Printing photos at home

Printing photos at home is becoming more and more common. Indeed, the price of equipment has dropped a lot lately and there are more and more new passionate photographers. People take pleasure in making their photos, retouch them carefully and of course the next step is printing.

Often we entrust our images to a photo lab or we order our prints on the Internet. But sometimes we would like to do it at home because it is faster or simply for the pleasure of doing it ourselves.

It's true what a pleasure to control all the steps from the birth of the photo to its printing.

I am often asked for advice on how to print photos, hence the idea for this article.

Important clarification: there are already very complete articles on the Internet or in specialized magazines that deal with printing. My aim here is not to do the same thing, but to give people who are new to photo printing and who don't own a high-end printer some information. I will therefore concentrate on the essentials.

In the course of this article we will discuss: The necessary steps before printing your photos, useful concepts for printing, which print settings, choosing options in print drivers, which photo paper to choose, which photo printer to buy.

Before printing :

You should start by retouching your photos correctly and work on a calibrated screen (see my last article) and a calibrated printer in relation to your inks and paper.

ICC profile and calibration: An ICC profile is a digital file (.icc or .icm) that specifies how a camera, scanner, monitor or printer should render colours. The profile is developed by a sensor for monitors and by a spectrophotometer for printers.

The ICC profile allows the colours displayed or printed to be adjusted so that they are identical to the reference colours.

Inkjet printer manufacturers and paper manufacturers provide ICC profiles free of charge and these are usually satisfactory.

If the ICC profile for your printer/paper combination is not available, you can try an ICC profile for a paper of the same type

If you are not satisfied with the result, I advise you to create an individual ICC profile, with a spectrophotometer if you have one, but I doubt it, or by calling on a specialist service provider. This is what I did (couleur-icc.com). In this case, you download and print a colour patch (A4 format on your photo paper), you send it by mail to the service provider who analyses it and establishes your ICC profile for your printer/ink/paper trio. It's worth paying a little (from 25 euros per profile on some sites) and starting from a good base, otherwise hello failed tests... which will end up costing you more than the profile, wasting your time and moreover will spoil the pleasure of printing...

Before printing, it is essential to retouch your photos and prepare them for printing.

There is only one rule, especially for beginners in photo retouching: retouching is used to improve the photo and is done with a calibrated screen. If you have experience in retouching, no problem, but for beginners, be careful! We often see many people who retouch their photos too much and badly, and on top of that on uncalibrated screens. The results are of course very disappointing afterwards. If you want to know how to retouch easily and quickly like a PRO, go here:

Remember: calibrated screen, "light" retouching (not the contrast, saturation and sharpness sliders at full speed!). I will soon make a video on how to learn how to retouch photos (don't forget to subscribe to my newsletter to avoid missing it!)

For those who already know how to retouch, it is often necessary to add a bit of sharpening before printing to limit the loss of sharpness.

2.      Printing:

Here again, I'll keep it simple. Print purists will be disappointed, but this article is more for those who are new to printing.

In your retouching software, a few settings to make:

Size of your image to choose (45 x 30cm for example). If your image has a low definition (for example 4 million pixels), you will have to be satisfied with a smaller size. This is because the resolution of the printer will not be sufficient to provide a quality print.

There is a practical relationship between the image resolution, expressed in pixels, and the print size.

To calculate the optimal print size for a digital file, the resolution measure to use is pixels per inch (ppi). Photoshop or your retouching software automatically calculates all this and gives you indications. To do this: Image menu then image size.

It is generally considered that the optimal resolution, expressed in pixels per inch (ppi), is between 200 and 300. 300 ppi = the quality standard. You can use more, but it won't show on the print.

So in practice, if you end up with values below 200 pixels/inch, it is better to print with a smaller size to maintain good quality.

Once this is done, a little accentuation (sharpness) to anticipate the loss of sharpness linked to the printing. The settings vary according to the photos, the size and the desired result. To make it simple, just add a little sharpening before printing and gradually you will find the settings that correspond to your equipment and your tastes.

3. Choice of options in the printer driver panel

Each editing software has its own panel, but the proposed settings are very similar.  Sometimes, with free software in particular, we are sent directly to the printer driver where we will find the same settings anyway, but with fewer options.

Colour processing :

Either we let Photoshop take care of the colours and we choose our printer profile (downloaded or created by a service provider)

Or you let the printer manage the colours and then you choose your settings in the printer driver.

I advise you to choose the maximum print quality of your printer in the menu. Then at the level of the colour profile you choose a generic profile or yours in relation to your paper.

 4. Choice of paper

There are many brands and types of paper. Let's be simple and concise:

First of all, there are different types of paper: glossy, satin, matte, barbed, etc...

As this tutorial is intended for beginners, I won't talk about Fine Art prints and other barite papers...and I'm more concerned with the owners of general public or semi-pro inkjet printers (and not with those who own high-end pigment printers)

Let's distinguish the most common ones:

Glossy paper: corresponds well to passages or photos with good contrast and dynamics. The sharpness and contrast are high, it's a blast! Problem: it shines, so reflections are sometimes annoying and fingerprints are clearly visible...

Matte paper: more suitable for photos with softer contrasts. This type of paper also allows for a less clattering finish, which is better suited to certain images.

Satin paper: A pleasant mix between glossy and matte. It still has a good sharpness and dynamics, but it is less snappy than glossy.

For my part, I only use this for my prints. Good sharpness, no fingerprints, no reflections and a nice look.

Be careful with the weight (e.g. 290g). The lower the number, the thinner the paper and the lower the quality. Be careful if it's more than 300g, it might not fit in your printer!

About paper brands:

The easiest way is to take the brand of your printer and choose the type of paper you prefer (glossy, matte or satin) so that you have an icc profile that corresponds to your paper and your printer.

I use Ilford gallery smooth pearl in 290g. There are also other brands like Canson, Arches etc...

5. Choice of printer :

There are basically two categories: inkjet printers and pigment printers. To remain consistent with the content of the article, let's focus on inkjet printers. There are lots of brands and models, so here's some info on how to choose:

- 4 to 6 different ink cartridges (4 mini, 6 is better!)

- A3 size is recommended (A4 size gets frustrating fast!)

- Canon, Epson and HP are the best for photo printing

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