Colour Photo Printing !...

I would like to tackle this notion that you can’t get good photos from your printer without first going through the rigors of profiling the paper, monitor and inks.

Just about every guy who owns a desktop printer will want to print their iPhone photos on paper sooner or later but they always come up against the brick wall, when they first ask for a little advice.

They don’t want to hear the profiling rigmarole again and again, most will just give up when there’re faced with the plethora of things there’re told they’ll need, they only want to print a stupid picture from their phones, they’re not asking to be launched into outer space.

It’s not going to be a master piece so if they leave everything to chance and just click on print, then their photo will work out just fine and the world won’t end, and they’ll have their print in their hands, so what’s wrong with that !

If ever they get interested in photography and they want to improve the quality of their prints, and they then ask the experts for their advice, well ?

Then that’s the time to lower them slowly into the deep chasm of expensive Cameras, Monitors, Pro Printers’ Fine Art Papers, Colormunki and OEM inks, and if they don’t have the eye for it, well then... !

I think that for the casual photographer almost any inkjet printer will produce acceptable photos, if used with OEM cartridges or refilled with a good refill ink with a good colour match.

If you use a cheap point-and-shoot camera or a telephone camera, the printer might not be the weakest link.

I bought a cheap camera at a sale at Aldi, it is a Traveler DC-12, probably made in the far East for Aldi. It is nothing special, but it has 15 capture modes (!) one is "Natural green", "Select this mode when you want to capture the green scenery background such as forest. This mode help brighten the colours."

Here is a shot of a Norwegian landscape using default settings, click to enlarge:



And here a similar shot with the enhanced green setting. I wonder if somebody would wrongly blame the printer? Click to enlarge:



It can be even worse, click to enlarge: