It’s always a nice surprise when someone you’ve been following on Twitter launches an eBook. And even better when it’s with Craft and Vision. Martin Bailey (@martinbailey), who’s just got an all clear from surgery, is obviously getting on with his life. Today marks the launch of ‘Making The Print‘, his ebook on the print process. As one begins to read the book, you might be forgiven for thinking it’s a beginner only book. Martin starts the book really easy, introducing the process of home printing to the new user. It doesn’t end there though and extends all the way into print calibration, large format printing, and even creating, laminating and mounting gallery wrap canvas prints.

This 65 page book is beautifully laid out. Martin’s photographs don many of the page backgrounds as well as being visible in the photos of the printing process. They’re simply wonderful and prove Martin the master printer. He breaks the print process down in steps that you take, each one bringing you closer to a great print. From explaining how to preview prints vs monitors, monitor brightness, paper selection, to sharpening your prints, Martin covers the software process to getting good prints in Lightroom, Aperture and Photoshop. Other software choices covered include Perfect Resize from onOne Software and Sharpener Pro from Nik.

Stepping it up, Martin takes use through both monitor and print calibration, and talks about the variety of tools to do it, in every price bracket. He also covers camera calibration, to give you entire control of the colour process right through from capture to print. Soft proofing gets explained in detail for Photoshop (Lightroom 4 Beta’s soft proof gets a mention in-blog posts will fill in the detail).

The final sections of the book cover large format printing, how to make your own gallery wraps, and printing for exhibition. With the gallery wraps, we get a detailed look at cleaning, laminating, stretching mounting canvas. The photos of the laminating process are worth the price of the book for those that have never done it. The final section on printing for exhibition is interesting. I like the advice and will try it myself next time I exhibit.

All in all, the book is well written and surprisingly comprehensive for its size. At less than the cost of a Starbucks coffee, it’s a no brainer for those interested in improving printing at home. In fact Martin even suggests at times that if you don’t want to go through the process, to seek out a lab to work with. That can be worth the price too!

As always with Craft and Vision books, there’s an intro promo. For the next five days only, use the promotional code PRINT4 when you checkout so you can have the PDF version of Making the Print for only $4 OR use the code PRINT20 to get 20% off when you buy 5+ PDF eBooks from the Craft & Vision collection. These codes expire at 11:59pm PST January 21, 2012.