Where does the final appeal of a Creative image lie?

[Vijay Mohan Raj]

A casual thought was expressed by one of my senior photographer colleague that the appeal of creative images get affected when printed. This to me struck a chord. I did get to see those lovely images which won the awards at the BBC Photographer of the Year awards on the net. I also got the opportunity to pick up a printed copy of the award winning images as a supplement to BBC Wildlife magazine. I glanced through the booklet of the award winning images and was really mesmerized with the prints I held in my hand. Infact the images on the net were a pale reflection of the ones in print. The prints evoked more feelings and the impact of relating to the image was much higher on a print.

Coming back to the topic I think the thought of whether the appeal of a creative image gets diminished on a print or the appeal of a creative image sustains only on the web is a moot point. I stay far away from professional labs so I have never had much opportunity to get my creative images printed. I would not be right in passing any comment. I would love to know the views of others….

regards
Vijay Mohan Raj

[praveen]

hi,
my view on the topic is ..the final product is definitely print....could be photographic print or publication....publication has its own problems in producing good results...mostly depends on the quality of the printing...but in the photographic print we do have control over the out put...the experience of seeing a photographic print is far appealing than watching the image on screen....
since i have started photography i have made 12x18 size prints of all images appealing to me....any one coming to see the images i take these prints and show them....that goes even today....i hardly see my old images on screen but very often take my prints and see them....
i also feel the size of the print also has a role in true appreciation of the image....certain images looks good when they are printed large...few images small....from my observations landscape or wide images looks good when printed in larger sizes ...this only an impulsive reaction..i dont know the science behind it..yet to study them....
when we go through coffee table books few images which are double page spread has more impact than smaller size images...most of the time these larger images are simple images...
the resolution of the image also have major role in appreciation....images made with large and medium format has much more details when printed than viewed on screen.... comparison on screen we hardly make out the difference between formats....i ment 35mm,medium and large formats...
regards
praveen

[Pramod Viswanath]

VMR,

Good that you brought up this very interesting topic of discussion. Let me take few stands by commenting my personal thoughts and experiences.

Be it a creative image or a plain portrait, I am a firm believer of "making" images for prints and "seeing" images in prints. The story goes like this - There is a friend of mine who always told me to see the images on prints rather than seeing them digitally. Initially I was vary of taking my images for prints. The aversion was due to several factors:

a) My own confidence levels in terms of printing the images that I have shot.
b) Asset thefts - especially the commercial printing business owners are extremely cunning. Even now I am scared as there is no strong regulation against piracy here in India!
c) Managing the prints or Usage of prints - not sure where our prints can be used. Leave apart the thought of printing our own images for ourselves. We have accepted the fact that only the BIG guys ( with BIG guns ? ) gets recognized . I might sound naive, but that's the reality.

Coming back to the main topic of discussion - after accessing above mentioned points, one day I decided to take the prints of few selected images of mine that I felt, are worth printing. I was just taken aback by the way I started to feel about my own images. In a nut shell, the real value of the image that you have shot MUST BE and WILL BE realised once you see it on paper and not monitor.

What has changed since then:

1) No Cropping - I am vary of cropping my images since I personally feel that the quality of the image degrades drastically upon cropping as we lose pixels. There might be varied argument about this, lets not get into it.

2) Before I press the shutter, I make sure I compose my images on field rather than composing in digital dark room so that I can avoid the statement - "Cropped for composition". This supplements the urge to print.

These are purely my personal thoughts. To summarize, I completely agree with the fact that Creative images ( as well as portraits for that matter ) will have its maximum appeal on prints than an image seen on monitor.

Waiting to see the views of others..

Thanks!

[Ganesh H Shankar]

VMR, I think we are essentially talking about size and resolution here. Printed resolution being 3 to 4 times more than monitor resolution (72 dpi vs 300dpi) with size being equal prints I think will have upper hand at similar size comparisons. Also, when we talk about print we typically talk about size 8x12 or more. At 300 dpi we are talking about 2400x3600 pixels for the print while on screen needs for similar size it translate to about 560x840pixels.
Lots of information in terms of details is lost in the process. You are right, I think last year's award winning BBC's WPOY image (elephant getting out of a water hole) appeared much better on the print than on web. I do however think web/monitor has advantage when we are working with heavily cropped image - while 3x4 print may not make much sense but 210x280 dimension web image can serve several purposes !!

- Regards,
Ganesh.

[Vijay Mohan Raj]

I think we are getting some views here but I would like to reiterate the issue here

" I think the thought of whether the appeal of a creative image gets diminished on a print or the appeal of a creative image sustains only on the web is a moot point."

I feel on the web you can get away with technically not so sound stuff and this not so sound images will certainly affect the impact of the image when you make a print. The point I am trying to make is we all are all the time looking at a display which is LCD based and trying composition, light subject everything. We are heavily influenced by what we see on the instant playback and on our screens. This may look great on our LCD's but how sure are we that it will translate to the print. I think people who are doing their custom prints should really be answering this.

I fully agree with Pramod on not having confidence of 'our'(mine) image can make a good print. I have had not so good experiences in getting mine done.

[image seen on camera lcd screen and print...]

hi,
when i shoot an image it self i have a small idea about the image which would come on my print....composition tones etc....but when shooting composition can be controlled but other aspects need to be seen different...an exposed to right image will look awful on the lcd screen....but i know even if looks awful i can get the correct colours i need for the print....there is a purpose for me to shoot an image looking lighter..i use histogram a lot in creating an image....but using the histogram changes according to situation.....i feel once we are clear on the result we need, i think the image seen on our lcd screen need not trouble us....provided we have understood the lcd screen....i have observed same image varies on different screens....
i feel printing few images and studying them can move us closer to desired results...
regards
praveen

[Ganesh H Shankar]

Till couple of years back I use make my own prints using Epson 1270 photo printer which could make prints up to about 12x18 inches. I had then experimented with different photo papers like matte, glossy, premium glossy, Pictorico's super gloss papers etc. I stopped printing thanks to the dreaded banding issue which use to show up often if I don't make a print for few days. My experience has been if the image has the enough resolution it is possible to match color and contrast as we see on the monitor most of the time (if we have a calibrated workflow of course). After converting the image to paper's color profile (matte, glossy, premium glossy all have different color profiles) color and contrast of the print is almost same as what we can see on the monitor. Of course this does not answer - can we expose only for the print (expose right?) not for the monitor and get superior prints ? May be or may not - I am not sure. What is the reference in this case to do the correction/image processing ? This also does not explain the human aspects of ability to feel the print in hand, ability to see it in different lighting conditions - it is said that prints should be viewed in 5000K light and such light sources can be purchased too.

That said, what is my preference ? wish I could see all images as framed prints !