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Author Topic: Printing from lightroom to pixma pro 10  (Read 10488 times)

MLrgb

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Printing from lightroom to pixma pro 10
« on: May 22, 2017, 10:09:33 pm »

Hello everyone!
 It's my frist on your forum and also new to digital printing. I just bought a used canon pro 10 and so far it seems to be OK :). I work with windows 10 and lightroom 5. My first question is how do i know the number of DPI I need if i want to make a 13X19 print compare to a 4x6. My second Question is when I am in the print section of lightroom in the print job section why don't I see if I print in 16 bits (like in MAC) and how do I know if I do print in 16 bits. THank you!
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NAwlins_Contrarian

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Re: Printing from lightroom to pixma pro 10
« Reply #1 on: May 22, 2017, 11:21:30 pm »

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My first question is how do i know the number of DPI I need if i want to make a 13X19 print compare to a 4x6.

There is no fixed answer, and much depends on your personal standards and the subject-matter of the image. At normal viewing distances 300 ppi for a 4x6-inch print should produce very close to all the quality you can see, but if you're very picky or really look closely, then AFAIK the Pro-10 might benefit from as much as 600 ppi. The close-viewing limit pertains equally to 13x19 inch  prints, but as a practical matter, IMOPO a good file of 200 ppi can produce a very nice 13x19 inch print. (And 600 ppi at 13x19 inches requires a 100 MP medium format digital back--do you have one of those?) I have had a few 24x30-inch prints made from 16 MP files, i.e., 136 ppi, and at normal viewing distances most people think they look very good. And I have framed in my office an 11x14-inch print from a crop from a 6 MP camera, giving me 175 ppi, which only the fairly picky would find lacking in resolution / detail.

But to hint at two points of elaboration, in case you're interested:

(1) If part of what you're looking for is to know exactly what pixel dimensions to which you need to scale an image to make a certain-size print at a certain nominal resolution, then I suspect you'll find it quite difficult to get an accurate answer (tons of people will give you approximate answers, which are easy to calculate). There are many variables. For example, I strongly suspect that "300 ppi" minilab printers are really 12 ppmm, i.e., 304.8 ppi. But then paper dimensions are inexact, or exact in metric and approximate in English units, and both inkjets and wet printing machines need to overspray a bit to make sure there are no white borders. In all my years of looking, I found one lab that that told you the exact dimensions its printers used; I remember, e.g., that their 8x10 inch prints used exactly 2456x3070 pixels. And of course the way inkjets simulate continuous tones with 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, or 11 colors makes it a lot more complex--see the next point.

(2) You used "DPI" and may be confusing that with "PPI". For inkjets that's a big difference. DPI is Dots Per Inch. The Pro-10 can lay down a pattern of up to 4800 x 2400 dots per inch. But those dots aren't exactly dots of any visible color, but dots of the eight colors of ink it can print. PPI is Pixels Per Inch. What you edit are pixels. Pixels are much closer to representations of continuous tone. At the simplest level, if you sent a 300 ppi image to a 4800x2400 dpi inkjet (like the Pro-10), then the printer can put whatever combination of dots of its 8 ink colors in a 16x8-pixel matrix (the matrix being 1/300 x 1/300 inch) to simulate continuous tone. So if you have a dark green pixel in a 300 ppi picture that you print with a Pro-10, it can fill that 16x8-pixel matrix with some combination of cyan, yellow, gray, and black spots of ink. But really it's even more complicated than that. With sophisticated software, there's no reason why a printer can't be controlled more along the lines of--this is a simplified example--'You fed me a 3264x4912-pixel image and asked for a 13x19-inch print. I'll have to crop a little from the long side, but in real terms I have 3264 pixels / 13 inches = 251 ppi to work with. If I print at 2400x2400 dpi, then I will have 2400 /251 = 9.6x9.6 dots of ink with which to simulate the color of each pixel. I'll calculate exactly for that.' So theoretically--I doubt this is much of a practical issue!--with inkjets the higher PPI resolution you insist they print (e.g., 600 instead of 300), the less well they can simulate continuous tone; and conversely, the lower PPI you let them print at, the better they can simulate continuous tone. And really, the algorithms can get a lot more complicated. I suspect that almost all of us shouldn't worry about such things, and least unless we're writing printer-driver code or printing software.
« Last Edit: May 22, 2017, 11:25:37 pm by NAwlins_Contrarian »
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Printing from lightroom to pixma pro 10
« Reply #2 on: May 23, 2017, 08:54:42 am »

Hello everyone!
 It's my frist on your forum and also new to digital printing. I just bought a used canon pro 10 and so far it seems to be OK :). I work with windows 10 and lightroom 5. My first question is how do i know the number of DPI I need if i want to make a 13X19 print compare to a 4x6. My second Question is when I am in the print section of lightroom in the print job section why don't I see if I print in 16 bits (like in MAC) and how do I know if I do print in 16 bits. THank you!

Second question first: In the LR Print Module, right-side column, bottom, "Print Job" panel, you should see a check box for "16-bit output".

First question: Feel safe sending anything between 240-360 PPI to the printer. These pixels will anyhow be resampled to suit the native resolution the printer works with; for Epson printers that is commonly 360PPI for photographs and 720PPI for vector graphics; for Canon, I believe the comparable numbers are 300/600, though I'm not certain for your model (but you needn't worry about it). The main risk to image quality is sending too few - certainly not less than 180PPI. Don't be concerned about dpi (ink dots per inch - the number you see in the thousands rather than the 100s) - in and of itself this number is not very informative because these printers use complex dithering algorithms for rendering pixels by mixing and laying down the ink dots.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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John Chardine

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Re: Printing from lightroom to pixma pro 10
« Reply #3 on: May 23, 2017, 12:18:15 pm »

No intention to hijack the thread but I have Print Resolution set to 720 ppi in Lr for printing to my Epson p800. Should this be 360ppi or does it make a difference? I've never done the test myself.

Mark D Segal

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Re: Printing from lightroom to pixma pro 10
« Reply #4 on: May 23, 2017, 12:22:49 pm »

No intention to hijack the thread but I have Print Resolution set to 720 ppi in Lr for printing to my Epson p800. Should this be 360ppi or does it make a difference? I've never done the test myself.

720 is recommended for vector graphics and 360 for normal photographs.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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schertz

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Re: Printing from lightroom to pixma pro 10
« Reply #5 on: May 23, 2017, 12:40:15 pm »

No intention to hijack the thread but I have Print Resolution set to 720 ppi in Lr for printing to my Epson p800. Should this be 360ppi or does it make a difference? I've never done the test myself.

I treat this as pretty much the definitive reference.

https://luminous-landscape.com/videos/guide-to-lightroom-4-introduction-advanced/lr4-print-resolution/

There is an advantage to printing photographs at 720 sometimes (if the image is very sharp and has curves or diagonal lines), but you have to pixel peep (ink dot peep?) to see the difference. Most of the time I just keep it at 360. Note that if you do send the data at 720 you need to have the Finest detail box checked in the print driver or the print pipeline will just downsample back to 360 I think.

Mike
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Printing from lightroom to pixma pro 10
« Reply #6 on: May 23, 2017, 12:55:15 pm »

I treat this as pretty much the definitive reference.

https://luminous-landscape.com/videos/guide-to-lightroom-4-introduction-advanced/lr4-print-resolution/

There is an advantage to printing photographs at 720 sometimes (if the image is very sharp and has curves or diagonal lines), but you have to pixel peep (ink dot peep?) to see the difference. Most of the time I just keep it at 360. Note that if you do send the data at 720 you need to have the Finest detail box checked in the print driver or the print pipeline will just downsample back to 360 I think.

Mike

It's also useful to consider what resolution the photo starts with. In LR, make sure View>Guides is set to show dimensions, and in the Print Job panel, uncheck the print resolution box. The actual resolution and linear dimensions will now show in a little box on the upper left corner of the photo. Let us say that shows 16.5 x 11 inches at 365 PPI. But I have my output resolution set to 360 PPI once that print resolution box is checked with a 360 setting chosen. This tells me the print will be downsampled only by 5 PPI, which is trivial. But if I had print resolution set to 720, I'd be upsampling from 365 to 720. While the resampling algorithms in LR are very, very good, why bother doing this and sending 4 times more data to the printer than necessary? Mike is correctly having a hard time seeing the difference, because 360 is said (by knowledgeable industry sources) to correspond roughly with the limit of human visual perception of normal photographic image detail.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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John Chardine

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Re: Printing from lightroom to pixma pro 10
« Reply #7 on: May 23, 2017, 01:11:36 pm »

Thanks for the answers about the Print Resolution box. Also, Mark, good tip about View-Guides and unchecking the Print Resolution box to see a non-printing info line on image size and resolution. BTW, I think this information used to be shown in earlier versions of Lr with View->Show info overlay in the Print module. For some reason this option, which is still in the menu (shortcut "i") does not work. Very good to know where I can get to see the information now.

Dave Rosser

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Re: Printing from lightroom to pixma pro 10
« Reply #8 on: May 23, 2017, 01:15:54 pm »

Second question first: In the LR Print Module, right-side column, bottom, "Print Job" panel, you should see a check box for "16-bit output".

As the OP noted the Windows version of Lightroom does not have the 16-bit output check box.  However Canon do provide a downloadable 16-bit XPS driver for the OP's printer. Once this is installed he will have 2 versions of his printer installed, if he choose to print to the XPS version he will have 16-bit output to his printer.
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Printing from lightroom to pixma pro 10
« Reply #9 on: May 23, 2017, 01:18:48 pm »

As the OP noted the Windows version of Lightroom does not have the 16-bit output check box.  However Canon do provide a downloadable 16-bit XPS driver for the OP's printer. Once this is installed he will have 2 versions of his printer installed, if he choose to print to the XPS version he will have 16-bit output to his printer.

Thanks for correcting this. I left the Windows world 7 years ago and wasn't aware there is this difference in the options provided.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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MLrgb

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Re: Printing from lightroom to pixma pro 10
« Reply #10 on: May 23, 2017, 04:35:54 pm »

Thank you for all your clear and detailed answers very appreciated.  If I read all of you correctly the smaller the picture the more DPI I need like 360 for a 4x6 and 260 for 13x19. For my other question I just looked at what are XPS drivers and I will download them.
Once again thank you!
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Printing from lightroom to pixma pro 10
« Reply #11 on: May 23, 2017, 06:34:29 pm »

Thank you for all your clear and detailed answers very appreciated.  If I read all of you correctly the smaller the picture the more DPI I need like 360 for a 4x6 and 260 for 13x19. For my other question I just looked at what are XPS drivers and I will download them.
Once again thank you!

There is no hard and fast rule that you need 360 for 4*6 and 260 for 13*19. There is, however, a general principle that the smaller the photo, the closer up will be the viewer and therefore the more resolution it may be good to provide; but if you abide by the guidance I provided above you'll be fine whether 4*6 or 13*19, etc.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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NAwlins_Contrarian

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Re: Printing from lightroom to pixma pro 10
« Reply #12 on: May 23, 2017, 06:37:11 pm »

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360 is said (by knowledgeable industry sources) to correspond roughly with the limit of human visual perception of normal photographic image detail.

The often-seen statement is that the limit of ostensibly 'perfect' human vision is about 0.5 minute-of-angle (MOA). A minute is 1/60 of a degree. At 18 inches, 0.5 MOA corresponds to 382 ppi; at 360 ppi, 0.5 MOA corresponds to a minimum viewing distance of 19.1 inches.

But the statement is often made in the context of distance; 0.5 MOA is about 0.52 inch at 100 yards (14.5mm at 100 m). Is it an appropriate limit for photo viewing at close distances? I won't wade into that, except to say that I've heard disagreement on the point. Also, I suspect that this limit refers to seeing a well-defined, high-contrast subject, e.g., a black disc on a white field. I suspect that if you're looking at the moderate-contrast details of green foliage, the limit is somewhat less; and if you're looking at red rock details in a landscape, it's even less. But that's just what I suspect. YMMV!
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Printing from lightroom to pixma pro 10
« Reply #13 on: May 23, 2017, 06:47:02 pm »

I used the word "roughly" advisedly! :-) As a rule of thumb it seems to work.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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NAwlins_Contrarian

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Re: Printing from lightroom to pixma pro 10
« Reply #14 on: May 24, 2017, 12:32:12 am »

Quote
I used the word "roughly" advisedly! :-) As a rule of thumb it seems to work.

That's what my eyes say too. I can recall having seen the limits of 300 ppi only where it was black pigment (toner) on white paper, with certain geometry: back when laser printers were 300 ppi (late 1980s - early 1990s), I could just barely see the 'jaggies' on things like smaller italic letters. Some years later, 600 ppi became typical for laser printers, and I stopped noticing such things, even on close inspection. That sort of maximum-contrast rendering is probably more demanding for the printer / demonstrative of the limits of resolution than 99+% of regular photos.
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Rand47

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Re: Printing from lightroom to pixma pro 10
« Reply #15 on: May 25, 2017, 06:58:30 am »

I treat this as pretty much the definitive reference.

https://luminous-landscape.com/videos/guide-to-lightroom-4-introduction-advanced/lr4-print-resolution/

There is an advantage to printing photographs at 720 sometimes (if the image is very sharp and has curves or diagonal lines), but you have to pixel peep (ink dot peep?) to see the difference. Most of the time I just keep it at 360. Note that if you do send the data at 720 you need to have the Finest detail box checked in the print driver or the print pipeline will just downsample back to 360 I think.

Mike

+1  Jeff Schewe knows what he's talking about.

Rand
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Printing from lightroom to pixma pro 10
« Reply #16 on: May 25, 2017, 08:38:47 am »

+1  Jeff Schewe knows what he's talking about.

Rand

Yes, of course, and if you go to pages 128, 129 and 186 in his "The Digital Print" book, the relevant information is provided. There is nothing on pages 128 and 129 suggesting the usefulness of printing at more than 360; however (and Jeff forward-referenced this), on page 186 he says "if you were printing a textural fine-detailed image and the native resolution, uninterpolated, is above 360 PPI, you'd want to upsample to 720...."; then on page 187, "The advantage of selecting Finest Detail applies primarily to glossy media."

All this boils down to the basic point that the value of moving above 360 is limited to a combination of several specific conditions.
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jrsforums

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Re: Printing from lightroom to pixma pro 10
« Reply #17 on: May 25, 2017, 12:10:46 pm »

Yes, of course, and if you go to pages 128, 129 and 186 in his "The Digital Print" book, the relevant information is provided. There is nothing on pages 128 and 129 suggesting the usefulness of printing at more than 360; however (and Jeff forward-referenced this), on page 186 he says "if you were printing a textural fine-detailed image and the native resolution, uninterpolated, is above 360 PPI, you'd want to upsample to 720...."; then on page 187, "The advantage of selecting Finest Detail applies primarily to glossy media."

All this boils down to the basic point that the value of moving above 360 is limited to a combination of several specific conditions.

As you are aware, Jeff text refers to Epson.  Since the thread references Canon, it would be 300/600, right?
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Printing from lightroom to pixma pro 10
« Reply #18 on: May 25, 2017, 12:55:47 pm »

As you are aware, Jeff text refers to Epson.  Since the thread references Canon, it would be 300/600, right?

Most likely. I hesitate to be definitive because Canon defines the technology as Canon FINE (Full-lithography inkjet Nozzle Engineering); how that translates into specific resolution numbers isn't stated in the specs for that printer model; however I quoted the material from Jeff's book because I think the general guidance it provides would be valid across a range of printing technologies, as it relates more to the limits of human visual perception than to any specific printer PPI, albeit that he references the usual Epson specs. At one point there he also mentioned the Canon 300/600.
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jrsforums

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Re: Printing from lightroom to pixma pro 10
« Reply #19 on: May 25, 2017, 02:49:52 pm »

Most likely. I hesitate to be definitive because Canon defines the technology as Canon FINE (Full-lithography inkjet Nozzle Engineering); how that translates into specific resolution numbers isn't stated in the specs for that printer model; however I quoted the material from Jeff's book because I think the general guidance it provides would be valid across a range of printing technologies, as it relates more to the limits of human visual perception than to any specific printer PPI, albeit that he references the usual Epson specs. At one point there he also mentioned the Canon 300/600.

Well.....For a long time the printer "experts" refused to acknowledge what happened to the ppi of an image when sent to a printer.  Specifically that printers have, based on settings, specific ppi that they need/expect to print and image.  If they do not get that ppi, the will interpolate to that size and, usually, that interpolation is much rougher than what would be done in the computer. Whether this will be seen in the image depends on many factors such as image, ppi sent, printer, paper.  Also, the computer interpolation used to get to the expected printer ppi, which is why better results are obtained be Perfect Resize or Qimage vs bicubic.

It was only recently that people such as Jeff changed their recommendations to be in line with what people such as Mike Chaney had been saying for years.  Jeff is correct with the Epson numbers.  Unfortunately, the terminology of what driver settings relate to which ppi change over time.  Same with the Canon 300/600.  In fact, if I remember correctly, some Canon printer settings can expect 1200.  In any case, sending a different ppi than expected may, or may not, have a visible effect on the image.  To optimize the image, Qimage queries the printer driver to provide the ppi expected, allowing the interpolation algorithms to resize optimally.
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