Post process - Just as important as taking the photos

You may ask, if you take a good photo, what use is it if it is not printed correctly? In days gone past my understanding is that if you were serious enough to develop your own negatives in a dark room, the printing process was just as much as important as taking the photo.

Sadly, I have never been in a darkroom, nor developed a 35mm negative. The closest I have come is dabbling in editing RAW files which are essential digital negatives. So where does the printing come in? Well, in the digital age, this is surprisingly difficult.

Firstly, there are the kiosks in shops like Kmart, Harvey Norman and so on where you plug in your media, go through the touch screen process and Bob's your uncle, there you are with some prints. Now, there is nothing wrong with this process, except in my experience it can be a bit hit and miss. The colours need to be well calibrated on the touch screen for a start but the main thing I've found you need to be careful with are the sizes - numerous times a good photo is ruined by poor cropping - I've had a problem with printers like this cutting off heads.

Secondly, you can print at home. This involves self-calibration of your printer and computer and expensive ink but it does give you a great deal of control over the product.

Printing is important. A few tips include: making sure the file is saved at 300dpi, the screen and printer are calibrated correctly and you have high quality photo paper.

This is a photo I took on my smartphone of some of the firework photos I took in August. I like it. Three landscape oriented ones I printed at home before my printer got sick and the other two I printed at Kmart. It's not a great quality photo because I needed the flash to bring out the colours.

PS still in South America having a great time - I hope!