What Ken said. I gave up long ago trying to produce prints from an
inkjet. I either had to use very expensive manufacturer's inks and
papers or do ridiculous amounts of testing and calibration for anything
less expensive. But chemical prints from digital images work as well as
they ever did for film and are much cheaper. The trick there is to
control the process yourself. Pick a supplier who will print "as is"...
no color adjustments or sharpening allowed. You do it all ahead of
time. The only printing I do today is an occasional 4x6 or 5x7 print
and sometimes a 4x6 or 5x7 cropped from an image produced for a much
larger print just to check (mostly) the sharpening.
As Ken said, pick a larger print size and paste your smaller images into
the larger one. Print them all as one image and, using a good paper
cutter, cut them apart.
As I was writing this I wondered if FastStone has the capability to
produce this array of prints on a single, larger image. I think it does
by using the "Contact Sheet Builder" under the "Create" menu. See the
FastStone Tutorial PDF for how to use it. There are two examples there
where the first is a very detailed set of instructions to create what it
was first intended for... a "contact sheet" of thumbnails. But he gives
a second example more like what you're trying to do where he used it to
create a page for a sales brochure for selling his house.
I also wondered if there were any practical size limits to what the app
can work with. The app expects the output page size to be specified in
pixels and has a 10,000 pixel limit on both height and width. But I
think that's not a problem for you. At 300 dpi that gives you 33.3" or
40" at 250 dpi. Good luck.
Chuck Norcutt
On 2/2/2014 1:22 PM, Ken Norton wrote:
>> Getting up at 6am does not agree with me !
>
> Which is why few of us get sunrise photographs.
>
>
>> There was (in my opinion) good foot traffic;
>> 50 - 60 % elderly locals and NZ tourists, the remainder being 30% Asian
>> and Indian tourists and Australian, Brit, USA, EU tourists.
>
> I grew up in a touristy area which had various arts festivals about
> every weekend all summer long. Pretty standard breakdown. The elderly
> locals will go for something crafty that shows something very unique
> and historic. The tourists will buy something that is representative
> of the area.
>
>
>> I didn't
>> sell a thing, and it wasn't price as the decisions to not buy were made
>> long before price entered the decision train. Only ONE customer asked
>> about price.
>
> Ouch. But we've all been there/done that.
>
>
>> Clearly it's format and content; maybe mainly format as I
>> had lots of compliments about the photos but not necessarily from
>> potential buyers. My format is mainly 'A4', with larger prints 8 x 12
>> and 12 x 18 inches.
>
> I have also found that the standard crops and measurements aren't
> moving as much. Wide, ahem, VERY wide borders rule.
>
>
>> His costs are low; he now shoots entirely film 6 x 17, and
>> prints and processes it in his own darkroom. He prints on Fuji Crystal
>> Archive paper which costs him less than $10 ( I forget the exact amount)
>> per square metre, which converts to about $1.25 per print. He sells them
>> sleeved, un-matted, for $10 each for his regular size with larger sizes
>> priced at $20 and $100.
>
> "Craft Pricing" combined with "Craft Format". The "Great Lie" about
> digital being less expensive than film rears its ugly head when it
> comes to bulk output. I know what my costs are for B&W and it's a
> small fraction of digital. A tiny fraction. I really don't want to
> share what my costs for the most premium-grade fiber-based B&W paper
> is, but it's so low as to be almost laughable.
>
>
>> I think that in the short term at least I will create 6 x 17
>> images using my E3 and tripod, and use Hugin to make small panorama
>> shots, and crop to the desired dimensions using the crop feature of
>> Faststone.
>
> I wouldn't necessarily do that, but I would be experimenting around
> and seeing what formats and subjects sell and milk them.
>
>
>> How to get them printed is another and serious matter as my
>> usual printer ( Photo and Video in Merivale) doesn't have pano shots as
>> part of their print menu.
>
> Combine multiple pictures to an ordered print and cut them apart later.
>
>
>> I DO have a Canon S9000 printer (which I got
>> virtually for a song) which I have not fired up seriously. Somebody in
>> this list told me I should use encapsulating paper in this printer but I
>> have not investigated availability, sizes and price for the paper.
>
> At this point, absolutely not. My old S9000 prints are still holding
> up, but the latest papers aren't actually as good because of
> manufacturing cost savings and the fact that all the developoment has
> migrated to pigment.
>
>
--
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