Evaulating Photographic Prints

A lot of people think that the best viewing screens + monitor and printer calibrations + color management = the best photographic prints. After the fact, a lot of others do not even evaluate their prints. They get it from a lab, or out of their printer, and it looks good to the eye, and they are done.

What a lot of people do not do, is check their photo prints under proper lighting conditions and really spending time looking at the detail and color of each print made. A color-corrected print-viewing booth for instance, provides a controlled viewing environment.

Just the way you would check your photo negatives over a lightbox, you need to also use proper light to evaluate your prints.

I just found a great article on the Canon Digital Learning Center that talks about 5 tips to evaluate your prints during a printing workflow.

Canon DLC: Article: Five Tips to Consider When Evaluating Prints

This helped me drastically, and now, I am producing close to perfect prints of my work when outputting them through any printer.

Are you guys performing print evaluations, and if so what are your techniques. Any feedback is welcome! Thanks.

Since I drastically prefer emulsion based prints to ink prints, I send mine off to labs. On receipt, I do evaluate the print under daylight balanced light. If I need to examine details, I pull out an ancient loop. Same as I did prior to digital. Great point though!