Printing series coming this summer (UPDATED: July 22, 2010)

I am pleased to announce that I will be taking on the challenge of printing and hopefully answering a lot of questions you’ve had about how to get started, how much it really costs, which printer is right for you, the digital printing workflow and much more.

Team Epson

Thanks to assistance of Photoshop and Photography legend, Vincent Versace, I’ve teamed up with Epson Professional Imaging Division’s Marketing Manager, Dan 'Dano' Steinhardt to discuss how to get started with Epson Professional Imaging products. They have been kind enough to send a Epson 3880 (B&H & Adorama) 17” wide printer as well as a huge assortment papers and extra inks. I’m also very excited to announce that one of New York’s top fashion photographers, and Epson printing guru, Douglas Dubler is on board to help me get the best prints possible in a way that is “so easy even a chimpanzee can do it.” Check out my Nik Summit – Final Day Wrap Up article to learn more about Douglas, and stay tuned to what is sure to be a great discussion about printing on the Epson platform.

UPDATE: The legendary Greg Gorman (from my Top Photographers list) has been gracious enough to share his workflow with me so I’ll have some useful tips from this industry icon in an upcoming article.

Team Canon

I am also very excited to announce that thanks to the help of Canon Professional Imaging's Rich Reamer, Jim Walters and Patrick Owen MacElroy, I’ll be doing the same types of articles for Canon as I will be doing for Epson. Canon has been kind enough to send me the all-new iPF6300 24” wide format printer (B&H and Adorama) for this series as well as an assortment of paper and ink. I’m in the process of getting some great new shots for this series using my Canon EOS 1D Mark IV and the all-new Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM lens to show how great your prints can be straight out of the camera, without any post-processing. Of course, I’ll also be showing shots that are post-processed and how to get the right digital workflow for your end-to-end printing workflow with Canon.

UPDATE: Canon Explorer of Light and Photoshop Guru, Eddie Tapp has also shared his printing workflow with me for getting the best results from Canon iPF printers.

Details Coming Soon

It is too early to share all the details, but I can tell you that I will be performing a series of long-term tests this summer using a professional printer from each platform along with OEM papers and ink all provided courtesy of Epson and Canon. XRite, Solux, ColorBurst, ColorByte, Ergosoft and GTI have all joined in sponsoring this series so it is sure to be an exciting series!

For those of you who are wondering, I am not a master printer. In fact, I suck at printing and have always recommended that people outsource their printing. However, printing is a critical part of the end-to-end creative process to realize your true vision, so I’ve decided to tackle the problem head on. I plan to start off with no assistance from either team to make the mistakes we all have made, but from there I plan to utilize the resources of each team to educate on how to get the best results (and how to address a lot of common mistakes). In fact, I hope to even have a checklist for you that will hopefully give you all the info you need to print an image with confidence on the first try without wasting paper and ink doing test prints.

Share your thoughts

While I think I have all of the hot topics on my to-do list, and I plan to take on a series of myths about digital printing, I am happy to hear your thoughts about the topic of printing. Feel free to sound off about your bad experiences, what you’d like to learn, why you aren’t printing yourself now, and more. I may use your feedback to tackle some of YOUR issues head on from my team of experts to help get you out of printing hell and into printing nirvana!