Photoshop CC: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition

Printing on an Inkjet Printer

If you’re a photographer, you probably use an inkjet printer—most likely of the expanded-gamut variety that uses six to eight inks, rather than the standard four (they’re technically dyes, but most folks call ’em inks). The most common combination of expanded-gamut ink includes the four standard process colors—cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK)—plus light cyan and light magenta. You may also have a choice of black inks, like glossy or photo black, matte black, light black, and even light light black (seriously!).

Note

Inkjet printers are more common than dye-sublimation or color laser printers, so they’re the focus of this section. But no matter what kind of printer you use, you can use printer and paper profiles as explained in this section.

Nearly all expanded-gamut inkjet printers can convert RGB images to CMYK (plus any additional inks they may have). For the brightest and most saturated colors, let the printer convert the colors for you (see the discussion in Step 8 below). However, to get the most accurate results, manage the conversion yourself in the Photoshop Print Settings dialog box. Here’s how to do just that when printing a high-quality image on an expanded-gamut printer (also called CcMmYyK or, if it’s an HP printer, CMYK-Plus):

1. Prepare your image for printing by cropping, editing, and resizing it.

   Make sure you’ve cropped, color-corrected (Chapter 9), and resized the image and set its resolution to between 200 ppi and 450 ppi (Chapter 6 ...