COLOR

Can you print this?

The most extreme colors usually come from backlighting, where the sun is shining directly through brilliantly colored leaves, which will most often be red.

Printing the way you would see them in real life is impossible, because of the intensity of the sunlight that simply cannot be matched, and if it could be the print would looked washed out.

So, you use a printing process with the largest color gamut, view the print under “daylight” illumination (technically 5000°Kelvin, which is easily achieved with LEDs, and can be a bright as you wish).

What is the largest color gamut possible from printing: dye transfer, simply because pure dyes can be used for printing. In practice today, the best ink jet printers are remarkably good. I use an Epson p9000 which use 10 colors of ink (dye transfer uses just three, the subtractive primaries: cyan, magenta and yellow). Dye transfer prints, however, placed in direct sunlight will fade a a few days.

Modern ink just printers, such as the Epson p9000 use pigments rather than dyes and are far more light stable and get around color limitations by using 10 different colors of ink. In the case of the Epson: cyan, light cyan, magenta, light magenta, yellow, black, light black, light light black, orange and green. The results are pretty amazing. So far I have not found an image where the printer with semi-gloss paper, cannot match what I see on my LED monitor.

There are two conclusions: 1. You cannot match scale except for macros; 2. you can match most colors; 3. you can do pretty well with detail; 4. you must be willing to adjust your origial so all is within range. This means the very brightest areas must be made less bright and the darkest areas less dark. Why? to stay within what the printer can do and to adjust the image the way your eyes would do in real life, the pupils close when the light is too bright, and open when it is not bright enough.