Hi all. I've been shooting UW photography for a few years, but have never had any pictures printed for displaying. I'm not doing this for selling, don't really think my skills are there yet, but my wife has been prodding me to get some printed for artwork for us. I'm planning on doing either metal or acrylic as medium, any suggestions would be great on that topic. Also what I'm most interested in is after doing any post corrections how do you get your photo files ready to be printed? How do you handles sizing? do you set the jpeg file to the canvas size and shape in photoshop to the size you want the end product? or leave the file as big as possible? also do you leave your pictures at original photo format you shot? Or go for square? Most of my work is macro, I haven't done much wide angle yet. TIA

Printing is whole other universe, there's lots of options these days and the quality can be exceptional. I'll describe what is done for inkjet printing. In general terms you size the image to required dimensions at the native resolution of the printer being used. Printing with archival inks is what I would recommend, a good printer can match the gamut of Adobe RGB but not the brightness range of a quality monitor. I print my own prints on an Epson P880 printer which can do up to A2 size.

The choices of printing medium is quite subjective and personal, I tend to favour archival fibre based papers with a lustre finish. If you want to display prints you need to consider reflections from the print - I tend to not like the ultra reflective media that much. You could have a whole chapter on the choice of media available. I generally print with Ilford gold fibre gloss these days.

The ideal inkjet workflow outline is as follows:

• work on a calibrated monitor - the correct brightness is important, if the monitor is too bright the print will look dark.

• Obtain the profile for the paper of choice from whoever does your printing and soft proof it in photoshop to review any colour changes

• Generally work in Adobe RGB, it has a wider range of colours and modern inkjets can reproduce 90-100% of that colour space.

• Make any adjustments needed while viewing in soft proofing.

• Flatten file, re-size to the required size at the recommended dpi setting

• Re-size in PS or program you use to the linear dimensions (mm, cm, inches etc), generally I would leave a 10mm border around the image, some printers can do borderless but it is more of a problem to deal with.

• Sharpen file and preview it at around 50%

For practical purposes find a quality printing firm that uses inkjets with archival inks and follow their recommendations for file preparation. Pay attention to requirements such as flattening and no alpha channels that may be specified, i generally work with tiff files. You could also buy a printer - but they have specific requirements, large format printers are big! they also need to be used regularly. Your choice of medium will be restricted to what they have on offer. Possibly get some A4 prints done to test out a vendor and to see how the colours look and the general look of the paper you are thinking about

As for format I generally crop to suit the subject to whatever dimensions look pleasing.

I do a lot of large format metal prints on aluminum. 30x24 or 30x30 inches.

The process is pretty easy, mostly.

• Calibrate your monitor to ensure color accuracy (not do easy, needs a device)

• Crop your photos to 4x5 or 1x1 as needed, or what ever format you pick from your print shop

• Export and resize in Lightroom as sRGB color space, 100% quality, and 300dpi. So for a 30" print you resize to 30*300 or 9000 pixels on the longest side.

• Upload to print shop

In the US I use Printique to make my prints. I have had good results from them for many years.

10 hours ago, Dave_Hicks said:

• Export and resize in Lightroom as sRGB color space, 100% quality, and 300dpi. So for a 30" print you resize to 30*300 or 9000 pixels on the longest side.

I have found the greater range of blues/greens in Adobe RGB gives me nicer looking water - this is quite obvious when converting to sRGB for web posting. I firmly believe there is a benefit of using Adobe RGB in UW images. This of course depends on the printing service and whether the printing method and your monitor can accommodate the Adobe RGB colour space. This needs to be confirmed as if you try to print colours that are out of gamut then the results can be unpredictable. sRGB is a safe but somewhat limiting option.

36 minutes ago, Chris Ross said:

I have found the greater range of blues/greens in Adobe RGB gives me nicer looking water - this is quite obvious when converting to sRGB for web posting. I firmly believe there is a benefit of using Adobe RGB in UW images. This of course depends on the printing service and whether the printing method and your monitor can accommodate the Adobe RGB colour space. This needs to be confirmed as if you try to print colours that are out of gamut then the results can be unpredictable. sRGB is a safe but somewhat limiting option.

Print services generaly use sRGB.

4 hours ago, Dave_Hicks said:

Print services generaly use sRGB.

I think it depends on what they are printing with and the medium. Any service printing with an Epson or Canon large format printer using their pigment inks can accept Adobe RGB as these printers cover the 100% of the Adobe RGB colour space. For example in your area this service specifies you should use Adobe RGB : https://www.nwfineartprinting.com/file-preparation.html

If the service has a file preparation page it's generally a good sign. It's even better if they have printer profiles you can download for soft proofing.

It's really important to use a calibrated monitor and also to ensure monitor brightness is set to the correct value of around 100 cD/m2.

7 hours ago, Chris Ross said:

I have found the greater range of blues/greens in Adobe RGB gives me nicer looking water - this is quite obvious when converting to sRGB for web posting. I firmly believe there is a benefit of using Adobe RGB in UW images. This of course depends on the printing service and whether the printing method and your monitor can accommodate the Adobe RGB colour space. This needs to be confirmed as if you try to print colours that are out of gamut then the results can be unpredictable. sRGB is a safe but somewhat limiting option.

I totally agree what regards viewing the photos on a calibrated monitor that has wider gamut than sRGB (BenQ SW270c in my case). aRGB gives better colors...

When it comes to send the photos to a service for printing out, it depends on the service (most have just sRGB or similar and do not not provide a color profile; high end publishers have better printing devices and provide color profiles - aRGB is preferable in such a case).

When I process and view my photos in aRGB and use such a simple service, the end results are less predictable and deviate more from the photo I see in aRGB on the monitor, compared to processing and sending in sRGB. Therefore I prefer to process and send in sRGB, the end result is just more close to what I see on the monitor...

=> Anyway the greatest step for me was switching to a calibrated monitor. Before using a calibrated monitor the end results were pretty unpredictable...

Edited Saturday at 08:35 AM3 days by Architeuthis

On 10/25/2025 at 4:28 PM, Architeuthis said:

I totally agree what regards viewing the photos on a calibrated monitor that has wider gamut than sRGB (BenQ SW270c in my case). aRGB gives better colors...

When it comes to send the photos to a service for printing out, it depends on the service (most have just sRGB or similar and do not not provide a color profile; high end publishers have better printing devices and provide color profiles - aRGB is preferable in such a case).

When I process and view my photos in aRGB and use such a simple service, the end results are less predictable and deviate more from the photo I see in aRGB on the monitor, compared to processing and sending in sRGB. Therefore I prefer to process and send in sRGB, the end result is just more close to what I see on the monitor...

=> Anyway the greatest step for me was switching to a calibrated monitor. Before using a calibrated monitor the end results were pretty unpredictable...

Personally I would use the fact that the print supplier uses Adobe RGB as a deciding factor in choosing a vendor, it indicates they understand colour and are prepared to make the most of their printers to give the best possible prints. You might pay a little more, but to me it's worth it if you are going to display your work. I actually print my own with an Epson P800 and my printer has been profiled so I can soft proof the image before committing to print.

Admin dudes: any chance of pinning this topic? I'm finding it super useful.

I haven't printed anything for over 10 years and have forgotten whatever I learnt about colour management.

And my spider is sure to be useless now.

But I'm feeling a renewed printing urge coming on!

While we are at it, could the printing gurus suggest a user-friendly Mac compatible spider, which works with all types of displays, please?

Might as well get some thoughts on underwater photo-friendly displays too! Say, mid-range prices?

Many thanks in advance...!

If you have not tried an aluminum print yet i highly recommend it. They are clean, sharp and very modern looking. Compared to a traditional framed paper print they are a bargain in large format sizes.