Photo Print Quality


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MonkeyMan

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May 10, 2009
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Hi all, jst an experience to share, hope i get comments also, bad or gd doesn't matter comments r free. Jst wanted to see if any of u guys have the same prob.

I went to print some pics recently, i found some photos turned out super washed out. Damn jialat. The colors were not vibrant n it was jst plain boring. I personally always shoot raw n do lotsa adjustments in photoshop like exposure, white balance, saturation, blah blah blah. One thing i really love doin is playin with hue of diff colors. for exp sometimes i'll change a woman's lipstick color to extremely bright red. I love tweakin colors, sometimes the pictures turns out extremely vibrant n bright cos of all the colors. Not overexposed, jst u know like a really brightly saturated pic. But not oversaturated. Im always very careful with that.

My prob is when i send for printin, if i dont edit colors i find the pics dull n washed out, but when i like wat i see on screen n send it for print, most of the time it comes out darker then wat i see on screen. My pc isn't caliberated la so thats one of the reasons. But i discovered somethin, i converted my photos to cmyk in ps, send it for print where the dude had to convert it back to rgb, pictures turned out as gd as wat i see on my monitor. Tho he told me i should not convert n give him in rgb, but when i do that prints isn't satisfactory.

He also said shootin Jpegs r easier for prints, but personally i want my photos to look the way i see it n want it, not the way thats easier. My clients pay for my work n vision when they see my port, how would they feel when they see prints bein normal n lack vibrance?

Jst sharin n hopin to hear from u guys, i personally feel convertin to cmyk is better, tho its not for offset printin jst a normal print shop. Ur opinions, experience n views would help alot.

Thank u all.
 

Personally, I would suggest calibrating your monitor first.

Get rid of the possible causes first, if not, you would just be perfecting your mistakes.
And when you change your monitor next time, it is harder to change your pp workflow.
 

If your pics look better in CMYK than in RGB when printed at a photo development shop, it is pure coincidence. Unless you are sending your photos to an offset printer (e.g. for magazine, book publishing etc), I would expect the result of printing a CMYK photo in an RGB colour space to be worse, not better. This is because the range of colours in the CMYK colour space is quite a bit different from the RGB colour space, and converting between one and the other will result in a very compressed range of colours. i.e. you are not getting the best possible image out of your photo.

I agree with the other poster that you should calibrate your monitor first. If after calibration, your prints still look way off, then you may need to find out how your photo development shop is processing your images. e.g. do they do any auto-colour adjustments, or are they printing your images without any adjustments?

If your monitor's colour is way off, then whatever you adjustments you make to your photos will only make the job of your photo developer harder when he has to adjust the colours back to "normal". This can result in wonky colours, blown out highlights, loss of shadow detail, or washed out images, etc.

One way to compare is to view your photos on someone else's calibrated monitor and see if they look like what you saw on your own screen. If they do, then maybe the problem is not with your monitor, but with the photo development shop's colour calibration on their end.
 

two things.

first, you need to have calibrated monitor before consider doing any adjustment you images, without a calibrated monitor, you will never know how your original image looks like and what will be the final look after your editing.

second, all photo labs use RGB for their printing, CMYK is for offset printing, when convert RGB to CMYK, images does not lose much data, but not the other way round. if you want to make print from photo labs, use RGB only.


btw, your lab is correct, many people sent thier images after heavy editing, without a proper calibrated monitor and skill of editing, the lab unable to do any further adjustment since the images already lose too much data. so it is better off it to just leave the image un-touch.
 

I am also having the same problem when going for 4R prints. The funny thing is that it only happens on images taken using DSLR. The print outs from PnS looks ok even when both are sent at the same time. I never had this problem when printing on photobooks though.
 

Is there any service around that will calibrate a monitor without having to purchase those calibrating devices?
 

Is there any service around that will calibrate a monitor without having to purchase those calibrating devices?

You need to redo the procedure after some time (hardware ages, characteristics are changing slowly) so you will need the device. Secondly, the license agreement might not allow multiple installations of the calibration software so that the installation at your PC becomes illegal once you don't own the device.
 

if your print shop is decent, then the above isn't ONE of the reasons.

it's the ONLY reason.


Hi, I hope the TS doesnt mind me posting this question.

But, anyone around here has experience with print shops that are decent and can share?

Decent being, given that your screen is calibrated,
what you see on screen = what your print turns out to be.

Thanks! :)
 

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