New to Printing and having great confusion

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liverpool_f_

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Hi all,

I am new to this forum and photography in general. I have taken 100's of photos recently and decided that the best thing to do with the better of them is to get prints made. It seemed like it should be a very straight forward process, but I am running into confusion when trying to understand the technicialities of printing. I hope someone with experience can answer this question (which may seem stupid to those of you who know what you are talking about, but please bear with me!)

I take photos on film and scan them myself using a Plustek 8200i. I am happy with the results of the scans in general. The file format is TIFF and is 8 bit per channel in Adobe RGB colourspace. My photos range from snaps that I want to print in 6x4 to photos I put effort into and want to print up to A3, as well as a range in between.

A lot of the sites I am looking at require JPEG's in sRGB colourspace. Will converting my images to comply with these requirements give noticable quality reduction? I may choose to work in sRGB in the future if it transpires that I get more accurate results, but that doesn't help for the 100's of images I have already scanned.

I am looking to print the less important 6x4 images first to get an idea, so I may use a cheap and cheerful place Bonusprint ot Snapfish. Is it a case that online cheap and cheerful places make ok prints from JPEG's but the pro places that I may look at for my bigger A3 images will accept my TIFF's in Adobe RGB?

I hope someone can provide some answers because I would hate to put a lot of effort into taking and scanning images I am happy with, only to make mistakes with formats and conversion and end up with rubbish prints
 
You can export your files into the required format and get an idea of what they will look like.

I would then recommend getting a test print (or multiple test prints) done to check that the workflow and/or printer are fine.
 
Hiya and welcome to the forum!

This might be a bit better in the Film & Conventional section before someone comes in and tells you to shoot raw :) Then again, it is kinda a print question...

The answer to your question isn't straightforward sadly as it depends on how much time you spend examining your images and what you mean by noticeable? I print at home from a Plustek 8100. I have no clue what colour space they're in and the (very) brief tests I did with sRGB vs Adobe RBG left me unable to tell the difference visually.

My colour images are developed by Filmdev and I have started using their (sRGB) jpegs as I get better results and they are absolutely fine for printing up to A3. I even got an A2 print out of one of their large (JPEG) scans. Printing big means that they're usually viewed from a distance and only up-close examination will reveal imperfections. I don't get nose up. If you do, then what's noticeable to you is going to be very different to me.

The other variable is the film stock. I struggle immensely to get good results from some films which is why I go to a lab for colour. They just look great to me. The thing is that most film has a colour shift of some sort, so the gamut you're in is almost going to be the least of your problems. Most of the missing colour between sRGB and Adobe RGB (looks to me like it) falls in the green/blue spectrum so if you're shooting a ton of Kodak Gold I would imagine you're very unlikely to notice any difference.

If you're just starting out, I wouldn't worry too much about the (very dry) subject of colour space. If you're interested, the beginning bit of this video explains the basics in a really clear and simple way
(timestamped to the relevant bit)
View: https://youtu.be/-I2gw5Iup3M?t=132

Wikipedia "colour space" will get you an accurate diagram and you can see for yourself which colours you're missing.

I guess another question, is 'can your monitor display anything other than sRGB'? If you have an sRGB monitor then you're not going to be able to see the Adobe RGB colour space on your desktop anyway and your monitor will be "converting" the Adobe RGB file down (if you're interested in more detail around this, continue to watch the rest of the video that talks about rendering intent).

tl;dr
If you're converting from Adobe RBG to sRGB you will lose some green/blue hues but you won't notice it if you have an sRGB monitor. If you're shooting something like Kodak Gold, you probably won't notice it even if you did, but if you're shooting Velvia, or Pro 400H you might. I personally probably wouldn't notice and I have a monitor that covers 99% of the Adobe RGB space.
If you're printing using a jpeg you'll be fine as long as you're not printing really big (assuming going from 35mm neg to A2 or larger) and as long as your file has plenty of detail (i.e. it's not a 600x400 file. The small sized files will struggle to print big whether you go TIFF or JPEG)
 
You're just discovering that printing can be a minefield!

For print, sRGB jpgs are pretty much the norm, I'd say. But I keep my archive of images on disc as full-size Adobe rgb tifs in 16-bit, and re-size as wanted for print, web, etc. When saving as jpg for print (sRGB 8-bit), keep to maximum quality (biggest file size).

A norm is to size images for print at the final print size in inches (!) at 300 dpi.

Depending on paper used, contrast can vary compared to how you're viewing on screen. Predicting & pre-empting that is another stage in the adventure. At the simplest level, send files as you have them, & it might work out fine - the lab may auto-correct. If you get into it more, or use different print processes, you might want to get into 'soft proofing', a way of previewing the effect of different papers and tweaking the image tonally to suit.
 
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Thank you for taking the time to give these very detailed answers. It seems such a shame to convert a tiff file into a compressed format like JPEG while trying to achieve the best print results. I imagine for most if not all of my pictures, it will not make too much difference given the quality of lens and film used on many occasions.

As an additional question, will there be any differences on how I convert the files? For example, I have been doing quick and dirty batch conversions to JPEG for sending to people on Whatsapp. I was converting with Preview on a Mac. Will that give different results compared with converting in Photoshop and will coverting the colourspace and the format in one go give the best results?

These are exceptionally dry questions, but I would rather get the theory of it all correct before bundling into it and not knowing why I am not geting the results I want.
 
I would imagine the process for converting from TIFF (uncompressed) to JPEG (compressed) is quite a common process and thus I would imagine there is little difference between applications. Straight answer though, is I don't know.

Converting the colour space will also depend on how the software does it. I don't know whether there is a "standard" that people adhere to.

Getting the "results you want" - as Droj says above - can be a bit of a journey. Paper choice for example can really make a difference - far more so than colour spaces and tiffs vs jpegs. Pick a paper with optical brighteners and it will look very different to a paper without. Likewise, matt papers will give very subdued colours vs the bright impact of gloss with semi-gloss (lustre/silk/insertfancyname) falling anywhere in-between.

droj said:
At the simplest level, send files as you have them, & it might work out fine - the lab may auto-correct.
Click to expand...
This is what I'd do initially. Somewhere like DSCL who have a modicum of quality control on their prints and are reasonably cheap. If you find a lab that can deliver you acceptable prints without lots of faffing, you might be saving yourself a lot of work.

It's one of the reasons I print my own. Control over the output and the ability to tweak images based on the resulting prints I get. Control over paper choice and ICC profiles. Ability to soft proof and see the results... Printing one's own images isn't cost effective. But then again, neither is shooting film :)
 
for the conversion I would use something where you can control the quality of the jpeg - I know you can do this in Photoshop, not sure about Preview as I had never thought to use that for conversion.

As mentioned above, DSCL are a good option, especially for smaller prints.
 
When you're looking at printers, work your way through their sites looking for guidance about how to present your files. There's often advice tucked away.

I've done ok with Photobox, certainly up to A4, and you could probably send srgb jpgs 'as-is', ie w/o soft-proofing, and they'd be fine.

A proviso is that monitors often leave their factories with the displays set too bright (100%!) and if you gauge your print files by that, the prints'll likely come out too dark. A rough & ready benchmark for screen brightness is more like 50%.

Certainly have a few prints done for each printer / paper type to see where you're headed.
 
droj said:
When you're looking at printers, work your way through their sites looking for guidance about how to present your files. There's often advice tucked away.

I've done ok with Photobox, certainly up to A4, and you could probably send srgb jpgs 'as-is', ie w/o soft-proofing, and they'd be fine.

A proviso is that monitors often leave their factories with the displays set too bright (100%!) and if you gauge your print files by that, the prints'll likely come out too dark. A rough & ready benchmark for screen brightness is more like 50%.

Certainly have a few prints done for each printer / paper type to see where you're headed.
Click to expand...

I have done all my scanning with the screen at 100% brightness on my Macbook pro and aswell I imagine the colours are way over saturdated on it but they are done now. For the bigger prints I want to do, I will rescan them after having my monitor calibrated, which is something I will not have access to until late September.

I will give a batch of 10 or so not so important pictures a blast with DSCL is see if what comes back is anything like what I expect. If not, I will reconfigure my workflow and have another go.
 
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