Getting the same thing off the printer as what I'm seeing on screen.

[Brian_of_Bozeat]

Hello everyone,

Long story: I recently had some 4x6 family snapa printed via at snapfish. These were all shot raw and processed via lightroom and output to jpeg. They looked great on screen at home/work and on my iphone... however the prints came back much darker than on screen and lacked the contrast and saturation that I saw on my screens. I wasn't too bothered I thought it was something they had done and kicked myself for wasting money.

I've had snaps printed at boots in the past and always been happy with the outcome... so I put them aside and promised myself I'd take them in and get them printed there soon... they are still on my todo list!

Aaaaanyway, I've just replaced my home printer/scanner/copier and I now have the ability to print some photo's at home. after setting it up - A HP photsmart 6520 - I remembered the snapfished set and printed one of those and blow me it looks identical to the snapfish print.... :bonk:

Short story: I think I need a beginners guide to printing which would include things like monitor calibration, colour spaces & colour profiles. I have searched TP and found nothing so far, can anyone point me in the right direction please?

 

[Brian_of_Bozeat]

oops!

 

[Photodiva]

Hello Brian.

1. check the gamma setting on your monitor (1.8 is a down and dirty option) see http://www.photoscientia.co.uk/Gamma.htm. Or spend money and get it calibrated. Most monitors off the shelf are set for office work, and are too bright, which means when you edit your photos they are, in reality, too dark.

2. Check your color space. If you're shooting RAW you can change the color space without damaging the original. For most printers, Srgb is fine.

3. Save as .jpg, send to print. Remember if you are using something like Photoshop, use that printer drive and not the printer driver for your Photosmart. Definitely don't use both together, that is a recipe for disaster.

4. Print a test and compare. Hope you get better results!

 

[Spuriousfish]

If you need a beginners guide you can check my website...

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/colin_w/colour problems.htm

Its a little out of date in respect of Photoshop Elements because I can't get access to it any more but its still valid as far as the concepts go.

Colin

 

[maninsuitcase]

I can recommend the eBook "Making the print" by Martin Bailey from Craft and Vision. It's not pricy US$5 I think so about £3 and well made and easy to read.

but as a quick input:
Sounds like you need to turn your monitor brightness down between 10 and 45% is usually where the correct value is but most are closer to 90-100.

 

[Brian_of_Bozeat]

Thank you all very much, some really good sound advice there and I'm sorted out now.

fwiw: Firstly I "calibrated" my screen as best I could with Quickgamma, (didn't change much) then after a thorough check of everything and a bit of back and forth I ended up re-exporting the "suspect" files (unchanged) from lightroom (making sure that they were in sRGB) and printed from windows phot viewer with colour management turned off in one part of my advanced printer dialogue box and another part set to sRGB - I still don't understand that bit .

Phew!

My guess is that I messed up the export first time around... Cant see where the colour space is in the exif to check though? Or am I just completely on the wrong track.