Almost two years ago, I started preparations for printing my first self-printed portfolio. Unfortunately a lot of other projects stalled my progress and only now, under the third Corona-lockdown here in Austria, I have been able to pick up where I left back then. The custom-made leather album from Heiner Hauck was still waiting for me, as was a stack of Hahnemühle’s prepunched and prescored Photo Rag Duo paper.

In this article I will describe my workflow for printing the portfolio, and show you some photos of the finished product.

Choosing the Software

I chose Affinity Publisher to design and print my portfolio. My requirements for the layouting/printing software were the following:

• Support of photo and text elements with easy and intuitive layouting
• Be able to save the whole book and come back to make changes later
• Support of color management and the ProPhoto color space

My first try was with Adobe Lightroom, however their book printing does not support custom formats, and their normal printing function only has mediocre support of text elements. Also saving pages would have been quite troublesome. So next I looked at desktop publishing software, concretely Adobe InDesign, Scribus and Affinity Publisher. Scribus was lacking in the color management area, but Adobe InDesign and Affinity Publisher both fulfilled all my requirements. While InDesign may be a bit more powerful, I went for Affinity Publisher, since it ticked all the boxes for me, at a fraction of the costs (at the time of writing, InDesign costs $20.99 per month, while Affinity Publisher comes at $49,99 for a permanent license).

Affinity Publisher

Document and Spread Settings

Before starting to layout, it is necessary to configure the document and spread parameters in Affinity Publisher, which was fairly straight forward.

I am using the square Hahnemühle 12x12” content paper, giving ample space to photos in both portrait and landscape orientation. The actual dimensions of this paper is 331x305mm. I decided on leaving 15mm margins, respectively 41mm on the inner side for the non-printable area where the paper is mounted in the album. The screenshots below show the corresponding spread settings.

Also important are the document settings regarding color space and depth. As outlined in my article on the topic, I prefer using ProPhoto RGB and 16 bit color depth to retain as much information for printing as possible. Note that Publisher uses the less-well-known name ROMM RGB for ProPhoto RGB. Other relevant document settings are the resolution (DPI, see output sharpening further below) and the image placement policy. Linking images instead of embedding them helps with updating them later. When an image is changed in the file system, Publisher automatically detects that and gives the user an option to update it in the document.

Set the page dimensions …

… and the margins.

Some useful document settings.

Once document and spread was setup, it was easy and straight-forward to layout pages with photos and descriptions as shown in the first screenshot further above.

Exporting Photos with Output Sharpening

My photos are managed in Lightroom, and needed to be exported properly for use in Affinity Publisher, using ProPhoto RGB and 16 bit color depth.

Before printing, photos need to be scaled to their print resolution and then sharpened again. Affinity Publisher does not support such output sharpening, so this step needs to be done already in Lightroom. Therefore the photos need to be exported in the exact size and resolution they will be printed in. In my case this was easy, my photos all needed to fit in a square with 275mm edges, so using the long edge option in the Lightroom export dialogue and aligning the DPI between Lightroom export and Publisher did the job.

Lightroom export settings

Updating Photos

I regularly refined and updated photos after creating the layout. To speed this up, I exported the photos from Lightroom directly into the directory from where they will be used in Publisher, and linked them into the document instead of embedding them (see document settings above). Publisher then detects changes and prompts the user to update the photo.

Lightroom export settings

Publisher automatically detects te update …

… and the Resource Manager allows for easy taking over the changes.

Printing Workflow

To streamline the printing process, I first created a custom media type for the Photo Rag Duo paper in my Canon PRO-1000 printer. With a thickness of 276 g/sqm the Photo Rag Duo would technically work in the PRO-1000’s automatic top feed, however the High Density Art base paper type recommended to be used by Hahnemühle only supports the manual rear feed. The High Density Art base paper uses more ink than other matte paper types, and I choose that additional bit of quality over the the convenience of the top feed. Also using another matte paper type would require creating another custom ICC profile, since both Hahnemühle’s and my custom profile for the Photo Rag paper produce a color cast when used with other paper types than High Density Art Paper.

Custom media type for Photo Rag Duo

Next step was then to prepare the print settings in Affinity Publisher and in the printer driver. While Affinity Publisher supports storing print settings in profiles for reuse, those profiles unfortunately do not save the settings made in the printer driver (as for example Adobe Lightroom does). Therefore it is necessary to create a profile in Publisher, and separately save the settings in the printer driver. When printing, both profiles need to be selected manually. Saving settings in the printer driver does not save custom paper sizes, so I set the paper size from the Publisher dialogue, where it is saved in the print profile.

Custom size is stored in Publisher

Color management is done in Publisher

The custom media type and print quality needs to be selected in the printer driver

Feeding Issues

My first printing tests revealed two more issue with feeding the paper into the printer:

When printing on the front of the paper, you need to load the paper in the rear feed with the pre-punched and pre-scored side forward. The first issue is that the holes confuse the printer’s paper width detection and the printer thus refuses the paper. My first solution for this problem was to disable the width detection in the printer driver, which worked fine. However then the second issue was that the scores embossed in the paper do not seem to work well with the feeding mechanism of the printer, leading to smudges in the lower left corner of each print. So for solving both issues, I started to use the 180° mirroring in the printer driver for printing on the front of the pages. This way the paper is feed into the printer with the plain side without holes and scores first. For the backside this is anyway the case, without using the 180° mirroring.

The smudges in the lower left corner.

Disabling the width detection only solves the first issue …

… but using 180° mirroring for the front of the pages solves both.

Finishing Touches

Printing the first few pages of my portfolio as proof-of-concept went very well. So there was only one more thing to do: Since the matte Photo Rag Duo paper lacks coating, it is rather sensitive in regards to fingerprints and scratches. Therefore as final touch I applied Hahnemühle’s Protective Spray, which increases the abrasion resistance of the prints. Below a few snapshots of the printing process and the first prints in the portfolio.

All the best, Robert