| MAKING
A PRINT
At
the 7th Annual Nikonians Photo Adventure Trip (ANPAT 7) held
in September and October 2007 in the gorgeous Grand Teton and
Yellowstone National Parks I had the pleasure of meeting and
working with Tom Hubbard, Pro Photo Development Manager for
HP while we stayed in Jackson, Wyoming.
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Hewlett-Packard
Photosmart Pro B9180 Photo Printer |
Over
three days Tom showed me the HP Photoshop print plug-in, how
to set up the printer, and demonstrated the B9180 for the ANPAT
participants. I was immediately impressed by the simplicity
and straight forward design of the new plug-in.
At
the time I had not yet upgraded to Photoshop CS3 and was
not aware that this was the model for the new Print dialog.
It
is my understanding that HP and Adobe worked together to re-engineer
these new print routines. This is another testament to the
level of commitment from HP in designing world class digital
imaging
hardware and software. Using the new "Print" feature
in Photoshop CS3 is a significant departure from the previous "Print
with Preview" dialog. I welcome this change as it leaves
print commands and selections to the printer driver as it should
have been all along.
At
the time I had not yet upgraded to Photoshop CS3 and was not
aware that this was the model for the new Print dialog. It
is my understanding that HP and Adobe worked together to re-engineer
these new print routines. This is another testament to the
level of commitment from HP in designing world class digital
imaging hardware and software. Using the new "Print" feature
in Photoshop CS3 is a significant departure from the previous "Print
with Preview" dialog. I welcome this change as it leaves
print commands and selections to the printer driver as it should
have been all along.
Printing in Photoshop is a straight forward process but you
should first be aware that the B9180 performs best when your
PC monitor is calibrated and profiled using hardware based profiling
software. Even though the B9180 is a marvel of technology you
still need to follow a sound color management workflow to get
predictable results. This starts with a calibrated display. Today
you can get reasonably priced profiling packages that use a colorimeter
to measure the output of your monitor. If you are serious about
printing you must invest in one.
After you have prepared your file for printing it is recommended
that you use soft proofing to examine a visualization of what
the print will look like using a particular paper. Going through
the steps to explain how to soft proof an image is beyond the
scope of this review but I can briefly describe that you select
the ICC paper profile provided by HP for the paper you are going
to print on and then choose the best rendering intent and examine
the image on screen for tonal and color shifts. You then make
further edits to your file to bring the colors back to their
intended state.
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