Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

Hi guys,

I have 3 images that I need to send send off to be printed and I want them to be sent as 1 file, end to end. Anyway, they all have different pixel resolutions and they are being printed on an Epson so they will ultimately all need to end up with a resolution of 360dpi to be the correct size in the document I'm creating. 2 of the images are very close to the target resolution, they're around 340ppi so any interpolation artifacts will be negligible but one of them is 262ppi at the size I want. The 'finished print to file' document that I'll get from qimage will be AdobeRGB (so that they can add in their own custom print profile) with sharpening off (again so they can add their own final print sharpening as I don't know their printer).

Ok, so the question! Is it best to make all of my sharpening/contrast edits etc in Photoshop and then send it to Q to be interpolated to create the final file. OR to send it to Q first and then make all of my photoshop edits on the interpolated image? Either way it seems there might be problems, I'd either be softening a sharpened image by upscaling or trying to sharpen a softer upscaled image. I'm guessing that I'd make my edits first and then run it through Q as that is closest to a normal workflow if I was sending it directly to the printer? What do you think?

I have tried both ways and I can't really tell a difference, but these are all fairly high res images to start with so any artifacts from upscaling will be minimal but I'm not always that lucky! I often end up having to work with fairly poor res images so it would be good to get this right for the future.   

Thanks in advance

Jamie

Before I got a printer I used Lab services.

I got the Labs. printer profile and used the Labs requirement for dpi, one Lab required 300dpi another required 402dpi

I had no problems, the problems started when I got my own R1900 :) :) :)

Some labs would not provide profiles saying they did all the necessary adjustments to get a perfect print everytime.  They did not get the job.

So, I would think best to do all the final print file creation with Qimage, then at least if any thing is wrong with the final print you have only yourself to blame and have one point to correct things.

Jeff

Thanks Jeff,

Think you're right, going to do it as if it was a normal print. Edits first then send it to Q 'print to file'. I assume that the order Q processes would be to interpolate first then add the print sharpening so doing it this way the only difference is that someone else presses the big red print button and nothing else. Like you say, do it all yourself and you can't blame anyone else.

Cheers

Jamie

Not to belabor the point, but Jeff's approach is good.  That's what I've been doing and I have rarely been disappointed.

I don't print enough to justify an injet printer.  When I used injet for black and white text and didn't use the printer for a very long time, I found that it was clogged.  I'm sure that this would happen with color cartridges, which are very expensive.