And I should suspect in turn that the print function through Aperture is
well-refined.
I used to process in Mac, and port over to my Windows machine to print through
Qimage, which is an excellent low-cost RIP only available for Windows. It
allowed me all kinds of variety in how I set up my print jobs. I did not expect
ever to abandon it, but then did just that when I started using Lightroom. I
think LR does a much better job, especially since adding a soft proofing option
in the DEVELOP module and a print adjustment option in the PRINT module.
Soft proofing lets you make subtle adjustments to your image based on what kind
of paper you plan to print on. It even has a checkbox to emulate paper surface,
but I think it emulates too aggressively. I usually check the box just to see
what it says, but uncheck it to make actual adjustments. (The soft-proof image
does change depending on which paper you select. Profiles for papers use the
icc profiles that either came with the printer or that you have downloaded from
the printer manufacturer's site.)
The soft-proof function also will show you which of your colors will be out of
gamut for your paper and printer. For example, and well-saturated image output
to a matte paper will tend to have out of gamut colors. The printer will do the
best it can, but they won't be the same as what you see on the monitor. Having
seen what's out of gamut (and again, this sometimes is way too aggressive), you
can adjust the file so that the colors come back into gamut. Proof the same
file on a glossy or luster paper, and the out of gamut warnings frequently
disappear.
The print adjustment option allows you to add brightness or contrast to printed
output, but you have to experiment with it because it doesn't show you the
result of your adjustments on screen. The reason it's there is to ameliorate
the effects of size, either large or small, which will alter brightness and
contrast as seen on the original file. We often talk about the need to pay
attention to sharpening when we change sizes for printing, but it's also
important to monitor brightness and contrast as well.
--Bob Whitmire
Certified Neanderthal
On Dec 13, 2013, at 6:11 AM, Chris Barker wrote:
> I suspect, Bob, that this is mainly the result of better integration,
> recently, of printer drivers with the MacOS. For me, Aperture and my lovely
> Canon Pixmas (1 x A4, 1 x A3) work very well in printing excellent output.
> Of course, my standards are probably lower than others' on the List, but the
> combination makes me happy.
--
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