My Printing Adventures | Color Tweaks and Piles of Porn (Patreon)

Once I made the decision to switch to luster paper, the next step was to run all of my patreon illustrations through the printer to make sure they printed okay. The first few were a little rough as I played with all the various settings to get a feel for the controls, but after going through about 10 pictures, I was getting pretty good at predicting what needed to be tweaked for each pic. I tried not to be too perfectionist about it, since I learned upfront that it's easy to be dissatisfied with just the tiniest flaw in color or contrast. You could literally spend all day tweaking a single file.

Images with a lot of darker elements typically printed much darker than what was on my screen, but nothing a hue/saturation tweak couldn't fix. 

The "control" print is on the left, and the tweaked version is on the right. The difference is very noticeable with all the dark-furred doggies around Ashley. 

Not all of the images were easy to tweak. Some took quite a few tries before I really got the hang of it...

Some too dark, some too light... some where it was bright, but all the lighter elements had become flat... The center middle Clara was printed in CMYK, and compare that to it's right-most neighbor, where I tweaked the raw RGB file instead. Her pink shirt has a better contrast with the overlay layer I put over it, while the CMYK decided to eat up that overlay layer. I think this was the print where I decided that maybe I should just stick with RGB going forward.

Once I had my strategy down, it was time to continue in printing my entire library. And what a task that was... 

Some of these were the test control prints, where some of them were the tweaked version. I got them a little mixed up in the flurry of printing out all day. But these are just a small portion of the images I've got sorted out. I've sure drawn a lot of pictures in the last couple years...

To the left, all the matte paper tests I did before switching to luster, on the right. What a huge stack! I'll need to find a way to sell them as discount prints at some point, because it seems a shame to recycle them. Along with all that paper, I built up an impressive ink cartridge graveyard. Now these I'll definitely have to recycle...

Tweaking the colors of all my prints was just the first step. Most of the prints when fit within the 8.5x11 print area left margins, since none of them were originally drawn within that size ratio. In order to keep within standard print and framing sizes, I'll be going through each file and creating versions that will fit within each of the two sizes I've chosen: 8.5"x11" and 13"x19" (or A4 and Super A3/B). That part will be even more time intensive, so this small enterprise of mine won't be ready for a little longer.

That's all I got for this episode of My Printing Adventures. If I encounter any more notable printing adventures, I'll let you guys know!