Hi Folks,
A good number of club members and guests turned out last night to hear a talk on consistent quality printing by David Lowe.
David has been with PermaJet for a number of years and before that he did developing in a dark room for 14 years. He spent many hours in the dark room and he said his wife would leave a tray of food outside and often commented that it was like feeding a fly in the house lol.
For the evening David had brought along various equipment which included a laptop and monitor.
David said, If one were to go into a television shop and browse the televisions on display the pictures would all look different even though they all were receiving the same signals. That is because they all needed to be calibrated .
To do this David suggested that we use a calibrator called a spider.
The screen monitor for calibration is set to go through its display of colours using software. The calibration spider hangs over the top of the screen comparing colours with universal standards and if the colour is not correct it sends a code to the computer.
At start up time these codes change the colours to the right ones. So one always has the standard colours on screen to work with.
Screens and monitors with led lights are so good these days that calibration only needs to be done about every 6 months.
Our club has a calibrator for hire for our members use.
Next the printer needs calibration as it may not match your monitor colours.
For consistency one has to use the same monitor, same printer and same paper. Change any of them and you need to start again.
There is a very expensive program one could buy that will work out the calibration for the printers and the types of paper used but would not be for the normal user.
There are many different types and shades of white in paper and each will have an effect on your prints.
To calibrate your printer you will need to create and send off a copy of the colours in a chart to PermaJet. They have a lab that usually returns a code to you within 24 hours which will act as a calibration setup to the printer and the type of paper used.
Only use manufacturers inks to guarantee that batches are exactly the same, as any variation of colours will lose the consistency.
Once the code is sent back by email it needs to be added into your computer and can be used under the Photoshop software.
Everybody’s eyes are different so to have consistency it needs to be technically done.
On the illustration below there are triangles of colours contained in each visual area and to fit all colours into your printer one has two choices when printing images. Not all colours fit into the printers work space
The relative option just squashes the last colours in and you may get a band of colours not quite blended as expected.
The perceptual option is what is recommended by PermaJet as this method just compresses all the colours in to fit.
Coffee time
After coffee,
David gave a demonstration of running off some prints using Photoshop software.
For quality PermaJet recommend Photoshop quality 4.
Studies by PermaJet under microscope using quality 5 is said to only end up using more ink but the result is no different, so better not to waste the ink.
The print requested settings are added in the Photoshop panels including the previously given calibration code for the printer and paper type.
These settings can be stored for the next print
We were shown three prints David produced that all came out perfect.
Costs work out about £2 for an A3 print said David.
All this technology to get your print correct but then it is down to a judge to pick the best using his or her eyes lol.
Next week is
Competition: Winner on the Night (1)
Tuesday October 2, 2018 from 20:00 to 22:00
Print and/or Digital entries – a maximum of three entries per member across both sections:
1 print & 2 digital or 2 print & 1 digital or 3 prints with no digital or 3 digital with no prints
Open category only
Judge: Steven Galvin (Marlow CC)