The Art of Printing and Selling Your Art
Instructor: Mark English                                                                              Duration: 4 Weeks            Cost: $195            Starts: Sep 12, 2008

Most of us have been led to believe that with a desktop ink-jet printer and Photoshop, it's easy to create archival prints of exceptional quality; rivaling or exceeding that which was possible only through a professional photo lab just a few years ago. But as most of us have also discovered the path to creating great prints is akin to a mine-field, with numerous hurdles and pitfalls along the way! It no longer has to be that way!!!

Mark English, a photographer and fine art printer with over 30 years experience, brings his knowledge and expertise to PPSOP with four of the most concise, thorough and remarkably easy to understand lessons ever found on the subject of digital printing. Mark will cover it all, including color profiles, color space, sharpening, the multitude of paper choices as well as framing, matting and pricing your work! PLUS, each week every student can upload three images for Marks evaluation and critique on what if anything needs to be done to that image before making it into a digital print (and the choice in subject matter is wide-open).

Lesson#1 starts with an easy to understand discussion on the calibration and profiling of your display and output devices as well as setting up Photoshop for proper color management in a "Closed Loop Environment", for consistent predictable color.

Lesson#2 places the emphasis on the origin of a great print. Not only does this include a high quality file, but Mark will discuss issues relating to proper exposure and file type choice. Mark will also talk about choosing an appropriate editing color space for use in Photoshop: sRGB, AdobeRGB(1998) or something else?? And, Mark shares several of his secrets on optimizing RAW processing for fine art printing, where he unveils those new controls in the latest versions of Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom.

"NOTHING CAN RUIN A GREAT SHOT QUITE LIKE A BAD PRINTING JOB!"

Lesson#3 addresses the issue of digital print sharpening, the "myth" of print resolutions and print size. Nothing on the topic of digital printing involves more "Black Magic and Voodoo" than the topic of sharpening. In all of Mark's experience, including numerous trial and errors, he has concluded that there is only ONE method to create a sharpening workflow that consistently works time and time again. In addition, Mark will also cover those often confusing issues surrounding the choice of an appropriate print resolution, as well as discuss the oft misunderstood topic of "just HOW BIG of a print can I expect from my digital files?"

Lesson#4 brings this intensive 4-week course to a close and with an even much louder bang than when it began. Mark will not only cover how to correctly set up Photoshop for printing, including the use of output profiles and rendering intents, but he will also share his secret on how to correctly soft-proof your images! The paper and ink savings from just this one lesson will far exceed the cost of this course in only a matter of months. In addition, Mark will discuss some of the major issues surrounding archival matting, framing and display and pricing your work based on current business models.

To obtain maximum benefit from this course you should be comfortable with basic RAW processing and image adjustments in Photoshop. You should also own and be familiar with the operation of a dye or pigment based printer suitable for fine art printing, such as the Epson R1800, R1900, 2400 or, 3800; the Canon PIXMA Pro9500, ipf5000, or similar printers.

Although Mark's lessons are built around the use of Adobe PhotoShop CS3, it is NOT necessary to upgrade from Photoshop CS2 since it is sufficiently similar. However, if don't have CS2 or CS3, you can download direct from Adobe a 30 day trial for FREE at www.adobe.com. If you will be downloading the 30-day FREE trial, DO NOT do the download until the morning of April 17thth. Otherwise your free trial will expire before May 16th, the end of class.