Quick question for you. Have your photos ever looked kinda dull and maybe lacked some depth when they’re printed? Maybe your edited image looks great on-screen- it has nice contrast, it pops, and seems to be perfectly exposed. But… then you printed it.
Now, in your hand is a flat and lifeless version of your photo.
womp womp
I get it. Mine did, too. Until I noticed a pattern. And then, the solution. It’s real simple. Ready?
Raise the overall brightness of your photo before printing.
There it is. Easy-peasy.
I could just go with the “trust me bro” route, but instead I’ll share the info I found out after a little bit of digging. Most screens and monitors we’re editing on are set to display a lot brighter than the equivalent of a physical print. It’s estimated that screens have a typical brightness of 200 to 300+ cd/m². And surprise, surprise, there’s actually a recommended brightness and industry standard for editing and printing- and it’s about 80 -120 cd/m².
What the heck is cd/m²? Glad you asked.
Cd/m² stands for Candelas per meter, squared. A Candela is the measurement of light output of a specific area. Sounds kinda technical, but it’s basically just a way of measuring how bright your screen is- the higher the number, the brighter the display. There’s also something called nits, but, for the sake of simplicity, we’ll leave that out of this explanation.
Now that we know there’s a typical difference between screen and printing brightness levels, it makes total sense why raising the exposure in your on-screen edit translates to a brighter, more vibrant physical photo. In my experience, I’ve found raising the exposure about 2/3 stop tends to yield a better physical print. Your mileage may vary, though, because different screens will be stock calibrated at different brightness.
Speaking of calibration, that’s absolutely the proper way to fix this issue, and if you’re a professional photographer or corporate creative, no doubt you already have your monitors calibrated. Products like Datacolor’s Spyder unit automatically adjusts brightness, contrast, and color balance for your specific display and viewing environment.
This is a great tool for the working professionals who need it, but, for those of us who are just hobbyists and tinkerers, there’s always a cheap workaround. Raise your exposure a little bit before printing. Done deal.