Printing misconceptions: 10 common myths debunked

Canon Ambassador Joel Santos is a busy man. He's travelled the world as an award-winning photographer and filmmaker and is the creator and producer of more than 50 TV documentaries to date. He's also a journalist, the author of nine books and a teacher in his home country of Portugal.

Joel is passionate about printing. "For me, a photograph is not alive until the moment it's printed," he says. "It's as if the image only gets its soul when it becomes a print. Printing is the consummation and the realisation of the photographic image. It's beautiful how paper bounces the light, giving you a completely different experience to viewing a photograph on a screen."

And yet, Joel is frustrated that so many of the aspiring photographers that he teaches are put off creating their own prints, hampered by misconceptions about the process. We caught up with Joel between assignments to ask about his experience of making prints with a Canon PIXMA PRO-200 and hear him debunk the most common printing myths.

The Canon PIXMA PRO-200 can output large-format A3+ photo prints and even panoramic prints up to 990mm in length. It enables you to make imposing photo prints with incredible detail, but it doesn't take up a lot of space. "When you're not using the printer, you can fold down the input and output trays and it takes up very little room," says Joel. "Even though it's quite small, it's very well made and is beautifully finished. I like that it's quiet when it's running. All in all, it's a very easy printer to live with."

Because screens transmit light and paper reflects light, photographs will never look exactly the same in print as they do on screen. Joel finds that, especially for dark colours and blacks, prints give him better results than even a top-quality screen. "I took some shots in a Nigerian mosque in the early morning and late afternoon that have deep blacks blending into dark colours," he says. "On screen and even with many printers, you can see hard steps in the transition but, with the Canon PIXMA PRO-200, the transitions are completely smooth and seamless. The texture in the clay walls is also incredibly well preserved, much better than on a screen. Printing images I shot of Guatemala's Fuego stratovolcano erupting at night against a really dark blue sky produced the same results."

Printing can sometimes feel like a bit of a chore, forcing you to sit at your desk to fire up your computer. Joel takes a different approach. "I hate wires and cables," he says. "I want everything to be wireless and I really enjoy creating prints from my smartphone and tablet. I store my favourite shots in the cloud and across various servers, and even on my phone and tablet. With the Canon PRINT app, I can access my photos from an 'always on' device that I have with me wherever I go, and print them on my Canon PIXMA PRO-200 without even needing to be at my computer."

Joel tends to use Adobe® Lightroom® for editing and printing his images. "The print module in Lightroom® is no harder to understand than any other aspects of the software," he says. "Better still, I've started to use the Canon Professional Print & Layout plug-in with Lightroom® and Photoshop®, which makes things even easier. It has soft proofing options to show how the results will look on a wide range of different photo papers. There's also a hard proofing tool so you can create several different small versions of an image on the paper you're using and select the one you like best for making the final big print. You can even customise the layout, for example, making a really nice border that's like a passe-partout."

"I've known people who only create prints occasionally and find that the ink dries in the print head," says Joel. "That's a problem because you have to run multiple cleaning cycles to clear the blockage, which wastes ink, time and money. I've never had that problem with a Canon printer," he continues. "The design and manufacture is so good that, even when I haven't used it for a few weeks, the nozzles in the print heads have never become blocked. I've found the Canon PIXMA PRO-200 to be completely reliable."

"The amount of sharpening you need to do can vary depending on whether you're using smooth or textured papers," says Joel. "The good news is that when you select the printer profile for the paper you're using on the Canon PIXMA PRO-200, everything's taken care of automatically. I find that I only need to use the amount of sharpening that suits my taste when I'm viewing and editing the image on screen and the printer profile automatically makes the right translation for the paper I'm using."

Some photographers think they'll get better results if they send their images to a lab, but Joel disagrees. "If you send your images somewhere else you lose something that I think is very important. The advantage of digital is that you can control the whole process, from choosing the location to capturing and selecting the images, and finally editing and printing them. If you give up the final step, you're letting go of a vital part of the creative process. You never know what you'll get back from a lab – what they'll do to your images – whereas Canon's printing profiles are so accurate you can guarantee you'll get exactly what you want when you do your own printing."

"Canon makes some very good photo papers and I've found the Pro Platinum A3+ and A4 glossy papers work brilliantly with the Canon PIXMA PRO-200 to give really vibrant prints. I've also started using Hahnemühle Photo Luster (smooth, non-textured bright white lustre finish) and Hahnemühle FineArt Baryta Satin (subtly textured natural white satin gloss), which are wonderfully tactile and luxurious fine art media. There's a massive range of fine art papers available, not only from Canon, but also from companies such as Hahnemühle and Canson, all of which are directly supported by printer profiles to ensure the accuracy and fidelity of the results." If anything, your options are far wider when creating prints with a printer such as the PIXMA PRO-200. "It's really easy to save presets in the printing software for the types and sizes of paper that you often use, which will save you time and avoid the risk of making mistakes," says Joel.