Local Houston Photo Lab Help

[venchka]

Everything points to your monitor being too bright.

"My Printer is Too Dark"

Even if your monitor has been recently calibrated, and you are printing with a custom profile for your printer/paper/ink, you may still end up struggling to match your prints to what you see on your monitor. Why ? Because LCD monitors are much brighter than paper, and manufacturers are making monitors brighter with each new generation: 150 cd/m2 (candelas per square meter) or more. For editing photos, we need somewhere around 80 cd/m2.

If you have a light meter, you can see for yourself that standard office illumination is such that a white piece of paper, or a white wall, gives an Exposure Value or EV, between 9 and 10. Actually, EV 9.3 is around 80 cd/m2, so that's good brightness to set your monitor for digital printing. However, many LCD monitors don't do well at that level: they are designed to be brighter than standard office walls. That's why print imaging specialists don't use consumer-grade equipment. Instead they use monitors like Eizo, which are designed to perform at paper brightness.

Most monitor calibration software will automatically turn the brightness all the way back up, even if you have it turned all the way down. You can turn it down after you calibrate it, but then what's the point ? Your monitor is no longer calibrated. One solution is to use Color Eyes Display Pro, which lets you set the brightness down as part of the calibration process. It keeps it down, and calibrates the monitor at that brightness.

Here's a nice article on the Shutterbug web site, entitled Are Your Prints Too Dark ? Here's another one, by Pat Herold of CHROMiX. It's called My Printer Is Too Dark and it's on the CHROMiX Color Wiki.

"If you do not set up your system so the white of the paper and the white of the monitor are as close as possible, you will not get a good screen-to-print match." - Pat Herold of CHROMiX

Ken Lee

One more thing. This drove me crazy until I figured it out. TURN OFF COLOR MANAGEMENT or click the box that says Photoshop Manages Color.

I assume that you are "printing" to a JPEG file and taking that file to Costco for printing? That is how Mpix works. They are the only outside shop I have used. I used them once and the print was fine.

[Jred]

Originally Posted by stephenpinn

Jred sorry this is turning out to be such a pain. Let me refer you to one more document. Drycreek is the company that prints for Costco, this is a guide demonstrating how to use their profiles with Photoshop. A warning the information is a little dated so some of the screens in CS5 are slightly different but not significantly. I think the important part will be to read through this carefully, especially the information regarding rendering jpgs with the profiles for submission (doesn't come till the very end!)

Using Printer Profiles with Digital Labs

Very helpful, thanks!!

Originally Posted by venchka

Everything points to your monitor being too bright.



One more thing. This drove me crazy until I figured it out. TURN OFF COLOR MANAGEMENT or click the box that says Photoshop Manages Color.

I assume that you are "printing" to a JPEG file and taking that file to Costco for printing? That is how Mpix works. They are the only outside shop I have used. I used them once and the print was fine.

Thank you for your help. The part in bold relates to what? How do I turn that off?

[venchka]

It's on a screen related to printing. Page Setup maybe? I recall a small window where I had a choice between printer & Photoshop managing color. Pick Photoshop. Below that is a window where you pick the printer profile you wish to use. Pick the Costco profile. When I say window, it's just a one line thingie similar to where you show Relative colorimetric in you Mac screen shots above.
Print to file. It should work.

[Jred]

After reading the above post a reading the Dry Creek sheet I am journeying back to the land of confusion.

I would like to make this as easy as I can. The instructions from dry creek suggest having the original and a duplicate for printing. They the suggest opening the duplicate and using the proof setup, selecting the Costco pinter profile under custom. Adjustments made to this proof when compared to the original should be close, and if so, the image is "soft proofed".

Once I have arrived here and the size is correct @300dpi I save the file as a jpeg without the embedded profile and baseline format checked.

Am I now able to take this jpeg to Costco?

[venchka]

You can try. You could also send the file to another online source like Mpix. Compare the two. See what happens.

I set up and calibrated a new to me monitor last night. After reading the same thing from several sources, I believe that the optimum settings for an LCD monitor are 6500K and 90 cd/m2. I didn't achieve those settings last night. I will be calibrating again.
What are the settings on your iMac monitor?

[Jred]

I have no idea how to change the settings in the Imac. I can adjust that brightness and calibrate, other than that I wish I knew.

Took another round of prints to Costo today, really bad...I mean not even close.

I am getting to the point where in the interest of time I am going to spec 3-4 different adjusted versions of each photo and pick the one that is the closest for the larger prints.

[venchka]

Without examples and without being there with a printer connected to your computer, it is impossible to troubleshoot your problem.
I probably said this earlier, but I just spent the better part of a month & a bunch of expensive paper & ink trying to print two landscapes. They were both sunsets. One was just as the sun was setting behind a ridge. The other was a few minutes later. I thought I had both of them perfect on screen. Then I printed them. Horrible. WAY too dark. I kept increasing the exposure & brightness in Lightroom and printing. When the photos were WAY too light on screen (relative to the way I thought the scenes should look), they printed ok. The instant feedback of a printer connected to my computer was a big help.
Good luck.

[Jred]

Originally Posted by venchka

Without examples and without being there with a printer connected to your computer, it is impossible to troubleshoot your problem.
I probably said this earlier, but I just spent the better part of a month & a bunch of expensive paper & ink trying to print two landscapes. They were both sunsets. One was just as the sun was setting behind a ridge. The other was a few minutes later. I thought I had both of them perfect on screen. Then I printed them. Horrible. WAY too dark. I kept increasing the exposure & brightness in Lightroom and printing. When the photos were WAY too light on screen (relative to the way I thought the scenes should look), they printed ok. The instant feedback of a printer connected to my computer was a big help.
Good luck.

Yes!! Thank you. I just got back from Costco and have found an interim (maybe permanent) solution that will work.

Here is what I did. I adjusted 4 different versions of each photo in varying degrees of saturation brightness exposure sharpness etc etc. Saved each as a separate .psd and .jpg file. I had Costco print 4x6's of each rendition. In very case save one they were able to get one of the renditions to print as I liked it. From there I printed 12x18 and was pleased.

Their customer service was outstanding!!

I am beginning to think printing is way more art than science...

Thank you for all you help!

[venchka]

Your welcome. It's also an expensive learning process.
Check the New iMac thread in the Equipment Forum for a link that Scott shared. It's a program called Shades & it helps iMacs play nice with printers by reducing brightness & constrast to the levels of the print.

[Jred]

Thank you again for all your help!

[venchka]

You are welcome.