A3 Colour inkjet fractal printing

[simon.snake]

I've just been given (for free) a professional Brother A3 inkjet printer.

I already own an A4 Colour Laser printer, but I do sometimes find that when printing a bright colourful fractal the output seems to lose quite a bit of the vibrancy compared to what I see on my computer screen.  Also, sometimes, the printed fractal seems to lose some clarity as well.

I know it has something to do with subtractive colouring differing from additive colouring, so I don't need to go into that (unless it helps with understanding the problem).

Also, for A3, what sort of image resolution works well?  I know this largely depends on the maximum resolution of the printer, but does it make that much difference?

I wonder what experiences other members have had in this department.

Any help much appreciated.

I will try a few images to see what happens, but as the yellow cartridge is already low I don't want to play about too much without some success.

[valera_rozuvan]

The first thing that comes to my mind is what software do you use to print out your images? Because if the image is RGB-based, and the software incorrectly converts to the CMYK colors...

Also, the DPI setting. What's the resolutions of your fractal image (in pixels)? What DPI are you trying to print it at? Does the printing software handle DPI correctly?

[blob]

For color there are two issues, color spaces gamuts and devices color profiles.

Many colors you see on screen (especially very saturated ones) can't be printed accurately as they are out of the CMYK gamut which is significantly smaller than the RGB one. Professional image editing software such as Photoshop has tools that let you visualize what colors are out of CMYK gamut and so you can quite easily edit colors as to have no out of CMYK gamut colors in your RGB image.

And then no two devices render colors identically so that for accurate color WYSIWYG printing you also need to work with color profiles and calibrated devices.

As for resolution, for best results you want images as large as what your printer can print. 3508 pixels x 4961 pixels for 300DPI A3 prints and double that for 600DPI if your printer supports that resolution, as to avoid interpolation, especially of the enlarging kind.

[valera_rozuvan]

Oh yeah. You definitely have to calibrate your monitor, if you want to see "the same" [1] colors on your screen as you see them printed out on paper. See for example MONITOR CALIBRATION. For some deeper theory on color gamut in relations to a monitor, see The Ability to Display Color Correctly Is Vital: Understanding the Color Gamut of an LCD Monitor.

[1] When I say "the same", I really mean "as close as possible" with your current monitor tech. For really 99.999% results you do need a top of the line monitor. And those are expensive. Key parameters to consider are homogeneity of the monitor, and wide gamut. See How to choose a monitor for photo editing by Arnaud Frich.