My Printing Workflow from Start to Finish

so recently I've been revamping my online print store I've got myself a new printer some lovely new papers that have new images for sale on my website today I'm sending some prints off to some clients and I thought it'd be a really interesting video for you to see my print workflow from the very start to the very end so from loading paper profiles all the way through to packaging signing and shipping the images like to thank Squarespace for their continued support of this channel so if you need a website go to Squarespace comm forward slash heated I should also mention that this video is not sponsored by any other brand so if you see any brand names or logos in this video it's not because I've been paid to make this video it's because I bought that stuff with my own money because it's the best tool for the job so the first and most important step when it comes to printing your work is going out and getting a photograph that you deem worthy enough of printing f/11 iso:116 mil perfect so I went out and got this photograph in Death Valley and I absolutely loved it and I definitely deem it worthy of print in fact I can't wait to print it so the first thing that I'm going to do is make sure that my monitor is calibrated the reason I calibrate my monitor is to make sure that what is on the screen is going to come out of the printer I use a spider v Pro to calibrate my monitor it's really simple takes about five minutes and you just follow the instructions on the screen there really is nothing to it it makes a difference with the iMac because the iMac is very cool and what the calibration software does is it just warms things up slightly and they're just a brightness so now that I've got an image that I'm happy with my monitor is calibrated I need to make a choice about paper and I think this is quite an important decision I like to think about how the image is going to look on different papers and and basically I have three main paper choices one is like a matte finish fine art matte paper one is a burrito which is like a fine art semi-gloss and the other one is a super high gloss paper so this image for example is going to work very well on the WETA paper and to be honest most of my images will be on this paper because it's just still really good on this paper this suits that kind of high contrast nice detail lots of saturation type pictures you know something similar to this one another paper that I like to use is this smooth cotton this is 300 GSM it's a hundred percent cotton paper it has a nice smooth matte finish and this works really well with images that are like have a softer color palette and for example yes for example something like this this is my goons of swakopmund image and this is you know it's very painterly and so I think it works really well and a lovely smooth cotton fine art paper another one that I use from time to time is canons Pro platinum paper and this is like super high gloss I worked particularly well with my star of the show image so I have my image my monitor is calibrated and I have chosen what I think is the best paper for this photograph now the next stage can tend to throw people off and but it's very important and I'll try my best to explain it as easily and as simply as possible and I should also say at this stage that I print everything directly from Lightroom so you buy a paper from a manufacturer now that manufacturer will give you the option to download a paper profile now every paper that you buy should come with its own profile let me let me try and explain so here I've got two different papers we've got a nice smooth matte cotton paper and I have a semi-gloss burrito paper if I was to print the same image with the same settings on these papers they would look wildly different the burrito paper holds blacks better the image looks richer more contrasting the smooth cotton the blacks will appear washed out and the colors will be slightly D saturated now what you can do is you can download a profile for each paper you load the profile into Lightroom and it gives you like a preview it gives you a preview of how that image will look when printed on that paper and then you re edit the image so that it matches the image on your screen that doesn't have the profile assigned to it so what you're trying to achieve is when you assign the profile to the image and it changes the image you want to bring back the image to as close as possible to how it looked before you assign the paper profile to it it's it's easier than it sounds and then you know it gives you a very good accurate representation of what's going to come out of your printer now I would also like to say at this stage you can download a generic profile from your manufacturers website and these are ok but what you can also do is you can print your own color chart and you can send that off to the paper manufacturer they'll take that color chart and they'll scan it and they will send you a personalized profile now this takes a lot of time you've got to print it you've got a package it you've got to ship it to you can take any from some three to four to five days so I did a test I printed this image one with a generic profile for that paper and one with a custom profile for that paper and I was actually amazed at the difference so the custom profile is calibrated exactly for my printer and and my whole setup here my whole system whereas the generic one they're just kind of guessing so yeah you can see here the image on the left is the generic profile the image on the right is the custom profile and the image on the right has better color at it there's more contrast my advice is print off a color chart ship it to your paper manufacturer they'll do your custom profile usually for free of charge so once I've assigned a paper profile to the image it does change I need to bring that back to how it was originally before the paper profile changed it and then when I print the image it's gonna be pretty accurate to how that looks but not always what I find is some images you can knock them out first time without any issues other images such as this one yeah that can take five or six test prints just I mean this image in particular the trees of deadly I just couldn't get the orange to look right I couldn't get it looking natural it was it was very difficult to work with and I went through many many test prints before getting one that I was happy with and that accurately represented my original image it can just be trial and error and I would always recommend doing test prints it's expensive and it's annoying so you have to use ink and paper but you know you only have to get it right once and then you're pretty much set so I think it's well worth it so now I've got a print that I'm happy with I always like to do several checks I like to hold it up against the window I like to look at it just in the ambient room light and I also like to inspect it looking at it through my ring lights because the ring light it's almost like looking at through a magnifying glass you can see any imperfections in the print or in the paper in this instance you can see here there's a very faint strip along the side of the paper this is actually a fault with the paper itself where there appears to be some coating missing that's difficult to spot but when I hold it under the ring light and inspect it then yeah you can see and that's no good I should say that the manufacturer did send me some more paper and that was just a bad batch which does happen from time to time but I don't think I would have spied that unless I'd inspected it up close with the ring light so now I have prints and I'm completely satisfied with it there's there's nothing wrong in the paper nothing wrong with the image I leave it to dry for 24 hours now they are dry to touch out of the printer but I like to give them give the ink time to really settle into the paper before disturbing it too much so once this time has passed I need to trim the paper because most of my images are a 4 by 5 ratio and my papers don't come in this ratio they only come in a 4 a 3 a 2 that kind of thing so there is a bit of wastage but that's fine absolutely fine so when it comes to cutting the prints I use an Avery a2 precision cutter this thing is awesome it's self sharpening it gives a lovely cut it's very accurate and yeah it's just it's expensive for what it is it's not a cheap cutter but for me it was just the best most efficient option out there and I prefer this to using a knife because I'm a bit clumsy and I can't tell you if I was to do ten cuts with a knife at least two of them I will end up slipping and you know cutting the paper at a wonky angle or something like that so for me this precision cutter has been a really good investment I always make sure to place a sheet of tracing paper over the image when cutting just to ensure that the plastic strip on the cutter which holds the print in place doesn't leave any kind of marking or scarring on the print itself the next thing I'll do with my print is sign number and emboss it the embossing is optional and if you've gone to my website you'll see that you do have the option as well to for me to sign and number the back of the print some people don't want the front signing and numbering because it can be distracting some people do so it's entirely up to whoever orders the print signing a print is is a funny one and for me when when I've sold prints now for a couple of years and the most challenging thing isn't choosing the paper and printing the image in them getting your paper profile and all that sort of stuff the most challenging thing is is signing it and it sounds stupid but it's it's not a lot of papers don't a lot of well a lot of photographic papers don't take a pencil so in an ideal world I think everything should be signed with a pencil and actually the smooth cotton does take a pencil so not an issue but the burrito and the canon pro platinum they don't take pencil so you have to use a pen you I'm not comfortable using something like a Sharpie because it can be quite destructive to the paper so I use what do I use where's my pens sorry guys so these are the pens that I use to sign my paper or any paper that won't take a pencil these are acid-free which means they're basically they're water-based and they're non-destructive so they're not going to damage the paper and as well as that like this these ones in particular that I got off Amazon I will stick a link below it's an affiliate link just saying these yeah these pens are brilliant and they come in shades from black all the way to very very light gray and what that means is I'm able to sign a print in a shade similar to a pencil so it's not too distracting and it's quite subtle and it doesn't take away from the image these yeah these pens are fantastic they come with two tips so a fine tip similar to that of a marker pen and also a brush tip which is great if you want to do a really fancy signature but I haven't got the success rate to use the brush so I don't bother but maybe maybe one day maybe one day all of my prints come with a certificates of authenticity that you can see here the certificate is embossed it's signed it has lots of information on it like the title the date of photograph has taken the date the photograph was printed who printed it the print size all that kind of good stuff these these certificates are made here by myself and I print them on canons museum edging which is a very very heavyweight matte card kind of fine art photo paper so my prints they're not cheap by any stretch of the imagination so I really like to add as much value as possible so one way of doing that is them being limited-edition usually they're limited to over 50 or 30 and this straight away hopefully adds a bit of value but I don't just want to send people a print by itself I like to just include a few more personal items so I'll show you what I include in the in the packaging with the prints so you get the print itself obviously it comes in a protective polythene wallet you know that's just to protect the prints it doesn't get dusty or scratched or anything like that it comes with a certificate of authenticity and as well as that I like to include a small information sheet now this is information about the image this is printed on a lovely tracing paper and actually got this I stole this idea hold my hands up I completely ripped this off mr. Ben Horne because I bought one of his portfolio box sets and it came with this lovely tracing paper with information about the prints and the paper and I thought what a great idea cuz what I used to do was I would if you've ever ordered a print from me in the past I will have written a very long personal letter that was saying thank you and telling you all about the image and you know how I felt lost capturing it and stuff like that but it took too long you know if I if I was to get five prints in a day I'd spend about you know a couple of hours writing these letters so this is a much better solution and it's it's nice I think it's a personal touch and I think it adds that little something to the image so this one here is from the dunes of swakopmund image and it goes like this climbing the coastal dunes of Scotland in Namibia my heart was racing and my legs were burning I was desperate to explore and shoot the expansive sand dunes but the relentless trade winds blowing in off the Atlantic made things very difficult I found this composition amongst a vast range of sweeping formations and I knew I have to shoot it the Sun was just starting to set to the west how to see which meant that I had the very last of the light illuminating the scene I risked exposing my gears to the elements as I change lenses before framing my composition I had trouble focusing my lens but soon realized that in fact the landscape in front of me was constantly shifting and moving as the wind drove the sand eastwards the windswept landscape coupled with the diffused light resulted in a delicate soft painterly image with no hard lines or real points of interest I finally calming and easy on the eye and then at the bottom you've got the exif data isn't that nice see it makes all the difference so you get a certificate of authenticity a nice information sheet and then I pop them in this lovely black envelope that I also emboss I'll be honest I'm like a kid at Christmas I emboss whatever I can possibly emboss so as nice as this is I still want to send a note of thanks to whoever has bought a print so I had these made up these are just it's just a thank-you card and he says thank you and then there's room for me on the back there to write a small message of thanks nothing crazy but you know certainly showing my gratitude and appreciation so this image for example comes in two sizes it's 13 by 11 or twenty by sixteen the 13 by 11s they get sent flats their place in a black presentation box I then include these certificates the information sheets and a little thank-you card and I wrap it all in a book mailer I send everything first-class recorded if it's in the UK if it's overseas then it's signed and tracked so every print with a tracking number the larger prints these come these have to go in a tube I can't send the 20 by 16 is flat it's far too expensive so I roll them and place them in a 15 centimeter reinforced tube this is basically a very wide very thick tube prints are safe as houses in there they really are so they're certainly well protected I stuffed the inside of the tube with tracing paper and then place in the thank-you card and the certificate and all of those bits and pieces and the reason a place the tracing paper is just to stop it shake it around which potentially could cause damage to the print even though it's in a protective polythene bag and that's it and then I also ship those signed and recorded or tracked and signed so that should give you an idea about my workflow when it comes to prints with regards to selling prints I'm certainly not a businessman so I well I obviously I put the prints on my website I like to include a photograph an image of the actual print itself so not just not just an image of the image but an image of the actual physical photograph I think people appreciate this pricing comes down to how much the image means to me so it's been ambiguous although all of the images you know I don't have many images for sale that's because you know it has to be quite a special image for me to sell it as a print and some are more special than others it's like kids you always have a favorite kid right well I have favorite prints and the more favored ones are more expensive maybe I worked really hard for it maybe it's really rare conditions and I know that it's not gonna happen again for like 10 years or something like that these are slightly more expensive and have a slightly higher run usually 50 instead of 30 so yeah that's it I hope that I really hope that you've taken some value away from this video and of course if you want to buy a print you can go to my website you can see my prints for sale all of the items I've linked to below if you're interested in any of those and that just leaves me to thank Squarespace once again for sponsoring my channel if you need a website perhaps an online store to sell prints maybe go to Squarespace comm forward slash Heaton and give it a go for free it's a free free trial 30-day free trial or something like that yet get free traffic go for free basically and if you like it and it's all going well for you you can get 10% off your first purchase by using off code Keeton so that's everything thank you so much for watching and until next time bye for now [Music] you

Channel: Thomas Heaton

Views: 332,206

Keywords: how to print photographs, printing photography, selling prints, signing prints, canon pro 1000, canon printer, how to package prints, printing artwork, landscape photography, how to load paper profile

Id: oSmISUQF4Vs

Length: 20min 17sec (1217 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 21 2018