384 ADVANCED PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS 7 FOR DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHERS FINELY CRAFTED OUTPUT Getting intimate with your printer With the screen now well and truly calibrated and our scanner, camera and printer all ICC profiled terrific prints should be certain to follow, and in most cases this is true. But despite the use of a fully profiled system there are still those annoying occasions where the print doesn't meet our expectations. As long as you keep to standard papers and paper surfaces these occasions won't be too frequent, but the more that you experiment with different paper types and finishes the more you will be presented with unexpected results. The culprit is the generic print profile supplied with your machine. By definition it is designed to provide good results with average images, surfaces and paper types. For those of you who want a little more than `average' results you can fine-tune your printer profile for different paper and surface types. As was the case with screens, here too we have a couple of different approaches. The first makes use of the extra color controls hidden away in the printer driver to modify your output and the second uses another ColorVision hardware/software solution to create separate print profiles for each paper type and surface that you use. 13.06 Calibrating your printer ­ resolution, color, tone and sharpness tests Suitable for Elements ­ 7.0, 6.0, 5.0, 4.0, 3.0, 2.0, 1.0 | Difficulty level ­ Intermediate Resources ­ Web text images 13.06-1, 13.06-2 | Related techniques ­ 13.04­13.08 Good prints are made from good images and, as we know from previous chapters, digital image quality is based on high image resolution and high bit depth. Given this scenario, it would follow that if I desire to make the best prints possible, then I should at first create pictures with massive pixel dimensions and huge numbers of colors. The problem is that such files take up loads of disk space and, due to their size, they are very, very slow to work with, to the point of being practically impossible to edit on most desktop machines. The solution is to find a balance between image quality and file size that still produces `good prints'. For the purposes of this book `good prints' are defined as those that appear photographic in quality and can be considered visually `pixel-less'. As we have also seen the quality of all output is governed by a combination of the printer mechanism, the ink set used and the paper, or media, the image is printed on. To find the balance that works best for your printer set up and the various papers that you use, you will need to perform a couple of simple tests with your printer. Quality printing >> Quality printing is based on paper, ink and machine all working together. Changing any of these components can alter the color, shadow, highlight or midtone rendition of the print. For the best control different set ups or profiles are necessary for each of the paper/ ink/printer combinations you work with. Book resources and video tutorials can be found at: www.photoshopelements.net