Dark photos

[ntexas49]

Has anyone else noticed that photos on screen seem lighter than when going to print? I shoot with Canon 10d and process with Capture One and Photoshop 7.0 and CS but when I go to print my shots I have to lighten them at the photo kiosk prior to printing. Am I alone here or just have my screen adjusted wrong? I have Spyder One to calibrate my screen. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks.

[edpouso]

What are the specs on the kiosk?
such as
color space
icc profile
paper type
rendering intent

Why are you printing this way?
Time? Price?

[ntexas49]

Hello Ed
Print from the drug store using Kodak terminal because of cheap price and ease. I am able to crop and check out the photos there and get pretty good prints. Don't know the specs on the device. It just seems that as a general rule my prints seem light enough when on my pc that I use to process the photos but when I go to print them I have to lighten them or they are too dark. I hate to say it but they have an enhance option that really helps to make better prints.

[Donb10]

Mark:

What is the brightness level setting on your monitor?

If it is set between 95-100 back it off to about 85.

See if this sounds right to you. Your photos look right on your monitor but print dark, which means that you need to lighten your prints during processing. With your current setting, this would make them look to light.

Trying looking at several of your current photos with the moniotr set at a brightness level of 85 and they would probably look a little darker. Take a couple of them and re-process them at the 85 level and set them to a level that looks good on the screen and see how they print.

This may not be your problem, but I had to lower the level to 81 on my Dell monitor. I recently purchased a 22 inch Samsung and I had to
play with the brightness settings and finally settled on a setting of 85.
If this does not work, set it back to where it was.... nothing lost.

[ntexas49]

You have a very good idea and I will try that. Just might be the trick. Thanks.

[AndrewCCM]

Have you tried printing the same images at a real lab? That would tell you more or less if it's your calibration or the kiosk.

[ntexas49]

Good point. The reason I don't make it the real lab often is that it is downtown and an hour and half away and the drug store is 15 minutes from the house and on the way to and from work. Plus the real lab has slow turn around like next day.

[SilverShooter]

Mark

You're not alone. I use CS3 and print on my own R2400. My monitor is a calibrated LaCie 319. My prints always seem too dark if the screen image is correct. The screen brightness level is set during the calibration. I suppose you could back off on the screen brightness, but you'd be uncalibrating your monitor when you made the adjustment. My fix has been to add a blank adjustment layer in CS3 using the screen blending mode just before I print. The layer usually needs to be reduce to a 50% opacity to make the final print look like the screen image did before the print adjustment. At an Epson training session, I was told that the difference between an image seen on a light producing surface (like a monitor) will never look just like an image seen on a light reflecting surface (like a print). A friend of mine with similar equipment has the same problem. We've spent a lot of time and money trying to get a better fix than the one I mention above. If you find a better solution, I hope you'll share it. I've been trying for the last couple of years.

Steve