6 ways printing can make you a better photographer

It is commercial photographer Keith Cooper's firm belief that printing your photography "will affect how you shoot, even if you're not consciously thinking about it."

The founder of Northlight Images is an expert on photographic printing, and he maintains that printing has massively improved his own photography and changed the way he shoots. What's more, he's convinced that every photographer can reap the same rewards. Here are six practical pieces of printing advice that you can follow to see the gains for yourself.

To become more aware of how you photograph, Keith recommends that while you're shooting in colour, you think about printing in black and white. "When you start printing in black and white, it forces you to think about the colours, the composition, the subject – and how they relate to each other in tonality. Remove the colour, and you start thinking about light and shade, which has a profound effect on your photography."

There are many ways to convert an image to black and white, but you're likely to get the best result if your printer has a dedicated mode for black and white conversion, such as the Black & White Photo Print option on the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300. Canon's Professional Print & Layout (PPL) also has a dedicated black and white photo print mode for improving the quality of monochrome prints. PPL works either as standalone software or as a plug-in through Canon's Digital Photo Professional (DPP) imaging software, or Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom.

No matter which method you use, it will have an impact, according to Keith. "The details of making a print will affect how you shoot, even if you're not consciously thinking about it," he says. "It's the same as people learning the technical side of photography, so they can mostly forget it. You only use the knowledge when you need it, but it makes a difference and sets your photo apart from somebody else's. These skills build over time and form the foundations on which your creativity rests."

"Paper has a relatively limited tonal range compared with a monitor. When you print a photo, the overall image contrast is compressed. But, if it's done well, you don't notice that. If it's done badly, you can lose details in shadows and highlights."

"With the help of the software, you're taking the wide tonal range of the original image from the camera, the slightly smaller range that you get from your monitor, and making it work with the further compression in the final print. That's why you need to learn to really look at prints to see whether they work or not.

Keith says it's important to assess prints under the lighting that you'll typically be viewing them under. If you look at them under daylight, they'll appear much brighter than under typical room lighting and the tonal range will be increased. "The print might look great in daylight with lots of fine detail, but take it indoors and compression kicks in, so it loses detail and doesn't have the right emphasis," says Keith.

"When you're comparing prints to screen images, never put them side by side," he adds. "I've found that the colour management system of human vision resets itself when you turn your head. Put the print at 90° so you have to turn your head when switching between the screen image and the print. It's much easier to judge the results that way."

Colour rendition is another area in which images can look different on screen and in print. High-quality printers such as the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 have a wider gamut, or colour space, than the latest wide-gamut monitors. But even the best printers will have a slightly different range of colours than what you see on a screen.

"A screen is emitting light, a print is reflecting light. There's always going to be a mismatch between the two," explains Keith. "There are some colours that don't fit well with the gamut of a screen, and others that are good on screen but don't print so well. Monitors are good at displaying really bright colours that you simply can't get from ink on paper whereas, for example, prints can work better for really dark blues. The key to successful printing is to edit with the print in mind, rather than the screen image."

Keith points out that good photography demands looking at the whole process – and the print is only as good as the weakest link in the chain. "That chain stretches back to a point before you even pick up the camera – to thinking about what you're going to shoot and how you're going to shoot it," says Keith. "The more you think about each link, through shooting, editing and printing, the more you realise how the whole process can help you to raise your game as a photographer."

Ultimately, he believes that printing is the logical final step in the complete photographic process. But why not just get it done in a lab? "I've never sent anything to a lab, not since the days of film," says Keith. "To me, doing my own printing gives me control over the whole process, and it also teaches me what's important, and what's unimportant. The reason I tell people that printing can improve their photography is because it has massively improved mine."