Technical
Apile of technical information around having me produce prints for you. Please carefully read and contact me if you have any questions. The important information is the details around the resolution and the margins.
Resolution
In order to get decent print quality your files needs to be at least 180ppi at the final print size. This means that for an A3 print it needs to be at least 2778 x 2034 pixels or for an A2 4011 x 2906 pixels.
Margins
Because I primarily deal with cut sheet A3 or A2 media the printer does have unprintable margins. On three edges of an A3 the margin is 5mm and on the 4th edge it is 23mm. On an A2 sheet, the 2 long edges and 1 of the short edges are 5mm, while the 4th short edge is 23mm. What this means is that the printable area of an A3 sheet is either 392x287mm or 410x269mm (depending on how I orient the sheet in the printer) and the printable area of an A2 sheet is 566mmx410mm (this can only be feed one way).
Size
Please set the output size in your file. There is confirmation of this output size as part of the file submission process but it will make my life so much easier if you set this correctly in the file.
If you are wanting prints smaller than A3 then you might want to gang multiple images up on an A3 sheet as A3 is the smallest size I offer. If you submit one image and ask for an A4 print you will get charged for an A3 output and the A4 print will be centred on the A3 sheet.
Inks
The Canon iPF5000 uses 12 of Canon's Lucia inks (Cyan, Light Cyan, Magenta, Light Magenta, Yellow, Photo Black, Matt Black, Grey, Light Grey, Red, Green and Blue). Independent advanced face testing by Williams Research has shown these inks to last over 100 years under test conditions.
Printer
The Canon iPF5000 prints at 2400dpi resolution (it has lower resolutions that I don't use). It's internal controller prints 12bits of colour information. In order to fully utilise the printer, all printing that I do from Photoshop is via the 16bit export print plugin.
File Types
As all printing is done from Photoshop, I can accept any file format that Photoshop will open. Please ensure that your files have embedded ICC colour profiles. If you are working in high bit depth colours I can take advantage of this extra colour information so please leave in 16bit rather than reducing to 8bit. Please ensure that your layers are flattened (which will help to minimise the filesize)
As the upload form is limited to 25Mb, choosing a ZIP compressed .TIF file when saving from Photoshop is a good choice. This is a lossless compression and allows you to save 16bit images. Other option is to save as a .PSD and then zip the resultin file before uploading.
If required I can also print Acrobat PDF files if you are working in Illustrator or Indesign. Please ensure that PDF files are created with embedded colour profiles for accurate colour conversion.
Softproofing
On the media page you can download current ICC profiles that describe how the printer output colour on that particular media. These profiles can be used to proof output on a calibrated screen. To do this download and install the profiles (on a PC download and right click and select Install Profile. On a Mac, download and copy to the Libray/ColorSync/Profiles folder) then within Photoshop select View->Proof Setup->Custom, select the profile of the media and turn on the paper simulation.
Media
Each media does treat colour differently and has a different whitepoint and blackpoint. Both whitepoint and blackpoint are shown on the media page in CIE L*a*b*. In regards to the whitepoint, a positive b* number will indicate a warm yellow type paper, while a negative b* number will be a colder bluer paper (which to our eyes is very white, especially in the presence of optical brighteners (OBA)). The lower the L* number in the blackpoint the blacker the dark areas in the print will appear (ie the higher the dMax)
Sharpening
Unless requested, I will not do any additional sharpening to your images. I recommend the either Pixel Genius Photokit Sharpener or TLR Professional Sharpening Toolkit for performing inkjet output sharpening.
