Digital Prints

268
Mastering Digital Printing
The top portion of the Print menu is easy to understand, but the bottom (Show More
Options checked), includes many options. I’ll explain four of them.
Option A: Using the Printer’s Basic Settings
Back in the Print menu (Figure 8.14), I confirm the scaling and sizing of the print and see
a preview of how the image is positioned on the page. In the important Color Management
section at bottom, I select Source Space > Document > Document: Adobe RGB (1998).
This was the working space to which I had converted the image file as it is my preferred
working space. If there were no working space associated with this file, it would read
instead Document: untagged RGB.
For Print Space I select Profile > Same As Source because I want to start with the basic
options at first. Same as Source means that there is no color conversion from working
space to printer space going on (other than at the operating system level); the file is sent
directly to the printer driver. This can yield very different results depending on the platform
and driver color tools being used. For example, HP’s color utility ColorSmart III
assumes everything is sRGB, which in my case it isn’t. Windows assumes the same thing,
but ColorSync on the Mac is much smarter, assuming I know what I’m doing and recognizing
whatever working space I have. You’ll see the result in a later section.
All looks good, so I now select the Print button on this screen (top right). When that happens,
I am presented with another small screen that allows me to quickly confirm settings
I’ve already made, but more importantly, the third drop-down menu is my entrance into
the key printer options, with the most important under the Paper tab being the Paper
Type, Quality, and Color (see Figure 8.15). Here is where I make important choices, selecting
my paper (Photo Satin), Quality (Best), and Color (ColorSmart III, HP’s primary
color utility). Note that Epson and Canon have similar screens that look slightly different.
There’s also a cool Summary option that let’s me save and see what all my settings are
and even fax them to someone else.
Figure 8.15 Deeper levels of printer
settings for this printer include a few
basics (top left), the all-important
Paper Type, Quality, and Color settings
(middle), and a summary of the
settings chosen (bottom).