The Beauty of Fine Art Prints

I love designing digital material but there is something special about having a printed product in your hands. A lot of people talk about print slowly dying out but I believe (and from what I saw at Adobe Max: The Creativity Conference) it is still a powerful communication tool. So when I got the chance to print this gorgeous portrait of my friend, Erica, I was ecstatic.

Process

This fine art print was taken in Victor, Idaho on our photo excursion. I used a beauty dish and an Einstein strobe for the lighting and Erica did all the posing work. I edited the image in Photoshop using retouching tips that I recently learned from Lindsay Adler. As always, I started with Camera Raw Filter and bumped up the blacks and the highlights, along with other small adjustments. I then used spot healing and the patch tool on the skin and to remove any stray hairs that were picking up too much light. I sharpened her eyes and used masked curves adjustment layers to increase the shadow on Erica’s face for more light/shadow contouring.

Original Fine Art Print

Edited Fine Art Print

Lastly, I turned down my screen brightness to about 50% then added a brightness adjustment layer to make my image match what I saw when I was editing at full screen brightness. This is very important to do before any printing is done because your fine art print will ALWAYS print darker than what you see on the screen. This is because screens provide additive light (light coming through the screen) and prints only have subtractive light (light reflecting off the paper). I printed at Alphagraphics in Rexburg, Idaho and had it mounted on white foam core.

On display in the Spori Building at BYU-Idaho

Results

My fine art print is currently hanging in the Spori hallway on the BYU-Idaho campus so if you’re around, check it out! Also, Alessio Andreani has some fantastic fine art prints to show off if you’re looking for more inspiration.