I need some suggestions on printing my fractals. When I print photography it comes out perfect. Just like the photo but my fractals are way too dark. I am trying to print 8x10 from 1600x1200. Tell me what I am doing wrong please. Regards, Diane

Your resolution could be a little higher. First of all I would suggest 2400x3000 for an 8x10. 1) Are you printing using your own printer or a commercial one? 2) Do you print your photography from your computer screen or straight from the camera?

I am having the same problem when I let Windows print a jpg. The color is dark and shifted red somewhat. Printing from some other programs is OK. I think it may have something to do with 'Color Management' but I haven't been able to sort it out.

I am printing from my computer screen using and Epson RX500. The photo qualitites are perfect. Do you think my colors need to be calibrated for fractals? Not sure how to do this. Thanks Diane

Your printing should look fairly close to what you see on your screen. Many times, people have their monitor set too bright. The computer doesn't know or care about the source of the image when it prints. In other words, it doesn't know the difference between a photograph and a fractal. It's all just pixels. What program do you use to print? I suggest Adobe Photoshop. As for Timbuk2, don't print from a JPG. Make sure you render your fractals to a lossless format like BMP to ensure maximum quality. For both of you, here is the acid test. Take your BMP fractal file to a copy center and have it printed out there on a colour laser printer. Have it printed on quality card stock. I use the Xerox DocuColor CS50 for all my work. I find it produces the most vibrant results because of the type of ink it uses. Compare your results with what you see on your screen. This kind of printing is accurate and very inexpensive. PS: Printing full quality colour images on card stock using your own printer is much more expensive.

I agree with Dagfari about the monitor brightness. It's one of the biggest problems I see here - many of the images are so dark you can't discern details or see much of the image. Part of the problem could be either not very good monitors - like my wife's - or the use of LCD monitors with limited gamut. Google monitor calibration and the thing you will see most often is to run your contrast way up and your brightness at 20-50%. This prevents the colors from being washed out and helps the monitor do black properly. It will also make your monitor last a LOT longer, which saves $$ you'll need - to buy gas for your car! lol Maybe your camera is using a different color gamut than your fractal/image editing program. Be careful using a laser printer as your reference - I believe they use the "cmyk" color gamuts/"workspace" - which is more washed out and less vibrant - rather than the "adobergb1982"(sic) gamut of commercial, Durst-Lambda types. Everything I ever printed on the laser printer here at work required me to lower the brightness by 10%, bump the gamma down a notch and raise the contrast 2% with MS PhotoEditor to come close to what I saw on my monitor. There is a big disconnect between what a monitor shows and what prints out (it's why the pro's use Mac instead of Windows PC's, I think) and many times a lot of post tweaking is needed to get them right. It's called "WYSINWYG" - or "what you see is not what you get" - in the printing biz. Print houses know this and that may be why some have cheap print prices but charge $75 per 15 minutes for any tweaks needed, or have $100 "setup" charges. Good luck - make sure to document what you needed to get them looking right so you can reproduce the process on the next image. c-ya! Rick

Thanks to all for your help!! I'll let you know how I make out. Regards, Diane

I print my fractal images from my Canon camera photo printing software... on semi-gloss photo paper... I tell it that I want best quality, and set the print resolution to 1200 or 2400 dpi for my HP 960C printer. I also tell it that the paper I'm using is HP semi-gloss. I would use the HP printer software, but it won't take png as a viable format for printing... grrr! My images are rendered at 1280x960 as png's, and using the above method I get very nice results at 8x10. It uses a heck of a lot of ink though... lol! T.

The standardizing of coloration for digital imaging is only just coming into its own. The term 'color management' appears to have been universally adopted. The intent is for all input and output devices from all manufacturers, i.e. cameras, monitors, printers, etc., to produce identical color results. (See the International Color Consortium website http://www.color.org). However implementation of the standard is far from finialized. Our most advanced printing lab here in Auckland still relies on the eye for the final product, and probably will for the forseeable future. Granted they mostly work with photographs, where slight skewing of color on skin tones can usually be detected. Whereas on fractal images it's hard to detect but, on the other hand, slight color changes can be tolerated without too much drama. For the record, I don't normally print jpg files; I was using that as an example to show that the Windows color managememt settings can be the source of the problem. If the application program does not handle color management then Windows applies its settings, such as when printing from Windows Explorer. Anyway, the resolution loss arising from jpeg compression would not cause uniform darkening or color shift. Surprisingly, to me anyway, inkjet printers are emerging as the highest quality printing devices and produce the best and longest lasting images. Advances in inks and corresponding papers (they must be used together for the best results!) have brought about paper images that can last up to 200 years in archival settings, and 70 years under normal display conditions -- no direct light, minimal exposure to air (it's the ozone that's the problem). These figures are for the latest Epson products. (See the Wilhelm Image Research webpage http://www.wilhelm-research.com) As mentioned above, your monitor screen can be the source of a color management problem. Without an expensive piece of hardware one cannot calibrate it exactly. However the gamma adjustment (available on most modern screens), as well as contrast and brightness, can be set fairly accurately with a freeware program called Quick Gamma. (See http://quickgamma.de/indexen.html)

This is a tip I was given by a professional some years ago and I have been using it ever since. I use an Epson printer, papers and inks, and as I print most of my pictures (and fractals) on glossy paper, when I choose the print media at the printing stage I don't select "Glossy Paper" but "Glossy Film". Give it a try. Cheers Jack Casement

Thanks Guys!! I'm going to check out the sites and download the Quick Gamma. I have a very expensive set up here with the best monitor etc with 80GB so if you know of any more software let me know. I've got plenty of room!! I'm using Photoshop to print by. One of the problems may be that I got a bad batch of photo paper I had hanging around(blonde moment)! I ran out(trying to figure out my problem) so I will know more once I get to the store. I really appreciate all your help. Can anyone recommend a large format printer? I'm really not happy with the one I have and I want to make some images larger than 8x10. Also thinking of getting a laser printer for my logo's etc (any suggestions here)? Regards, Diane

Hi Diane,

There now is another program by the same people that do Quick Gamma called Quick Monitor Profile. It obtains the flourescence data from your monitor (all monitors have this now available for upload), creates a profile and installs it in Windows to use in standardizing. I ran it but haven't yet tested to see if the results are useful.

The documentation is quite good, explaining about this topic in a reasonable amount of detail.

Good luck,
Tim By the way, with respect to archiving, the Epson line appears to be the best. (See the site mentioned before.) All the manufacturers have adequate resolution. The color quality is also very good, so long as you use Epson ink with Epson paper. The pH of the paper must match the ink exactly. Evidently the cyan ink is the one hardest to stabilize. T

Message edited on: 04/14/2005 17:12

Colour Lasers will print up to 11x17 visible on a 12x18 sheet. If you want to go higher than that, you need to find a "large format" printer as you mentioned. Used for professional art reproduction, this is known as Large Format Gicl printing and can be very expensive and more difficult to find than the standard array of colour lasers.

There is an A3 version of my HP 930C - the HP Deskjet 9300 A3+ - it's a standard inkjet jobbie - but my old 930C prints very nice quality (it's the same thing really) Specs are... * PAPER CAPACITY: Up to 150 sheets. * PRINT SPEEDS: 14 ppm black, 11 ppm colour. * PRINT RESOLUTION: Up to 4800 x 1200 optimised dpi. * DUTY CYCLE. 5000 pages per month. * PAPER TRAY. Up to 150 sheets. * OUTPUT. Colour Photo quality, from postcard (A6) to poster (A3+). * PAPER HANDLING. Automatic paper type sensor prevents misprint pages. * SOFTWARE. Features HP Digital Photography, Tiling, Booklet Layout, Watermark, Sepia, Print Preview, Quick Sets, Resizing, Banner Printing and Mirror Image. * DIMENSIONS: 592W x 381D x 233H mm; 10000g. * SYSTEM NEEDS. PC - Windows 98/NT4.0/2000/Me/XP. MAC - OS 8.6 or higher; MS DOS applications. * SUPPLIES. 5164A (black ink), C6578D (Colour ink). * * Requires parallel printer or USB cable. Comes with one black and one colour ink cartridge. Sells here in Australia for $599 (Aussie dollars) - ink cartridges cost $45 (black) and $55(color) Looks pretty sweet to me... lol! T.

Toby Marshall (kymarto) had quite a lot of information about printers that he was sharing a while ago. Perhaps you could ask him. My problem with inkjet printers is that the inks tend to dry up on me before they can be used up so I only ever get a few prints before I have to replace a $30 cartridge :( I also think that you need to be using very white paper. Remember that fractals are naturally backlit!