I am currently getting ready for the Palm Springs Photo Review at PhotoExpo by printing out "The Iron Triangle" Series. I am using a printer on loan from my friend Antoon at Uptown Fine Art Printing Studios. The way I am doing it is a bit strange to print them but is really easy to do.

The printer is pretty big and doesn't really fit in my office so I have it set up in the basement plugged into an old Power PC G5 that I connect to wirelessly. I edit the photos on my 2011 iMac and connect to the G5 using the Share screen feature of OSX. I also connect to the computer like I would to a server. This allows me to transfer files to the G5 so that I have them in one location and if I need to make changes, I can with then iMac and save them. I then open them in CS3 on the G5 and hit print.  

There are many advantages of doing it this way. I don't have to have the printer next to me. Having a computer dedicated to printing only means I can save all the setting without worrying that maybe I changed the gamma or color profile. Many times after printing, even if I saved the settings, I would go and print another image the next day only to find out that some setting defaulted back to the original. I am talking about things like the platen gap defaulting back to normal. With the Epson printers, I set the platen gap to wide or wider, otherwise the head hits the paper and causes streaks of ink. I am also more familiar with the way Adobe CS3 prints on a Power PC. After Adobe CS3 and the Intel Macs were released, something changed in the way images printed and I had trouble getting the images to like they used to.

I have printed out about half of the 26 images and so far have only had to make adjustments to 3 images and reprint them. I am getting used to telling how the image will look once printed. I am printing out in Black and White with a slight sepia tone and I judge everything by the numbers to see if the image is within the tonal range of the printer. 

It is really great to see the images all printed out in a 16x20 inch size, recommended to me by Jennifer Schwartz from Crusade for Arts and David Bram from Fraction Magazine. I was going to mount them onto a mat board, but Jennifer and David suggested not too. Once I saw the prints I realized as well how big and heavy it would be.