Printing the Image - The You Can't Always Get What You Want Session(s)

Ann and I spent portions of the past two weekends printing.  Join us at the blog to find out how well it went . . . or didn’t.  

It was bound to happen some time.  Printing is such a technical effort, with a million and one variables that you have to get right in order to get an excellent result, that one is bound to have an “off” day every once in a while.  Even so, we’d had such incredible successes with our Epson P900 and the downloaded ICC profiles for several different papers that I dare say we’d forgotten that fact.  Face it, I printed a 12 image portfolio using just 13 sheets of paper (I forgot to adjust the border size of the image on one of the prints, a mistake I didn’t make on any of the other prints).  And those portfolio images were as good as, if not better, than what I was seeing on my monitor.  So these printing sessions came as quite a shock.  I’ll spill the beans early.  It was not a successful session.  Not the first weekend.  Not the second weekend.  Still, a story is a story whether or not it has a happy ending and since it’s a story it should be told.  So here we go!

Like all stories, it has a beginning.  It started on one of my typical take-a-break-from-work-and-walk-upstairs trips to see what Ann was working on.  On her monitor was an image from our morning at Factory Butte.  It was lovely and I told Ann that.  She wasn’t sure if the image was any good (typical for her).  I explained that it was the simplicity of the image (as well as the atmospheric conditions) that made it such a compelling image.  Then I told her she should print it, big.  “Really?”  “Yeah!”  (Ok, I’ve omitted the explicative, but you get the drift.).

It took awhile between that day and our first printing session.  In fact, Ann was still not satisfied with her development of the image by the time printing day came so she did not print it our first session.  Still, I had worked on an images and, as a consequence of another one of my take-a-trip-upstairs work breaks, Ann had a second image that was ready.  The guiding theme for all of them was that we were going to print these images on the largest sized paper we had (13” x 19”), so the images tended to be of the “grand landscape” genre.  

Before I go on, I should also let you know that I thought we had some 16X20 fine art printing paper downstairs, a matte paper, so we used the ICC profiles for that paper.  Only afterwards, when I opened the box to print with did we realize that the paper was very well boxed, with protection on all sides and it was, in fact, only 11”x17”.  So not really grand, but significantly larger than what we usually print.

My  image came from our first photography trip to Utah with our friends Gary and Paula, and was taken in the southern part of Canyonlands NP way back in 2015.  I’d never worked on this image in Capture One so I saw it as an opportunity to revisit an image that I’ve always enjoyed.  Sure enough, I used some tools that are available in Capture One that were not available in Lightroom, and in the end was very pleased with the result.  

Then I added in the ICC profile for the paper and it became very flat, as is to be expected given the paper type and surface.  Usually, it only takes a few minor adjustments to make such flat files come to life, but for some reason, I worked and worked at the image and though tit it finally had some of the depth and texture that it should contain.  

Well, when the print came out I realized I’d worked the image way too much.  The dark areas were too dark and the curve of bushes turned into a dark, indistinct blob as it receded into the background.  It had none of the quality that I’d seen on my screen and that made me enjoy the image so much.  Ann’s print, which I’ll discuss below, came out much better, despite the paper, but she was not happy with one corner of the image - it too was too dark.  That first weekend we decided to call it quits and that we’d both “fix” what was wrong with our prints.

I wound up starting from scratch with the original monitor image - Adobe RGB on a calibrated monitor - and then working on that to correct for the ICC profile for the matte printing paper (Breathing Color Pura Bagassa Smooth).  I paid close attention to the darker areas to ensure that there was good separation between the trees and detail in shadow areas that I didn’t want to go totally black.  And since I realized that we also had a box of my favorite paper, Red River Paolo Duro Soft Gloss Rag, in 11”X17”, I decided to make a version with that ICC profile to compare the two papers.

Also during that period, I picked out another image that I thought would be nice on the Red River paper and worked on it too.

Well, on weekend #2, my corrected version for the Breathing Color paper turned out the way I’d hoped.  I became really excited about how the image would turn out on the Red River paper and it’s glossier surface, which usually adds a wonderful depth and richness to an image.  I say usually because the print turned out, in a word, horrible.  The bluish cast in the clouds was gone, instead was a neutral grey, which is ok, but doesn’t play off the warmer cliffs and ground like the other print did.  And the darker shadow areas looked overly blocky (again) despite a fine separation between the various receding trees.  It was yet another failure.

My second print didn’t turn out any better.  It was a photograph taken from our pre-dawn morning shoot at Factory Butte in 2019, the same morning of Ann’s shot.  And while there was a nice quality of light within the form of the land feature, something was just off with the colors.  It didn’t seem right at all.

I was perplexed to say the least.  

I should stop to comment on the subject of the image.  As you can see, it’s an interesting land feature.  If you look carefully, and it’s very, very clear in the print (and on my large monitor), there are scars all across the feature.  Parallel scars that, once you look carefully enough, are tire tracks.  A few months ago I was reading an article by a photographer who had also photographed this feature.  His image was from a few years before mine was taken.  He’s seen a friend’s images from the location and it was pristine.  His friend warned him, “Hey, the area has been closed to off-roaders, but word is they’re about to open it up.”  Sure enough, a certain administration did.  The guy heard about it and made a special trip out there 3 weeks after opening.  Too late. The feature had already been plundered by joy-riders.  Still, despite the scars, it is a beautiful landscape.

The first of Ann’s images, at least the first she printed, was from our unexpected discovery near Lake Powell in 2019.  As I’d mentioned above, she was not pleased with her development of the first print (the bottom right hand corner being too dark), so for the second printing session she went back to the Breathing Color version and lightened the corner (it looks better in the image below), and that print is lovely.  The mesas just glow.

Like me, she had also made a version for the Red River paper for our second printing session.  And, like mine, the print was horrible.  Not only did the dark areas look an eerie black, the white stars (very small star trails) in the sky each had little black rings around them and there was no real “glow” to the mesas.  What the heck was going on?

Ann then turned to the image that started this all.  An image as the sun was rising at Factory Butte, with a storm off in the distance.  A beautiful play of sky and landscape, light and cloud, warm and cool colors.  Well, that’s in the digital version of the image.

The print was . . . dark, oversaturated (at least in the foreground), and lifeless.  And like my Canyonlands print, the cool blues in the clouds was missing, which obscured the faint, sunlit, rainfall off in the distance which contributes so much to the image.  As you can see, the image beautifully conveys the vastness and wonder of the West; the print does not.

It’s been a long, long time since Ann and I have been so disappointed with a printing session (if ever).  And the paper that frustrated us so was my favorite paper.  The one I printed the portfolio on where each print came out exactly as shown on the monitor (ok, it revealed some colors that I’d not noticed on the monitor - but could see when I went back and looked carefully).  The only difference was that one paper was 8-1/2”x11” and the other was 11”x17”.  

We still haven’t figured out what could have gone wrong.  Given that the results were disappointing for 4 images, it wasn’t the development of the image itself.  It was either that they’ve done something with the ICC profile and it’s now off, or maybe the coating for the larger paper is not the same as the smaller paper (which means the ICC profiles can’t be the same for both) or . . . I’m still scratching my head for a possible reason and solution.  

Now we’re afraid to think about printing again, which means we need to start heading out to photograph some more.  Which is a good thing . . . right?

Let’s just hope our next photo shoot gives us something worth working on.  And that the printing issues don’t arise again the next time we fire up the Epson.  

I guess no one promised us photography would be easy.  Well, we can say for certain that sometimes it’s incredibly disappointing.