Interview With Photographic Printing Expert John Fitzgerald

Professional printer John Fitzgerald has been in the business of photographic printing for more than 30 years and in this live photography talk show he provides a wealth of knowledge on getting the best out of your printed images.

He and Karl explore the world of color, discuss the practicalities of displaying your work, debate the importance of monitor calibration and review the pros and cons of different printing papers.

With numerous industry awards for his printing skills, John runs a busy professional printing lab that services a number of printing and processing needs, making him perfectly suited to offer valuable advice to both amateur and professional photographers wanting to print their work.

In this photography talk show:

  • Paper choices for printing – The advantages and disadvantages
  • The longevity of different printing materials
  • RGB vs CMYK
  • Printing profiles – When to use what
  • RIPs and color conversions
  • Advantages and disadvantages of different printing methods
  • Printing for personal use vs for exhibition – What to consider
  • How big can you print an image

For more useful information on printing your work, watch our Pro Lab Printing and Printing Large Prints videos.

Questions? Please post them in the comments section below.

Comments

  1. Hi there, just making my way through this video. I just wanted to double double check something that was mentioned and then swiftly moved on (at approx the 44min mark) and that’s the temperature of the room bulbs in ones checking area; 6500K, to match the D65 calibration of ones screen?

    Maybe someone can help clear this up; I do some art reproduction for local artists, I shoot with older Bowens flashes which usually balance at around 5400K and then the artist and I will colour check the file against the original there and then. I have 5600K filming bulbs on in the room (with no other lights, not even modeling lights) as I figured this is approx daylight and it near enough matches the Bowens heads, ie we’re looking at the original with the same light as the flash light. But should I have 6500K bulbs in the room instead?

    I haven’t got involved in the printing side of it yet but it’s something I’m educating myself about (hence being here!) and have started a dialogue with a local framing company who do giclee prints as a bit of an add-on service, I’m not sure they have any real, deep training in printing either. So I might become ‘Their Guy’ for that, fingers crossed. Cheers!

    1. Hi Peter, 5600K is absolutely fine. Anything in the 5600 to 6600K range will be good enough for print checking they just need to have a high CRI.

  2. Masausuki

    Hi, I was just watching this live talk show and I was wondering about my screen brightness.
    I use Eizo coloredge monitor which is supposed to be sufficient enough to produce Adobe RGB colour appropriately.
    And I use my monitor at 280 cd/m2 for brightness.
    I often see my photos are turning too dark when they are printed. During the talk show John has mentioned that maybe customer’s monitors are just too bright and not printers are printing photos darker.
    Of course it may depends on papers or colour settings.

    But is there any benchmark for the brightness of colour accurate monitors?

    1. Hi, most people run 120 -140 cd/m2. I run 140 and this gives me similar result to my printer in my viewing conditions.

      1. Masausuki

        Hi Karl, thank you very much for your quick response even it’s just right after your live photography show.
        Yes, my monitor was extremely bright. I switched from Mac monitor and apparently that was why I kept it so bright…
        It was very helpful, thank you again!

  3. thanks for the nice talk, but the website of him doesn’t look like there is a lot of fine-art-printing

    1. I have to admit his website is pretty basic but he knows what he’s doing when it comes to printing. John has run a pro lab for over 35 years.

  4. Hi Karl,

    I liked this live talk show very much. I also went to John’s website after watching this video. What a wonderful photographer he is. I am really impressed.

    I would be really grateful if you do a workshop on printing images, where John can take us through the complete printing process. It will help me in learning printing my own images at home, which I have collected during my travel.

    Thanks once again to you and John for this talk show.

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