If you’re using Photojunction to export files for printing, you need to consider the part the software will play in your colour management system, to maintain image quality and avoid hassles.

Before you start…

We’ve emphasised the importance of ensuring that your images are tagged with the generic profile for your model of camera.

We’ve also recommended that you set up your Photoshop colour settings (colour management is turned off out of the box!)

Click here for more about getting the best from your camera.

For more about setting up Photoshop, click these links: Mac / Windows

Converting images from your camera’s colour space to your Working Space

Page layouts created by Photojunction’s scripting process will open in your chosen Working Space. Unless the embedded profiles match that Working Space, Photoshop will prompt every time Photojunction’s script opens an image or pastes it into the layout. That’s a couple of hundred prompts for every album!

That’s why it’s very important, before you start working in Photoshop, to make sure the embedded ICC profile of the images matches your RGB “Working Space” (we recommend Adobe RGB (1998)). It’s especially important if you’ve turned on the “Warn when opening” and “Warn when pasting” prompts.

Some loss of quality will in theory result, but this is highly unlikely to be apparent. Far more important is that things will go smoothly from then on. You will have saved the image in a wide gamut colour space, meaning a high quality file can be expected, and no further changes of colour space should be necessary until final printing.

This conversion to Working Space may be included as a normal part of the process of converting your images from your camera’s RAW format. If you’re shooting in TIFF or JPEG this isn’t necessary, but we still recommend converting to your working space for the reasons given.

Click here for more about Working Space.

Exporting images and page layouts for printing

This is the area where colour management is critical. When creating files for printing using Photojunction you can:

• Export either individual images or composite layouts (for albums or portraits).
• Create these either using Photoshop or directly in Photojunction.

We recommend Photojunction’s Photoshop export option

Using the Photoshop Export option offered by the High-Res Export Wizard (rather than exporting using Photojunction directly) will retain the embedded profiles in your image files. You will need a version of Photoshop that offers scripting (Photoshop 7 or later: Photoshop 7’s “easy install” does not include scripting: you’ll need to install separately or do a custom install; Photoshop CS installs scripting as part of the “easy install”).

The Photoshop option has other advantages

Because the result is a layered file, it’s easier to edit individual images in composites; and If your images need to be sized up past pixel for pixel (not normally an issue) Photoshop’s interpolation algorithms will give a better result.

Beware exporting from Photojunction without using the Photoshop option

If you use Photojunction’s direct export option, the images’ embedded profiles (if any) will be stripped.

If you don’t have Photoshop 7 or later, let us create the layout files

If you don’t have Photoshop 7 or later but still want to maintain the integrity of your colour management, send us the high-res files, the Photojunction files and the low-res image folder. We can then open the files and generate the layouts ourselves. There is a charge for this service.

Click here for more about creating print files using Photojunction and Photoshop.