Digital photos: Part two - Print lifelike photos

Getting stunning, accurate colour on the photos, documents and pictures you print at home can be a nightmare.

But it can also be very easy. We’re going to show you how to print great colours with the minimum of fuss.

Accurate colour reproduction on a printer or screen is a familiar problem for keen digital photographers. In part one of this series we explained how to correct the colours on the monitor.

The monitor is often the weakest link in the colour chain, but it’s also possible that the printer isn’t reproducing colours as accurately as it should. This is what we’re going to look at in this instalment.

Monitor and printer colour corrections are all part of ‘colour management’. This can be a complicated subject, but we’re going to approach it from a simple standpoint and pick out just those things that the average digital photographer needs to know.

It’s very important you use the first article to sort out colour displays on your monitor before doing anything in this feature. If you don’t, you may think your printer is producing ‘wrong’ colours when it isn’t.

There’s one more thing to make clear. Colour management is all about getting colours as close as possible, but they’re never going to be identical. Computer monitors and colour printers generate colours in different ways. The monitor may always display slightly more saturated colours than the printout or prints may have slightly more contrast than the monitor. The aim is to reduce the discrepancies, and not expect perfection.

Do you have a problem?
Firstly, it is necessary to find out if there’s anything wrong with the printer’s colours as they stand. This is why it’s so important to follow part 1 of this series and calibrate the monitor first.

However, a comparison between printed photos and their on-screen appearance may still show unacceptable differences. It’s important to try this out with a range of subjects and colours to get a feel for the size of the problem. If you don’t have a suitable photo, you can download a test image from the Digital Dog website, or Inkjet Art.

Printing and comparing test photos will only show differences between the monitor and printer. It won’t indicate how well the printer is reproducing colours in absolute terms. But specialist Colour Confidence has the perfect diagnostic tool.

The Kodak Color Management Check-up Kit contains, among other things, a set of seven digital reference files and photographic reference prints. The reference prints can be checked against those produced by the printer to see how well it’s performing, and against the monitor display as a comparison that’s independent of the printer. The kit costs £47 – not much when set against the inks, paper and time which could be wasted by inconclusive home-spun printer tests.