Do your photography prints look flat and dull when compared to your monitor? Follow these 4 steps to print your photography precisely as they appear on your monitor. 

1) Buy a monitor calibration device and calibrate your monitor regularly. Here is a great one: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1649339-REG/calibrite_ccdis3_colorchecker_display_pro.html

2). Match the Colorspace to all of your devices. Colorspace is a set of defined colors that guide the output of the colors to the medium you are using, such as your camera, monitor/display, printer, Lightroom, and/or Photoshop. All must match. The 3 most common colorspaces are sRGB, Adobe 1998, and ProPhoto. Determine what colorspaces work best for your workflow. I have chosen to shoot, edit and print all my artwork using Adobe 1998, and convert my images to sRGB later if I need them for web use. Youtube has tons of videos on how to set the proper colorspace for all of your devices. 

3). ICC Paper Profiles. Gone are the days of buying generic printing paper and printing. To get the correct consistency, only purchase professional printing papers from companies that will provide you with the ICC paper profile for that specific paper. I use 3 main companies: Canon, Ilford, and Moab; each company provided a free ICC print profile for the paper I selected.

Following the above 3 steps greatly increased results consistently, but I found I always needed to brighten the image by 10 points, add yellow and red to warm the image, and boost the contrast to make the image print identical to my monitor. Step #4 is the magic. I am not receiving compensation for any part of this document, I am simply stating what I have done to get superior printing results.

4). Custom ICC Printer Profiles. Every printer will render colors differently, even 2 of the same printers will render colors differently. For example, "Ferrari Red" is a specific color of red. It's hex #ff2800 and is composed of 100% red, 15.7% green, and 0% blue. It would be a shame to render an image of a Ferrari in a color that is the incorrect color/hue of red. To complicate things further, sRGB has 16.7 million colors available at 8 bits per channel. Adobe 1998 and ProPhoto are both larger colorspaces numbering colors into the trillions when you work in 16 bit. This leaves a huge possibility of colors being rendered incorrectly, hence, giving you a print that doesn't match your monitor or funky tones on the web. The magic for me was to purchase custom ICC profiles. I used Michael at https://www.greatprinterprofiles.com/. 

To create a custom profile, you simply download a color grid from the custom ICC profiling company which will contain a myriad of colors, and print it on the paper and printer you will use. Then you send the printed document to the profiler who will scan the document. Any color that needs to be corrected will be adjusted and a new ICC profile will be created and sent to you. You load the ICC profiles into your printer and computer and use that ICC profile every time you use that paper. I have created 3 custom ICC profiles and my prints look identical to my monitor every time. I have not needed to make any adjustments before printing since purchasing the custom profiles.

Relieve your printing frustrations by following the steps above.  However you decide to proceed, good luck and good light to you.

About David Williams: I specialize in African Wildlife, landscape images, and Indigenous People Cultural Photography. See my work at https://www.davidwilliamsphotography.com https://davidwilliams.photoshelter.com/index or Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/david_williams_photography_