The Joy of Printing

This past weekend I took a class on fine art printing at the Minneapolis Photo Center. The class was two afternoons, Saturday and Sunday, and covered everything from adjustments in Photoshop to make your photos look better in print to different types of paper and how they affect the look of the printed image. I learned much more than I thought I would and printed much more than I thought I would. The prints came out great, and I’ve discovered that I really like seeing my work on paper. Now I’m feeling a bit addicted; I can’t wait to make more prints and to try out different types of paper for my images.

The photos above were printed without cropping or resizing at 300 dpi on A3 Epson Premium Luster paper with an Epson Stylus Pro 3800 printer. Images from the 50D at 300 dpi are a little larger than 10 x 15, which fit really nicely on A3. I’m also interested in trying out 19 x 13 paper to give the photos a bit more of a margin on the page, and trying photo rag and bamboo papers for a different look at feel. I’ve ordered 8 x10 sample sheets of a variety of papers including a few types of photo rag from Hahnemuhle, and am excited to try them out. I’ll post my experiences here, so look for them closer to the end of next week.