Proofing paper

My question has to do with print proofing paper. You use two very expensive (at least very expensive to me) papers for your folios, Hahnemühle Photo Rag and Harman Glossy FB AL. Presumably you are like the rest of us that have to make any number of proof prints prior to being "done."  If in fact you do print proofs, which papers do you use and how do you make adjustments for your final prints.  Of course I am assuming you don't use the expensive papers for proofing.

— Roger

Choke. Cough. Cringe. Sniffle and weep. For proofing, I open my wallet and run cash through the printer by the bucket full, figuratively. Thanks for asking.

Like everyone else, I would dearly love for so-called "soft proofing" to work. Wouldn't it be great to look at an image on the monitor and have it turn out identical when printed! Boy, wouldn't it! Never going to happen.

The only way I know to determine how a print will look is to print it. The only way to determine how a print will look on Hahnemühle Photo Rag is to print it on Hahnemühle Photo Rag. Period. There are no shortcuts. There are, fortunately, a couple of things that can help reduce costs a little bit.

1. Print proofs on a lighter weight (less expensive) version of the paper you will use in your final prints. For example, use HPR 188 rather than HPR 308 and you can reduce your costs from $1.51 to $1.13 per 8½x11 sheet and save 25% (prices from Shades of Paper.com).
2. Try doing proofs on double-sided paper. Bleed-through can be a bit of a problem, but it will save some money. Double-sided, lightweight paper helps a lot, but it's still not what I would call cheap.
3. Print your proofs ganged on a larger sheet with narrow borders. You can do two versions of this: one version reducing the image sizes to 4x5 or smaller that will give you some sense of color balance, color gamut, color profiles, tonal densities, and perhaps where you might need to do some density adjustments like dodging and burning; then do a second version where you crop out a 4x5 section or smaller of the larger image so you can check sharpening at full size. (For sharpening, I often find I don't need to see the entire image to know if I've got it right.)

The one thing I've never been able to do successfully is proof on one paper and then print my final images on a different paper. Paper base-color, ink rendition, metachromatism, etc. all get in the way of making good judgments that are reliable.

So, sorry, but photography is an expensive hobby. (I am jealous of the pen & ink drawers in this regard.)

Let me offer this small seed to a large discussion. Costs in photography are "expensive" or "inexpensive" only relative to the income one derives from the sale of work. I cringe at having to buy expensive paper for proofing, but I can and do because I work very hard to make my work affordable so people will buy it from me. It's that source of funding that allows me to buy the paper I need to produce new work. Without that source of funding, photography would be so much more "expensive." So, as foreign as it sounds to the artmaking process, I believe marketing and selling our work is crucial to the creative process because without the ability to buy supplies, equipment, travel, etc. our creativity comes to a halt. In an odd way, the answer to expensive paper is inexpensive prints. But therein lies another discussion entirely.

Comments

[Jeff Curto]

Interestingly, this is another one of those things that hasn't changed from the wet darkroom to the digital realm; good paper makes good prints.

When I used to make darkroom prints, I would even make my contact sheets on the paper that I'd be trying to print the images on. It saved time in the long run, as I could see whether the photographs would "fit" on that paper. Ultimately, part of the creative process was to figure out what paper looked or felt right for an individual image, and we'd go through perhaps 3 or 4 papers to get the "right" one.

With really good silver darkroom papers, this was an insanely expensive proposition, especially after the Hunt brothers caused silver prices to go through the roof in the late 1970s.

I'm frankly grateful to be able to make 2 or 3 proof prints on the high-quality inkjet papers we have now rather than dozens of proof prints on darkroom papers that go for pretty much the same price per sheet.

So... I'm with Brooks on this one... proof on the paper you're going to print on.

Jeff Curto
http://www.jeffcurto.com 
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[Chuck Kimmerle]

I've found that Epson Ultra Premium Presentation paper (Enhanced Matte) is a great match for HPR Photo Rag (using their respective profiles, of course), as the two have a very similar tonality.

There are differences, of course. The primary one being that the Epson paper is a bit cooler and brighter as it uses optical brighteners. Despite than difference, proofing on UPP paper gets me close enough that I only need one, maybe two, additional proofs on the Photo Rag before I'm satisfied.

My counter top has a stack of 8.5"x11" proofs (don't know why I save them) from the past year, or so, that probably numbers around 400. The cost difference between HPR 188 and UPP for those 500 sheets works out to more than $250, which is substantial sum.

The best part about using UPP for work prints is that I can use the automatic sheet feeder rather than the rear manual feed on my Epson 3800, something that would not work with most fine art paper.

[Godfrey DiGiorgi]

Hmm. I'll differ with some notions here, but not others.

I standardized way long ago on matte surface papers. I went through an expensive period of printing tests on each of the three-four surfaces/colors I like (Epson Velvet Fine Art, Moab Somerset Velvet, Hahnemühle Bamboo, Hahnemühle Photo Rag Smooth) to learn what they look like. I agree that there's no way to learn a paper without seeing your work on it, discovering its imaging qualities, etc. It's just like learning a film, or a particular digital camera's sensor characteristics.

But that's where I depart. I find I don't need to constantly repeat that process.

I carefully calibrate my system to allow me to visualize accurately what the image is going to look like on those papers. I print with a color managed workflow to maintain that link between what I see on the display and what I visualize the image on paper is going to look like. I only rarely use soft-proofing ... when I have a color image that I know is going to challenge the gamut boundaries of my printing process.

Doing this, paying attention to the details of the system and color management workflow, my printing process nowadays only very very rarely requires me to re-print an image because it does not match what I expect. Using calibration and color management, I've reduced ink and paper waste down to the barest of minimums: it's only when I make a mistake that I have to re-print.

It's only when I switch bases ... swap the Photo Black ink for the Matte Black ink and use a new paper surface (Epson Exhibition Fiber Paper or Lustre, Harman Glossy FB AL) that I have to 'waste' some ink and paper again. Waste in this context really means to re-learn their specific imaging qualities, since I do this so infrequently. I find it easier to 'remember' matte surface paper characteristics ... I guess because I've always preferred them. But some work looks better on a paper with a little shine to it.

I don't find the calibration and color managed printing workflow to be burdensome. I find it saves a tremendous amount of time and effort, and reduces cost at the same time.

[Chuck Kimmerle]

Godfrey,

I honestly envy your ability to not rely on work prints. I am, like you, calibrated, profiled, customized and managed and, as a bonus, recently cleaned my desk. Still, I cannot do without them.

Don't get me wrong. I can predict, with a fair degree of accuracy, how the prints will look, and my soft proofing is spot on, but I almost always find either global or local changes than "need" to made when I see the image on paper. Changes that were hidden on the monitor.

I average 2-5 9" test prints per image, followed by a final test print at 17" (all on Epson Enhanced Matte, or UPP) before I commit it to 17" x 22" Photo Rag (almost $6 per sheet!)

[Donna Kirkpatrick]

I agree with Brook's assessment and Chuck's additional comments. My monitor is well-calibrated, I use good ICC profiles and can predict well what things will look like but I also use 2-5 test prints of the SAME paper and never use cheaper "proofing" paper. It is a waste of time, which to me is more valuable than the price of a good piece of paper. The funny thing is that most folks can't readily tell the difference between some of the proofs but I can see the differences - the curse of the eye of the photographer. So I could probably save money by being less discriminating ( but forget that).

[Scott Jones]

It was once suggested to me to make my test prints in very small 4x5-ish sizes. I thought this was crazy having always made 8x10 test prints in the darkroom, BUT I have found that it works perfectly for me. I CAN surprisingly tell about color, tone, dodging and burning and all the other parameters I care about before moving up to my larger exhibition size. This saves me a ton of moola. I use 8.5x11 sheets cut in quarters and set a custom paper size in my Epson 3800 printer for these 5.5x4.25 sheets and using my DSLR with its 3x2 aspect ratio, the actual image size is 5x3.33. It works great. The added bonus is that I grown to love the little prints themselves.....

But I agree with Brooks that staying with the same paper is key.

[Godfrey DiGiorgi]

@ Chuck et al:

I'm curious as to what problems you run into that you need so many proofs.

I found that just having the system calibrated doesn't necessarily produce the best results. The calibration targets you choose make a big difference in how well the display will match the print. I found long ago that a warm-white set of targets produced a far better match, with far less need to proof and re-print, than the defaults set by most display calibration/profiling software.

I set my calibration targets to 120 cdm^2, 1.8 gamma, 5500K white point with the Eye One Display 2. The fidelity of display to print is so close I can see a 1 point (old photofinisher color pack terminology... ;-) color shift easily, and the shift on display matches the shift on paper.

I also do paper tests for dynamic range as I've found that the profiles alone often don't correct for that adequately. For instance, I had one client using some highly textured papers who had had a bunch of custom profiles made, but his Zone 2-3-4 transitions were constantly going muddy. I did a paper test and found that the paper's dynamic range meant that anything showing up in Lightroom with a value under 25 wasn't going to separate tones well on that paper, so using the Tone Curve panel and the histogram readout, it's a simple matter to adjust the tones on screen for that paper so those values are represented properly. The work now looks right on the display and on the paper every time.

To me, the whole point of calibration and color management is to minimize the need for proofing, to make the system consistent in the representation of color and tonal values. If that's not working, then I consider something is wrong with the settings or the procedure being used, and I fix it.

It's tough being an obsessive techie sometimes. ;-)

[Chuck Kimmerle]

Godfrey,

It's not an issue of something wrong my system. As a matter of fact, it's not a technical issue, at all.

To me, printing is an art form all it's own. Like the actual photographing, it's not supposed to be easy or fast. I do not accept the first frame that I shoot, so I am certainly not willing to accept the first print off of the rollers, no matter how technically perfect either may be.

Really, it's nothing more than a matter of personal style.

[Godfrey DiGiorgi]

Hmm. I do not understand ...

If the first print off the rollers is perfect, what about the second print reaches that artistic moment you're seeking? What do you change?

When printing was a hand-done process, I would certainly agree: it was nearly impossible to make a perfect rendering onto paper with the first exposure through the chemicals. We were working in the future, trying to pre-visualize what that print might be.

But in my current process of image making, I do my creative rendering work on the display. The print is a mechanical process of rendering what I see on the screen to high fidelity onto paper. If I have that mechanical process well configured for the fidelity I'm after, there is nothing I can do other than change my rendering and print something different from what I originally rendered.

It's very interesting to hear how others perceive the craft.