Quote Originally Posted by senojbor View Post
I think the big issue here is to learn that prints whatever printer/lab you use you will be printed differently both in colour and luminosity than what is displayed on a PC monitor. I notice that there is a good tutorial on soft proofing and calibration on the main site on how to manage that.

It's a very in depth complex module on it's own but worth learning if the aim is to produce high end prints.
But it's fairly straight forward after a while when people get use to it.
I mainly use the better pro labs, although I print my own stuff which I only find fairly acceptable even on decent paper.
I find though printing my own stuff rather time consuming, limited and not really cost effective in the long run.
Actually, my screen / workspace has been set up so that what I see there is very close to what my prints come out looking like. Soft proofing emulates what the print will look like on the specific paper, so it can be a useful tool, but not all print makers use it and use test prints to evaluate the image. In fact, the two master print makers I studied print making under do not soft proof., but rely on test prints to evaluate the image. I tend to use the same approach, which is no different than how I did both B&W and colour prints in the "wet" darkroom.

In terms of making good prints, that is the same as any other aspect of photography; it takes time and practice. The image has to be prepared (mostly dodging and burning) before it will print well as the dynamic range of a print is generally 2 - 2.5 ev lower than what we see on a screen.

I personally prefer prints as they reveal details that are lost when we downsample an image to display on a screen.