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August 20, 2012 by Kat

PrintMania!

What is PrintMania! you ask? It was my weekend! This weekend I printed my photographs. And printed. And printed some more. All to get ready for the Corvallis Fall Festival, an art fair I’m going to be participating in a few weeks from now. It’s all part of my great adventure to complete the circle of creating my art through print. This is my first art fair and thankfully I’m in a group booth for the PhotoArts Guild. I can’t imagine how much I would have to create to have a booth of my own!

My plan was to get ready over several weeks before the festival set up on 21-September but events conspired to push me to complete it all this weekend. My lovely brand new printer developed a problem, and so I got a replacement under warranty. I wanted to test the heck out of the replacement printer before I sent the original, intermittently working printer back. I figured an intermittently working printer was better than no working printer, when I had this looming deadline coming up. The replacement printer worked like a champ, so I’m happy with the printer and I’m now ready for the fair! Here’s what I’ve prepared: 40 greeting cards with envelopes, 25 prints matted to 8×10 inches, 10 prints matted to 11×14 inches, and 10 prints matted to 16×20 inches (4 of these are framed).

Having this art fair project also enabled me to really dig and learn a bit more about how I want to present my work. Remember when I talked about printed aspect ratios? Most standard mats in the US have 5×7, 8×10 or 11×14 inch openings. My 2:3 photos can survive the crop for a 5×7 format, but 8×10 or 11×14 doesn’t work for most of them. That means I have to order custom mats to maintain the right aspect ratio, so I tested three different mat opening/photo size combinations for a 16×20″ frame. They are shown below. On the left is an 8×12″ print, the center is a 9×13.5″ print, and the right is a 10×15″ print. All of these maintain the 2:3 aspect ratio of the print with different widths of mat. I could use your opinion, which one do you like best? (If you are interested in checking out the companies I use for ordering custom mats and other materials, see the “Online Services & Shops” link under Resources on the sidebar of the blog.)

I also learned a fabulous new feature in Lightroom 4: Soft Proofing. This feature simulates the effect of printing for the combination of printer and paper you are using, and will show you not only the shift in brightness and contrast but also which colors the printer can’t print. (Monitors can display more colors than printers can print.) This is incredibly helpful to adjust the photo before printing. Between this feature and significantly reducing my monitor brightness (it’s set at 3% for printing!), I get pretty close to what I want on the first print. Soft proofing is still not completely accurate, but it does save on test prints. And the beauty of Lightroom’s virtual copies is I can have a copy of the photo edited specifically for printing with almost no effort. In getting ready for this art fair, I now have “print ready” images that have been edited and tested available for print any time. Nice!

It takes a different kind of creativity for a project like this compared to creating and editing the images. It’s been frustrating at times but I’m learning something new for my art, and that’s the important thing. While it’s different than the feeling I get from capturing a great image, the satisfaction of seeing my images in print, all matted, signed and ready for someone to frame and hang in their home, is pretty amazing. It will be fun to interact with the people attending the art fair and see the reaction to my work in person. I can’t wait!

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Filed Under: The Kat Eye View of the World Tagged With: printed aspect ratio, printed work, printing

Comments

  1. ElaineM says

    August 20, 2012 at 8:04 am

    I prefer the middle one the best. I think it has the right amount of printed area to white space around it.

  2. Elise Wormuth says

    August 20, 2012 at 8:12 am

    I’m very excited about your doing this and wish you the best of luck! I share your pain about the print sizes — though almost everyone is shooting digital now, the sizes of precut mats has not kept up. We need 8 x 12, not 8 x 10; 10 x 15, 12 x 18, etc. I find it so frustrating, when I’ve processed a lovely photo, that I have to do such a significant crop to get it printed on paper or canvas. Let’s hope they get a clue, one of these days!

    • Kat says

      August 20, 2012 at 4:47 pm

      They are starting to, but they are not quite there. Hence, the custom mats! But I also like custom because the standard mats have a half inch total overlap (quarter inch on a side) of the mat to the art. Really? I can’t line my art up that well? It just cuts off even more of my image! I order my custom mats with a quarter inch total overlap (eighth inch per side) and it works great.

  3. Jamie S says

    August 20, 2012 at 8:26 am

    I wish I could be at the festival to see your photos in person! Good luck.

    • Kat says

      August 20, 2012 at 4:44 pm

      Thanks Jamie! I wish you could visit here too. 🙂

  4. Teresa Harrington Hazelbaker says

    August 20, 2012 at 11:12 am

    I like the one in the middle the best. This is a gut reaction, but I don’t know why. 🙂

    • Kat says

      August 20, 2012 at 4:44 pm

      Going with your gut is always good! Thanks for the feedback.

  5. Anita Bower says

    August 21, 2012 at 9:23 am

    I like the center and far right ones best, though all look good.
    I deal with the ratio situation by cutting my own mats. It is more work, definitely, but allows me to crop my images any way I want.

    • Kat says

      August 21, 2012 at 9:27 am

      Cutting your own mats is a perfect solution! I’ve never done it, is it hard? I may have to put that on my list of future things to learn.

  6. Anita Bower says

    August 21, 2012 at 11:59 am

    Cutting mats is not difficult but requires practice. I use a Logan 750. Good luck with your show.

  7. nini says

    August 23, 2012 at 11:21 am

    I like the left one because it has the most white space around the photo so I can sort of observe the photo without seeing too much of the frame. Or maybe this is just my fancy for bigger mats.

    I wish you all the best at the art fair!

  8. seabluelee says

    August 24, 2012 at 5:16 pm

    I like the left one best as the wider mat seems to give the photo more weight. But I have to admit that perhaps it’s just that I like that image best of the three! “-)

    I’ve been considering whether to upgrade to Lightroom 4 (from ver.3) but I’ve read a lot of complaints about how much slower it is. Have you noticed much difference in performance?

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