In the last article we learned about different print mediums and how they suit different photographs. Once you’ve selected your photos to print and have an idea of what you might want to print them on, it’s time to begin preparing the file for print. In my view there are four things you need to do specifically when it comes to post-processing in order to end up with the best-looking physical print. Those are:
Let’s take a look at each in detail
“I’ve tried printing a few photos but they always come out so much darker than my monitor and the colors don’t look right!”
Does that describe your experience with printing at all?
If you want to create a print that closely resembles the photo you see on your screen, you absolutely must use a calibrated monitor. This ensures that you are seeing accurate colors and brightness in your photos.
First off, you should be using a monitor that has adjustable controls for brightness, color temperature, and gamma. Ideally you also want one that reproduces 100% of the AdobeRGB and sRGB color spaces, as these are the most common color spaces used by printers and print labs.
Once you have a decent monitor, there are two ways you can calibrate it: the quick and dirty method, and the hardware method.
QUICK AND DIRTY METHOD: Using your home photo printer or a print lab, print around 5 photos that each display a variety of colors. Compare those prints to the photos as you see them on your computer, then use your monitor’s color and brightness controls to make the monitor look as close to the prints as possible. This process will help your next prints match more closely. I used this technique for years and got surprisingly great results from it.
HARDWARE METHOD: A more accurate method is to use an external calibration device like a DataColor Spyder or Calibrite DisplayPlus. These tools will measure the colors your screen is displaying and compare them to the known standard version of the colors. Then they will create a monitor calibration profile that your computer will use to adjust the colors it displays so that they’re as close to ideal as possible. This way when you’re editing, it helps ensure that the colors you see will be closely matched to the colors that your printer creates. We will talk more about this proofing process in the next articles.
Not only should you be using a calibrated monitor, but for the best possible results you should be editing in a dim room with consistent, even lighting. This is because the ambient light levels where you are editing will affect your perception of the photos you see on your monitor. For example, if you are editing in a super bright room, you will very likely need to increase the brightness of your monitor so that you can see it better. But this means that your prints may turn out much darker by comparison.
Once you are sure that your monitor is adjusted to calibrated standards, you’ll want to make sure your print file is as high quality as possible. I already talked about steps you should take in the field in order to accomplish this, but there are lots of things you can do in post-processing as well to ensure your printed photo looks as clean, detailed, and noise-free as possible.
In 2025, one of the best steps you can take is to run your photo through an AI clean-up tool, such as DxO PureRaw, Topaz DeNoise AI, or even the AI Denoise in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. In general, all of these tools do an incredible job of reducing grain and improving detail in your photos.
For some of these tools, like Adobe Denoise and DxO PureRaw, you need to run them at the beginning of your post-processing workflow to create a brand new, ultra-clean raw file. With others, like Topaz, you can use them at the beginning to make a new raw file, or at the end to simply clean up your image and save it as a TIF file.
In any case, I consider this a critical step in the print process.
A common pitfall when it comes to printing is to spend endless hours tweaking the photo in post processing before sending it to print. There’s a sense that because a print is permanent, the processed photo has to be “perfect” before it can go to the printer. So you start to add a little more saturation there, lift the shadows here, pull down the highlights in the sky, etc. But very soon you find yourself lost in the process, chasing some impossible “ideal,” and you can no longer see the forest for the trees. That is to say, you are no longer able to look at your image with an objective eye.
The solution is simple: when you find yourself making endless tweaks to a photo, STOP, and walk away from your computer. Give your eyes and brain time to rest and return to a neutral point. Take at least 10 minutes, or an hour, or even a day. When you return to the computer with fresh eyes you will instantly see whether your photo is looking good or whether it actually does need any final adjustments.
Finally, because printing IS permanent, it’s nice to know what your print will look like before you actually print. Companies like Adobe have developed ways of previewing your photo on your computer in order to simulate what it will look like as a print.
Every printer, paper type, and print medium has something called an ICC Profile, which basically helps us understand how they represent certain colors. For example, different printers use different types of inks, in different shades, densities, and brightnesses. Different papers reflect light in different ways or absorb ink in different ways. Traditional photo prints use a chemical process to create colors and details. So when you tell a printer to print the color red (which can be shown perfectly accurately on a computer monitor), all of these factors affect how that red will actually look in real life. And the ICC profile of these printers and paper are the key to understanding how that translation from the computer to real life will happen.
So once you have finished processing a photo and it looks good to you, you can soft proof the photo using the ICC Profile for your printer and paper/media to get a sense of how the image will look once it’s printed. This allows you to then make further tweaks or adjustments so the simulated print looks the way you wish.
Soft proofing is a big topic in its own right, so we will take a more detailed look at how to do it in the next article. Stay tuned!
Do you have any techniques you use when post-processing to ensure that your prints come out as beautiful as possible? Let us know in the comments!
Joshua Cripps is a renowned landscape photographer who has garnered worldwide acclaim for his breathtaking images of our planet’s wild places. His photos have been published by the likes of National Geographic, NASA, CNN, BBC, and Nikon Global.
The Mt. Whitney Gallery was founded in 2023 by Joshua Cripps as a way to share his passion stunning landscapes of the Sierra Nevada and beyond.
Set at the foot of the breathtaking Sierra with a view of the range’s highest peaks, the gallery features large format, museum-caliber fine art prints of Josh’s signature photographs.
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