I’ll start by saying that I use a low quality old LCD monitor on my painting rig. Despite having a Spyder to calibrate this monitor it never really looks right concerning the value ranges. Sometimes I have all these lovely shadowed details that print as a black splotch, and other times I get blown out highlights. So I’ve taken to having multiple small scale prints done before hand where I adjust the mid high and low to a few preset versions that I’ve found correct for this horrible horrible screen. Once I get them back I select the one that most accurately looks like I want and maybe adjust it a little bit more, and then save that adjustment layer for the final print file. It’s a bit of guess work, and I have to pay for the small prints form the company I use, but small prints are cheap , so it’s not that big of a deal.
Normally that’d be it, I’d be finished. I’d send off the corrected file to my printer and wait for my lovely prints in the mail, but not this time. I knew I was going to print this big, so I had to make sure all the details were right, and that I didn’t have any stray brushstrokes long forgotten in the background. What I didn’t want was to hang this thing up and have someone be looking at it and say ‘What’s this?’ and find that there was some weird splotch, or a base layer peaking through or some other anomaly. So I set a grid over the image and methodically scoured each square for anything I didn’t want there. After I made any corrections I marked off that square and moved to the next. It was a slow but important step.
When I was finally satisfied I sent the file off for printing. The final image is 20 inches by 30 inches (including the little white boarder). And I love it! The people form iprintfromhome.com have once again done a terrific job, and I really can’t imagine using another company for my prints.
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