Lessons
Lesson Info
Class Introduction
In today's class, I'm going to show you a bunch of pretty pictures. And we're gonna look at prints, we're gonna inspect them, we're gonna understand what to do in the field, we're gonna understand what to do in the computer. All with the intent of producing great product so you can hold in your hand. But before I get to, where we at in the class, I do want to talk about why printing is so cool. Digital is neat, most people here shoot digital. There's a few people who shoot film and I've got a film that I'm gonna show you here today. But digital's neat 'cause you can see it anywhere you go, you can see it in your phone, you can interact with it on your tablet, you can see it in your laptop, your computer at home. But prints are special. Digital's neat I think prints are special. The reason why printer is special is because when you hold the print or when you give a print to somebody else, immediately there's an emotional connection to that time and space, to that event. I'm going to wal...
k over here and look at the couple of these prints that I've hanged up. These are both from different trips that I've run and places I've been. This is in Cuba and this is in Iceland. And I remember the moment that I was there. I remember the moment when this puffin flew up to the cliff side with some fish in its beak. Actually these are sand eels. And I remember composing the photo. I remember the emotional excitement of seeing puffins all around me in Iceland with ice behind me. It was exciting and then when I hold it, I can ... especially when you make big prints, you can inspect, you can come in close to look at the detail on the feathers. How often do you really do that with a digital printer or computer? I mean if you were holding the monitor of computer like this, kind of weird. But with prints we do that. We interact physically with prints. We interact emotionally with prints. That's why I love printing. That's why, you know, this one here in Cuba, I remember I was up at dawn and I remember horseman carriages kept clacking to these streets and people walking early mornings. I remember this lady selling bread. I remember the smell and I can interact physically with this. So, printing is important. Now, I've thought about making this T-shirt. Printing matters, you know. And it really does. So, today I'm gonna talk about how to make great prints. As with all live classes, there's bound to be a few niggles in this class. Printing with the inkjet printers at home. I'll talk about some of the challenges associated with that and then I'll also talk a little bit about printing at the lab. And of course, I value your input, your questions, and so throughout the class feel free to ask those questions. I just want to talk- I'm gonna move to the presentation here and I just want to show you what we're gonna talk about and then I'll hand it off to Jude just a second to tell him how to interact. So, we're gonna talk about cameras and field technique because you can't produce a great print unless you have a great image. And fortunately we have a lot of great images today and I'll show you some of those in just a few minutes. Then I'm gonna talk about editing workflow. How do you process that image in lightroom for the best print output? I'm gonna talk a little about highlight protection, shadow protection, I'll even throw some technical stuff that you may enjoy. I'll go through lightroom and Photoshop and show you the different processes for printing in both of those software packages. There are a lot of other packages out there that we can use, but for today in this class we'll just focus on those two Adobe products. And then we'll also cover some printing paper and I'll talk about different types of paper and I've got a few stacks of paper here. Now, I'll just explain why this paper, maybe a semi gloss works better than a matte works better than a fine art type of paper.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Dennis Walsh
This is a good fundamentals class. Mike is an excellent teacher. If you are just starting printing, this would be a good choice. If you are more experienced at printing it is probably too shallow. I thought the price of the class was high for the time and detail of the lessons.
Jul
Good solid fundamentals class for beginners. If you're a fairly seasoned pro wanting to refine your output techniques, you'll probably find this class too general. It concentrates on the basics of achieving a good image with a basic overview of printer settings and Adobe output dialog boxes.