Photo Tip – Digital Storage & Printing
- ALWAYS MAKE TWO COPIES of your images for long term storage. Hard drives crash and CD/DVD’s get scratched.
- If you want your prints to look like what you see on your monitor you must calibrate your monitor.
- Traditional photographic prints are still the best way to archive your printed images. And quite often they cost less than you can do at home.
I would also add that you need to be sure you use the correct printer profile for the printer/paper combination.
Good point, David.
If your printing at home you need to set up your printer for the type of paper on which you are printing. Different papers (even of the same brand) will require different printer set ups. This is not limited to just selecting the type of paper but some may need adjustments to color or contrast settings to get the best, most accurate prints.
Many paper manufacturers will have the info you need in the package with the paper or on their website. If not it’s just trial and error.
Keep in mind that the best profile may not seem like the right one. On a printer I used to use at a previous job, I had to set it for “photo glossy film” to get the best print on a particular glossy or pearl surface photo paper. Luckily the paper manufacturer had a listing for the printer I was using or it might have taken me a few tests to figure it out.
Any photo inkjet printer will let you save profiles for the paper(s) you use most often. Many (if not all) programs you print from will save the profile you use with the picture so the next time you print it from the same program it will print the same way.
My main thought in mentioning monitor calibration was if you want a good photo lab to print from your files you can expect the instructions “no corrections” to yeild a quality print.