Printing: 6 Steps for better prints

I have been realizing a few things over the past few months when it comes to photography and a way to get good images. Here are some steps

1. Probably the most important out of all the steps: Its very importnat that your screen has been correcly adjsuted when it comes to brightness/contrast/right colours. With a wrongly setup screen you will never really see how the pictures really loook, plus your prints will come out looking very odd. Unfortunetly to get this perfect you will need to invest in certain products which are not so cheap. But if you can get your hands on one that would be superb, you can always try trial and error but this is going to be very time consuming. Below are some links to monitor calibration that might get you on the right path

Monitor Calibration
Monitor Calibration Tool

2. I did this, i costumized my own shooting mode (this is something you dont really need to do when your shooting in RAW and are planning to process the iamge later on, but if your just shooting jpegs it could be quite nice to have). Why do i find this rather importnat is because there are always those moments where you see something adn you want to capture it but when you take a photo your camera isnt captureing the same things you see when you have exposed the image perfectly! How i costumized my own shooting option is that i lined up some white/black objects with texture and diffrent colours, and then i took pictures of them (under what seemed to me as perefcet light circumstances) at EV 0. Just play around with the settings till you get what you like!

3. At least here in Sweden, the photolabs that you get your photos printed (if you do get them printed at a photolab) will make your images go through a "autosetting" where they automaticly adjust the contrast/saturation of the iamges, making the final results look horrible, try to see if you can get passed this by talking to the staff they should knw if they dont knw, then your not at the right place!

4. Cropping - its really important! A crop on the image can make a huge diffrence, it can enhance the main subject (by brining you closer to it) you can remove things that you dont want to be in the frame. Its really important that if you plant to get prints of your image, that you crop in 8 x 10" (inches) or 10cm x 15cm, if you dont do this the print that you will request will be cropped in manner that you didnt want it, you will end up with a diffrent shot!

5. Send in some "sampel shots" to the photolab and see how teh prints turn out, if you dont like the way that they turned try another place, till you get satisfied with the final results

6. Send them the files in JPEG format, why? makes life alot easier it take less time to transfer files, you dont need to be sending them .TIF unless your planning on doing some extravogant with the shots (this is what the guy at my local printer told me, when you want something postersize go for .TIF, but if they are just standard 8x10" or 10cm x 15 cm JPEG is good enought)