Tag Archives: canvas

Apple Existence, Geek-Speak, Photography

Printing, Crossing the Streams, and How I Spent the Last Three Weeks

As I’ve begun playing with printing more and more, some of my fellow photographers at the office have asked me to begin printing for them. They’ve been pleased, I’ve been pleased, and I’ve learned a bunch from the experience. The latest challenge was stymieing me — how to get good prints on Epson Premium Canvas Matte paper?

After a boatload of permutations through print driver settings on the Apple side, I picked up Windows XP and VMWare Fusion in an attempt to print my work through the Windows print drivers. And that, fair readers, seems to have hit the mark.

I printed comparison runs using identical print settings in Lightroom on XP and Lightroom on Leopard, and there were definitely differences — major differences — in how the driver forced ink through my trusty R1800. With that knowledge in mind, I set down today to try printing the three canvas works ahead of me.

After making a custom paper size (one of the images is a bit oversized at 13″ x 25″), I started cooking canvas with what I’d learned. After all three were on the planks, drying, I took a good look at them, and believe I’ve found my printing path — do the work in Photoshop or Lightroom on Leopard, and them do the printing through Lightroom on XP.

Convoluted? Yup. But the results seem to be worth it!

Geek-Speak, Photography

Custom Paper Sizes

Casey has engaged me to do a little printing on canvas for him. This is the first time I’ve tried to print on roll paper, and the first time for me to print on canvas.

First off, it took me forever to load the 13″x20′ roll of Epson Premium Canvas Matte. As documented, you’re supposed to gently push it through the rear paper guide until the paper stops. Well, there are two stops, and from the first one, the paper will never load correctly. One problem down.

That’s when I ran into the conundrum concerning custom paper sizes. If I set up a custom paper size at exactly the size I wanted, I was unable to select canvas in the printer dialog. Believe me, I tried every combination I could think of. What fixed it? Well, I made the width 12.94″ instead of 13″ — found that one on a website somewhere — and I changed the margins to 0.25″ at the suggestion of another site. I’m not sure which fixed it, but it’s fixed, and that’s the important part for tonight.

I am getting some bodacious form feeds after the printing process, but I can recover from that reasonably well, although the end of the roll fills me with fear! 🙂

Now if I can just get the colors right on the canvas….