Turning images into artworks with print

Literature fuels the imagination of Canon Ambassador Menna Hossam. Her inspiration is drawn from diverse subject matter, ranging from Greek mythology and Shakespeare to Disney, but a common thread is the fairytale quality of her imagery, for which she has earned international acclaim.

Menna, who is based in Cairo, Egypt, discovered photography as a student in 2008 and turned professional soon after, but she has only recently started printing her images rather than always viewing them on screen. She found learning to print with a Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-1000 printer to be a revelation, and urges other photographers to take the plunge and make limited-edition photography prints.

Here, Menna discusses her voyage of discovery, and the power of print.

The magical Enchanted series of images was the catalyst for Menna embarking on her printing journey. It was a huge project that took her to far-flung locations around the world, creating ethereal images – each with its own back story – based on her creative heroes. She initially set out to print her own pages to make an 80-page photobook but, as the project grew, she decided to have larger 200-page books published, and to use the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-1000 to make limited-edition photography prints, to accompany the first few copies.

"Perhaps like many digital photographers, I've never felt a desire to print my own images," says Menna. "I felt it would be a complicated process with a steep learning curve and a lot of technical hurdles to overcome. But more recently, I started to dream of creating my own photobook and began looking into the possibility of printing. What I found very quickly is that you can get great results straight away, and that creating your own fine art prints is actually quite easy."

Although Menna has been shooting professionally for many years, creating her very first print turned out to be an emotional experience. "I was overwhelmed by the quality of the colour and the crispness of the detail," she says. "It was completely different to looking at the same image on screen. The print was so beautiful. It really is like magic."

Menna originally felt a little daunted after taking delivery of her imagePROGRAF PRO-1000 printer, which Canon had loaned to her. Running on 12 LUCIA PRO pigment-based inks, and capable of creating large-format A2 prints and panoramic output up to 1.2 metres in length, the printer is ideally suited to professional photographers who want to sell their work and create limited-edition runs. However, Menna found that any worries about complexity were short-lived.

For Menna, the main attraction in learning to print is that it gives her full control over the entire process. "If you send digital images to a lab for printing, you're never quite sure what you're going to get back," she says. "Printing them yourself puts you in the driving seat.

"One thing I learned straight away was that I needed to calibrate my monitor. When I used to only view my images on screen, everything looked okay. But when I started printing them, I found I had to pay more attention in order to ensure the colours, brightness and contrast were reproduced faithfully."

Even with monitor calibration and the correct use of printing profiles for different types of media, Menna says that the print will never look exactly like the on-screen image, partly because they're based on reflected light and transmitted light respectively. But she sees that as a good thing. "The depth of blacks in the printed images and the detail in dark shadows is far superior," she elaborates. "The prints have much more of the character that I want to convey."

A photo print is a physical entity by default, and it pays to take time to get the look and feel that you want. As well as glossy and matte photo papers, Canon offers a range of fine art media. The Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-1000 is also directly compatible with leading independent brands, such as Canson® and Hahnemühle. With a vast range to choose from, sample packs can help narrow down the choices and ensure you get the desired results.

Printing photographs is arguably about creative expression, and because the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-1000 and Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 printers come with the free Canon Professional Print & Layout (PLL) software, photographers have even more control, especially if they're learning to print.

As well as including design tools for creating prints with multiple images on the same page, the software has full soft proofing and hard proofing facilities. With soft proofing, you can select the specific printer profile for the paper that you're using and get a highly accurate preview on screen of how the final print will look. Hard proofing takes things a step further, allowing you to create test prints and fine-tune the results for the final print.

For Menna, a key feature of Professional Print & Layout is the ability to create 'pattern prints'. This enables her to create a variety of small versions of the print on a page, each with subtly different treatment of colour, tone and contrast. When it comes to accuracy, Menna can recall the settings and make sure that all the limited-edition photography prints in a series look the same.

Menna urges all photographers to take the plunge into printing their photos, and she relates this to her Enchanted photobook project. "Limited edition prints will be a good incentive for people to start buying the book," she explains. "It adds a real sense of value and worth. A limited-edition photography print is more personal – it's something I've made myself. It's also nice that I get to choose my absolute favourite photos to print.

"When I created my very first print with the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-1000, it was an overwhelming experience. The image looked fine on screen but printing it took the photo to another level."

Menna also recommends experimenting with different types of fine art paper as it can take time to find one that suits your needs. "It's taken me a long time to get into printing but now I want to hang my prints everywhere, and I've never been the kind of person who's wanted to do that before!" she says.