of this question.

How do I make my MX880 Canon prints come out in the same colors as on the screen?

Question

I have a Canon MX880 printer which I recently bought. For some reason, prints from Adobe Lightroom come out with bad colors (i.e. not the same as on screen, though not altogether different). I played around with a bunch of setting and couldn't find something to make it work.

Thanks in advance!

Asked by Shwouchk

Answer

For best results you need a "color profile" to match your monitor to the color palette / gamut / system / ... that you are using AND you want a color profile to do the same thing for your printer. Then you see on screen what the image should look like and your printer interprets this correctly. Both are necessary for serious work. If you set printer to screen and the screen is not correctly "profiles" YOU will see good results on screen and printer BUT your electronic images will probably not appear correct to anyone else.

There is more on web about this than you'd want to wade through, but it doesn't take much effort to get a good enough idea for practical purposes.

Some printer manufacturers provide formal profiles for their printers.

Here is an excellent introduction re ICC and ICM profiles and printers -
Understanding Printer Colour Management

Good Introduction to Icc Profiles and Their Use - monitors and printers.

An about.com tutorial - main value is in a number of useful links provided - Calibrate Your Printer

If you have money - Chromix

Adding a co or profile to Windows XP

Wikipedia - color management

Answered by Russell McMahon

Check more discussion of this question.

Why do my prints look different from what I see on my computer monitor?

Question

I haven't printed any of my photos yet but I decided to give it a try. I am thinking of getting a printer of my own but before that I wanted to see how they would look. So, I simply printed one at the office in the regular laser printer.

To my surprise the printed picture looked very different from what I see in the computer monitor. Can anyone tell me how can the colors look so different? Basically, they have lost their saturation and in some cases the yellows are orange etc. Also, do I need to look for anything in particular in a printer that I am planning to buy? Are printers for photographs different from regular printers?

Asked by sfactor

Answer

Color laser printers, especially the big high end office printers, have the color capabilities you need for printing the company logo and the occasional Excel pie chart — but they are truly bad for printing photos.

But the good news is that almost any of the current generation of ink jet printers, even the cheap ones, are pretty good at printing photos - but only if you print in the printer's high quality setting on photo paper, if you use the cheap office paper you will get the same desaturated colors you got at the office.

Now, the colors in print will never be the same as on screen, especially the brightness (because the screen is a light source and he paper isn't) but you can get good results results, here are the options depending on how accurate you want the colors to be:

1. Just print in high quality on photo paper

If you like the way colors look an screen right out of camera and you never calibrated your screen than it's likely you won't notice the problem from uncalibrated printer (but it will never be the same as on screen).

This should be good enough for most people and will probably match the results you get when you get the photos printed in cheap labs.

2. Calibrate your monitor

If you're serious about getting the right colors you first need to make sure what you see on screen is really what's in the file, this will probably get you predictable results (that is, the difference between screen and printer will be predictable and you can learn to compensate).

There are several systems that will let you calibrate monitors, some are not very expensive.

This should be enough for most serious hobbyists and pros

3. Use name brand paper that has profiles available

The next step is to use good paper and get printer profiles for that paper you are using.

4. Calibrate your printer

The next step is to get a device that can calibrate both your screen and your specific printer with the specific printer you are using.

Those are definitely not cheap and this should be good enough for everyone.

5. Know when to stop

This rabbit hole goes very deep, if you want truly accurate color you might find yourself in a black shirt (to avoid reflection) in a room with gray walls and special balanced lights (to avoid color casts) manually adjusting color space conversions.

Answered by Nir

Check more discussion of this question.

Online Printing API?

Question

tl;dr: Is there a way to have SmugMug-like + printing service integration hosted on your own website? (The API to the printing service is the piece I am missing)

I am looking for an automated ordering process, but SmugMug and co are not really to my liking because I want it to be self-hosted and 100% customizable.

What I have in mind:

1. I upload pictures to my website as an album or for a specific client shoot.
2. Client goes to the album
3. Client orders some prints
4. PayPal / other means of payment approve the money is received
5. I send the specifically sharpened/resized image for the output format to the printing-service (automatically, I don't have to do it myself for every order)
6. The images are printed and shipped to the customer. The printer charges me.

I can code 1-4 myself. The problem I have is what printing service offers an API so I can automate the ordering completely?

Solutions like a shopping cart with manual ordering is nothing I want to do because I may be on vacation or at a conference where I do not have access to all the tools I need.

Any suggestions? Also I prefer to use services like MPIX or eZprints over a local printer because they usually offer a wide range of products and also usually at a cheaper price.

p.s.: Yes, I will filter for high volume orders and check them myself before I fire out an 2000prints order to /dev/null. But the occasional 4 pictures from the last event order is nothing I want to handle myself every single time.

Asked by mmlac

Answer

Have a look at Pwinty http://www.pwinty.com . It's a nice simple API for ordering photos - and you don't need users to leave your site like the other options suggested.

they offer world wide shipping.

I don't think Peecho offers much in the way of prints and posters and doesnt't look like fotomoto offers what you want either

Answered by tgallard

Check more discussion of this question.

How large an image do I need to print a 32″ by 18″ poster at 300 DPI?

Question

I need to have an image printed as a poster at 300 DPI, but am unsure of how big the file must be. Also, what file format is best?

Asked by Jake223

Answer

The straightforward answer to your question is very simple arithmetic: 32×300 = 9600 and 18×300 = 5400, so 32 inches by 18 inches at 300 dots per inch is 9600 by 5400.

However, it gets a little more complicated when you consider a more complicated relationship between pixels and colored dots in your output medium. For details on this, take a look at jrista's answer to a similar question: What DPI should I resize my image to for best printing quality?, at What does DPI mean?, and at Is there a general formula for image size vs. print size?

It sounds like you're doing something specific, though. In that case, the best answer is to ask your print service what they recommend — and the same thing goes for file format (and color space, a whole 'nuther can of worms).

Answered by mattdm

Check more discussion of this question.

How does viewing distance affect print quality?

Question

Random facts: For those that assume you can enlarge a photo past the original size while preserving quality -- you cannot.

Asked by designparadise

Answer

No. Photo editing software cannot recover image detail that is not there in the image originally captured at the scene by your camera. So, enlarging the photo to a very large size will eventually reveal a lack of detail.

Apparent print quality depends a lot on the combination of print size and viewing distance. If you take your photo, print it A2-size and view it from 10m, it will look good. If you walk up to it and view it from 0.2m, it will look worse. No matter what the resolution of the photo, pretty much.

To state this again differently, printing the photo larger will always generate a worse looking photo, unless you also increase the viewing distance.

For standard viewing distances, around an arm's length perhaps, many people find around 300dpi sufficient. Meaning, if the image is 1" x 1", it needs to be 300 pixels per side. If you double the distance, you can halve the number of dpi you need. If you double the image size, you will need double the number of pixels per side for similar quality.

The camera I use most produces images at 4288*2844. At 300dpi, I can produce a print as large as 14" * 9.5" before I start to notice falloff in quality at normal viewing distances (that is, 4288 / 300 = 14.293333... which I rounded to 14 inches).

There are image editing plugins (for Photoshop for example) that help you resize a photo with good subjective quality by inventing image detail that really wasn't in the original photograph, but looks believable, and doing things like Anti-Aliasing to reduce the incongruous appearance of the magnified pixels. Alien Skin Blow Up 3 is an example, but I have never used it.

Answered by James Youngman

Check more discussion of this question.

What steps to take to match screen to print?

Question

I don't print a TON of my photos, but when I do it's because it's really important to me. I've got a MacBook Pro attached to a Samsung 2300 display and an HP Photosmart 7760 printer. I typically use Lightroom for OSX, but occasionally will make use of Aperture if the mood strikes.

What steps should I take to ensure that my print matches what I see when editing the photo? I've got a monitor calibrator, so I'm using the calibrated display profile. What do I need to do with my printer or Lightroom, though? Should Lightroom, the printer, or something else manage the color profile?

I'm looking at buying a much higher quality printer (Canon Pixma Pro) but want to make sure I know how to get the most out of my prints before I spend any money.

Asked by Shadowman

Answer

Calibration

First off, the obvious stuff: Calibrate your monitor, and use appropriate ICC profiles for your printer/ink/papers. You mentioned you already have a calibrated monitor, and for the most part, you should be able to find quality ICC profiles for your printer and the papers you use on the net (I use a Canon PIXMA 9500Pro myself, and make use of a very wide variety of papers...there have only been a couple occasions where I've had to generate my own profile.)

Soft Proofing

Having a calibrated screen and proper printer ICC profiles is a good start, but it is generally not enough alone. To really match what you see in print to what you see on screen, you need to soft proof. Lightroom 4 Beta brings some basic soft proofing tools to the table, however for some of the best, you should really turn to Photoshop. Photoshop has some amazing capabilities when your soft proofing that help you properly match your print to what you see on screen.

Screen/Printer Differences

Even with proper calibration, there are still some fundamental differences between a computer screen and a printer. The most obvious is the fact that screens are luminously transmissive, emitting RGB light, which conforms to the additive color model; conversely, printers are reflective, producing light by reflecting CMYK (and possibly many more) colors from ink on paper, which conforms to the subtractive color model. Because computer screens are transmissive, they tend to have greater dynamic range, and often larger gamut (although the gap is closing these days with special papers and advanced inks.)

The difference in color model and emission can create a visible difference in a print from what you see on screen, even when everything is properly calibrated. Print will generally be duller, and even with the best inks, bright primary and secondary color saturation will rarely reach the same levels as possible on screen. Similarly, maximum black and brightest white are limited by ink formula and density and paper brightness, respectively. With a modern wide-gamut printer like a PIXMA Pro, color gamut correction will probably be less of an issue than white and black point correction.

Correcting for Print

If you want maximum accuracy when you print, there are a few things you can do before hand. First and foremost is to make sure you have the best ICC profile you can find for your printer and paper. Second, make sure you select the right ICM Rendering Intent before printing or soft proofing. Generally, Perceptual will maintain the perception of print-to-screen accuracy, and is probably recommended. If actual-color accuracy is more important than perceptual accuracy, you may want to switch to Relative Colorimetric.

Before printing, you should create a printer, paper and print size specific copy of your photo. Once you have this copy, final and manual resizing and sharpening for the exact print size/border size you want should be performed. You can always leave sizing up to the printer, but the results are usually unpredictable. Save this copy before proceeding to soft proof.

Enable soft proofing in Photoshop, and make sure you choose to adjust black point, simulate paper, and pick the correct ICC print profile and ICM rendering intent. You should see your image change, probably become a bit duller, and be rendered on a different color background that should approximate your paper. If there is a large deviation in the simulated paper vs. your real paper, you might want to try creating an ICC screen profile that improves matching. (Personally, I use the DataColor Spyder Elite, which includes a utility to easily switch color profiles. I have a variety of color profiles that I can switch to with different white points, so I can quickly match my work environment to my paper...or at least get a better match.)

Once in soft proofing mode, the first thing you will want to look at is white and black point. I start with blacks, and use the hot key to enable/disable soft proofing. A fair amount of the time, fine detail in blacks will disappear when soft proofing against a specific print profile. Sometimes, you may see fine black detail is too bright, although its rarer. You can correct this with the levels tool by tweaking the minimum black or black point. Similarly, if you see any highlights that are blown out in soft proof only, you can correct this by using the levels tool to shift white point down. You can actually adjust most settings while soft proofing is enabled, to see the results directly. Any adjustments made while soft proofing will persist, so when soft proofing is disabled, it you'll still see their effects on the image itself.

If you are printing on a paper or with inks that have a particularly limited gamut, you may want to check out of gamut colors as well. You can do this in soft proofing mode, and it will highlight areas of your image in gray that have color values beyond the capabilities of your printer. Generally speaking, if you only see minor spots where gamut is out, and you are using relative colorimetric or perceptual rendering intents, you can leave everything as is...ICM will take care of it all for you. If you see large areas of your print out of gamut, you might want to spend some time either printing test images to see how the out of gamut colors actually render, and if they do render incorrectly, you might want to try correcting them in soft proofing mode. There are a variety of techniques for correcting out of gamut color...I'll leave researching those as an exercise for the reader. The simplest approach is to adjust range-limited saturation down a bit to bring colors back into gamut (although that can have its own side effects.) For the most part, outside of extreme cases, let ICM deal with correcting color for you.

Finally, I highly recommend you make all adjustments using adjustment layers in photoshop, rather than directly. You can always disable them that way, compare differences with various adjustments enabled or not, easily toggle adjustments for different test prints, etc.

Answered by jrista

Check more discussion of this question.

Where can I have photos printed in bulk at wholesale prices?

Question

I would like to sell prints of my photos, does anyone have know of any suppliers that print photos off in bulk? Ideally based in the UK but I would also consider printers abroad.

I don't want to use sites like PhotoBox, Snapfish because the margins will be lower.

Asked by IconicDigital

Answer

Try ProAm Imaging, based in Bradford. I haven't used them personally but have heard good things, and they have apparently won awards. 52p each for 8x10" prints. Sell them for £5 each and you're laughing!

Answered by ElendilTheTall

Check more discussion of this question.

What advantage does giclee have over traditional photosensitive print making?

Question

I'm trying to figure out why I would want to print giclee.

Let me set some background. I'm a gallery represented artist entering my third season. My sales are good. I print with Bay Photo (via SmugMug) and I'm quite happy with the service and print quality. I print mostly glossy or on metallic paper (using the Kodak Endura paper) and I've dabbled a bit with their "print on metal" service. (Gorgeous but expensive.)

So an photographer friend of mine is looking into giclee. Now I know what it is, I know the history of it (indeed, I'm a software engineer with a background in color science and there is a decent chance that the early Iris printers had some of my code in them, at least in the pre-press arena) but I'm surprised when I see the pricing of traditional photo sensitive paper printing vs giclee.

what advantage does giclee have over traditional photosensitive print making? From smugmug.com, I see an 11x14 is $7.95 on glossy or metallic paper, but $44.20 for a giclee watercolor.

Now I understand perfectly that giclee can make it easy to go large, but a 30x40" glossy is only $66 while a 30x40" giclee is $178.50. So there's no advantage there.

One possible advantage is of course, paper, giclee lets you put your ink down on all sorts of surfaces.

So, aside from paper choice, what advantage does giclee have over traditional photosensitive print making?

Answer

Stan's answer about the archival qualities of a [giclee | inkjet] print (and I won't get into the semantics between the two words) is right on. Inkjet-printed images can be of far greater longevity, considering color-fastness and substrate color constant. This is all a long way of saying, if you are trying to sell something that will last a lifetime, Inkjet/Giclee is a better bet than a Type-R or Type-C print.

The other interesting advantage of using the inkjet technology is that you can apply it to far more surfaces that it would be practical to apply traditional photo-process to. People take it for granted now that they can get prints on canvas and prints on acetate and prints on art paper, etc. That wasn't the case 20 years ago. If you want to see some really fine examples of Giclee printing, track down some by Nash Editions (Graham Nash's company). They really are in a league of their own and their black & white images are particularly compelling.

Check more discussion of this question.

How can I use Canon Photo Print Pro with 64-bit Photoshop CS5?

Question

I have a Canon Pixma Pro 9000, I use the photoshop plugin "Canon Easy Photo Print Pro" on a Mac with Snow Leopard with Photoshop CS4.

I have now changed to a New Mac running Lion and upgraded to Photoshop CS5.5. Installing Canon Easy Photo Print Pro does not add the plugin to photoshop.

I have researched this on the Canon website, both USA and UK and Europe and found that there is no support for CS5 due to it being 64bit rather than 32 bit (not sure why that would make a difference)

I have also seen on the Australia support site there is a new windows update however there is nothing available for the Mac.

Is there another plugin or piece of software that I can use to set the printing up to match the profile of this printer, as printing directly from Photoshop is not nearly as good as using Easy Photo Print Pro.

Answer

I suspect if you use Finder to "Get Info" and tick the "Open in 32-bit mode" box in the General section you'll be able to use your plug-in again. You might have to manually copy it into the PS5 plugins directory. I don't have the Canon software to try out so I don't know for sure.

Running in 32 bit mode might result in a slight performance reduction, and newer plugins might not work. I'd recommend enabling it only when you're about to print.

Check more discussion of this question.

Is it possible and/or a good idea to print digital photos to slides?

Question

I've been thinking about ways to project large images onto a wall or screen, since that's a fun way to share them with a group: i.e., the classic slide show. But LCD projector resolutions are still poor compared to camera resolutions, and HDTVs have the same problem to a lesser degree as well as being non-portable. Both are expensive.

However, slide projectors can be had fairly cheaply, and the whirr of the fan and the ka-chunk of the slide advance are fun sounds.

Thus: Is it possible to print digital photos to slides that can be projected with a standard slide projector, either at home or by outsourcing to a lab? And if so, what are the advantages and disadvantages?

Answer

Yes, this was very popular in the 90s when lots of labs did PowerPoint to slide services. Have a look at the Wikipedia article on Film Recorders. A commercial operation still offering this service in the uk can be found at digitalslides.

Polaroid used to manufacture a desktop slide (The ProPalette range) writer which was essentially a CRT and camera in a desktop unit; you may be able to find one of these on eBay - here is one currently active on eBay

Output to slides is commonly done as 4096x2372; and the images you'd supply would need to be exactly the resolution required by the lab you're using.

You can output to slide and make some very good projections from these at 4k resolution, and as you rightly say slide projectors can be picked up for quite a low price on eBay at the moment. The costs are about £3 per slide, and with a 4k digital projector costing about £15k you can output a lot of slides before you reach that.

Check more discussion of this question.

How can I self-publish a photography book?

Question

I took thousands of photos for a book I want to publish. I am a graphic designer, so creating the layout of the book, pages, covers, etc is not a problem. I know how to process my images for print.

What I don't know is how to get a book printed and bound with a dust cover for a reasonable price. Is it possible to self-publish a photography book? I define possible as:

• get a print run of 1,000 to 5,000 books at first (maybe more later if demand is there)
• keep the cost of printing a book to less than $25 (half of the retail price of $49.99)

Answer

There are several methods for publishing such a book, which I'll mention below. Note that there is an excellent Wikipedia article that explains more. I should add, be very cautious with these services. You can make a real profit, but they can also just be a drain on resources, and keep you out of traditional publishing. You might try contacting some of them, with a print out of your proposed book that comes from a local print shop.

Print on Demand services

The general idea of these companies is that you submit the book to them, with their layout, and they will print a copy of the book to anyone who orders it. You can set your selling point, and they will split the profits with you (I forget the ratio, but...) Some of the services that fall under this category are:

• http://www.lulu.com
• http://www.blurb.com/

"Vanity Press"

This seems like what you directly wanted from your question. These companies operate more like a traditional publisher, but they will require you to pay for their services and for an upfront number of copies to be printed. I haven't looked extensively at this category, but here's a few sites that seem to fit this mold. Take a look at the Wikipedia article for some more help.

• http://www.chooseyourpublisher.com/
• http://www.selfpublishing.com/

Check more discussion of this question.

How can I prevent photos losing vibrancy when printed?

Question

I take a number of landscape photos which I then do quite a bit of post production work with in photoshop elements 9. When I take them to my local photographic shop (I am not talking Boots etc) and get them back they have lost much of their vibrancy and mood. I spoke to the owner and he said that is because they can never recreate the colour on modern laptops/desktops? Is this right? Do I need to go and buy an old screen to mimic what is happening at the developers? He did mention that I could download an application that could imitate various printers. What is this? Anyone else with this issue? Would welcome any advice

Answer

You can ask the shop for its printer color profile or try to find it online. Then you can see how your printed pictures will look on your screen. E.g this links gives printer profile for costco printers.

Check more discussion of this question.

Where can I print a panorama?

Question

You scout the location, bring your tripod with you, wait for the right light, become victim of weather in the meanwhile, take an insane amount of photos, work hours on getting the stitch right, and only then you decide you are satisfied with those 20 million pixels.

But.

I'd also like to get those pixels out, on the paper and on a wall, where they belong. Where can I print such a thing (online)? Quality is a must. Bonus points if the answer is Europe-friendly.

Edit:

I volountarily left out many details to have more general answer, but on a second thought they might turn out useful.

Sizes: at least 1 meter on the longest side
Ratios: let's say from 2:1 to 5:1, but I can tolerate to resize and have some border to cut out.
Materials/finish: anything worth hanging in your house.

Answer

Let me advocate for offline printing for a second :) I used to print online, but I rely on a local print shop nowadays. I'm not talking CVS or Walmart (in the US), but small, quality print shops run by photographers. Not only is it good for the local economy, but you won't beat that kind of interaction. Print professionals are passionate about what they do, and will often give you good advices or guide through the process of large prints.

With that in mind, I would suggest you look around in your town, or a nearby town, and see what it has to offer. A local store doesn't mean you have to always drive there actually, they may have a web site for you to upload your photos. Check what kind of printer they use. I recently had this 9K x 3K panorama printed at 36" x 12" on a ZBE Chromira digital LED printer, and you can go larger/better on a Giclée printer. You will pay a price for that, but this will be quality work (not $5).

Check more discussion of this question.

What is the difference between Canon's black inks?

Question

My Canon MP560 printer requires one PGI-220BK black cartridge and one CLI-221BK black cartridge (which is a part of a CMYK bunch). What is the difference between the two?

Answer

The difference is in the kind of ink particle...the dye or pigment. In your case, PGI-* are pigment inks, and CLI-* are dye (ChromaLife 100 year) inks.

Dye inks use dye particles, which are soluble substances. Dye particles tend to be smaller than pigments, lay flatter on the surface of papers, and are often a bit more vibrant in the way they reflect light (which can actually be a detriment, rather than a bonus, when trying to print color-accurate photos.) Dye inks tend to do quite well on glossy papers and do not usually exhibit gloss differential. Dyes, as they are soluble, tend to have shorter lifetimes.

Pigment inks use pigment particles, which are insoluble substances simply suspended in solution. Pigment particles are larger, and can often lay unevenly on paper. Pigment inks can also exhibit certain effects such as metamerism, bronzing and gloss differential, however these days pigment inks are highly advanced, and such problems are mitigated to their minimums. Pigments also tend to be more controllable than dyes, and an extensive range of pigment inks is available for high quality pigment-based ink jet printers. Gamut and overall color quality that can be achieved by full pigment ink printers is second to none these days. Pigments, being non-soluble (and given their significant technological advances over the recent years), tend to have significantly longer lifetimes than dye inks.

The particular printer you have is not really known as a high quality photographic printer in the grand scheme of things. It probably has a pigment black ink to improve the permanence of text printouts, and possibly to support matte papers better (which have a tendency to absorb dye inks a bit too much, washing out the color.) The dye is probably used to support gloss better, as pigment ink usually causes a gloss differential...if pigment black is used on gloss with the dye colors, it usually leaves quite noticeable gloss differential for all the black (text, lines, etc.)

Check more discussion of this question.

Is it possible to print a photo so it can be mounted on a globe?

Question

I'd like to transform an image so that it can be mounted on a sphere. I'd like to use an image of a map (see the One Piece world map on the image), but it could be anything. Here is a kind of Family Picnic Photo that I could use, (this isn't my family, is just a Google result). I'd like to do this as a gift for my cousin on his birthday. I'm beginner on photo processing and manipulation and normally I use Linux, but every suggestion is welcome.

I would like a way to transform this image or photo into a "globular" image/photo, to put on something like this:

Is there any software that can do this for me? If not, how would I go about computing the necessary slices of my image to fit?

Answer

IP-Slicer perl script can create slices which can stuck together into a ball. You can define the number of slices.

The following command will create 12 slices, where the sphere circumference is 1500 pixels.

sphere-slicer.pl 12 1500 sampleimage.jpg

Sample input:

Output (12 images):

Check more discussion of this question.

How to print a photo so it can be mounted on a globe?

Question

I'd like to transform an image so that it can be mounted on a sphere. I'd like to use an image of a map (see the One Piece world map on the image), but it could be anything. Here is a kind of Family Picnic Photo that I could use, (this isn't my family, is just a Google result). I'd like to do this as a gift for my cousin on his birthday. I'm beginner on photo processing and manipulation and normally I use Linux, but every suggestion is welcome.

I would like a way to transform this image or photo into a "globular" image/photo, to put on something like this:

Is there any software that can do this for me? If not, how would I go about computing the necessary slices of my image to fit?

Answer

IP-Slicer perl script can create slices which can stuck together into a ball. You can define the number of slices.

The following command will create 12 slices, where the sphere circumference is 1500 pixels.

sphere-slicer.pl 12 1500 sampleimage.jpg

Sample input:

Output (12 images):

Check more discussion of this question.

Can leaving a print in fixer too long cause damage/staining?

Question

This is a question for you oldskool B&W photographers, I'm hoping there's some of you out there ;)

I am just getting round to sorting out my darkroom and thought I'd give it a test run now the power was in. The first thing I wanted to test was that the old paper I was given still worked, if only for testing even if not final prints. Freshly opened I developed an unexposed piece and all was well. I then made a few test contact sheets and although overexposed because I didn't eyt know the speed of the paper, all developed well.

I then made a couple of test prints, which looked fine in the darkroom but having removed them and seeing them in normal light, the edges of the paper had brown discolouration. The test contacts I had made previously were perfectly fine.

Now I know the paper is old so there's a possibility it is this, but given that the top sheets of paper, which are the most likely to have reacted with the packaging were fine, this seems less likely than I first thought. There's also the chance of the fixer getting exhausted, and I'll have to check this at a later date.

The main difference between the test contact sheets and the prints I made was that because I knew I was throwing the contacts away I didn't leave them in the fixer very long. Being an amateur who has only had a few evening classes in the darkroom I was under the assumption that fixer is harmless, and the longer you leave the prints in the fix the better, so that is what I did for the prints. Given that it is Ilford Rapid Fixer I have they were in there for long over the recommended time, which I had assumed was a minimum for safe fixing.

So my question, could the excessive time I leave a print in the fixer have negative effects on the print to cause this brown staining around the edge?

Answer

The answer is yes, although you must have left the prints in the fixer for quite a while to see the staining immediately. It's usually something that creeps in over time. It may be the case that your paper has oxidized from the edges inward before you used it, but you can check that by simply wasting a sheet and processing it "by the clock" (without exposing it, so you can eliminate as many variables as possible).

The length of time in the fixer isn't super-critical or anything. It's only the developer that you've got to get bang on; the stop bath and the fixer are (as you surmised) more or less a meet-the-minimum sort of thing. But the fixer is reactive, and for prints that are meant to last more than a very short time, it's something you want to get rid of. Otherwise you'll get that loverly yellow/brown patina of age in a hurry without the bother of toning.

In a typical "intro to the darkroom" course, you'll be shown the things that are necessary to make magic happen -- straight develop/stop/fix. And if you were shooting old-tyme news photos in the Weegee style to get something to the prepress guys, that's all you'd need. But if you want prints to last for any time at all, there's still a step to go, and that's to get rid of all of the residual chemistry (mostly the hypo/fixer). Your prints need at least a wash in running water -- how long depends on whether the paper is fiber-based (long time -- typically five minutes or more) or resin (shorter, since the "paper" itself doesn't absorb much and you only need to "clear" the emulsion). A hypo-clearing rinse (compatible with your fixer, of course) before the wash can speed the process up considerably.

An "archival" print washer is fairly cheap and easy to make if you can't pick one up cheaply enough. There are several DIY solutions online -- just search for "archival print washer". Both the "cascade" and the "upflow" desgns are effective; pick whatever looks easiest to make to you.

Check more discussion of this question.