Prints look dull

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wonder_lander

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Edit My Images
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I've used a variety of online printers and although I send off, what look to me, well exposured and processed pictures I get back photos that look quite dull (under expossed).

Do I just need to calibrate my laptop better or should I be intentionally over exposing them as printing causes them to be under exposed?
 
What you describe could be a number of things. Certainly it may be down to your laptop screen. Alternatively if you are sending them as images saved in Adobe RGB when the printer is probably using sRGB then that could be the problem. Also you could be trying to add more contrast or saturation than the printer can handle hence the prints looking drabber than you expected.
 
When you open the export dialog box, look at the section File Settings

You'll see a box labeled Format. In your case this will be JPEG

Below this is a box labeled colour space, what is selected here
 
wonder_lander said:
I've used a variety of online printers and although I send off, what look to me, well exposured and processed pictures I get back photos that look quite dull (under expossed).

Do I just need to calibrate my laptop better or should I be intentionally over exposing them as printing causes them to be under exposed?
Click to expand...

How do the histograms look when editing? Could easily be monitor issue or colour space - or both!
 
longlivemedia said:
If you can use a TIFF file instead of a JPEG, you'll be sending them an uncompressed image with all the formatting and detail you created in the original.
Click to expand...

I would avoid this. LLM, Remember that you can also get compressed tif files that are lossless so no all Tiff files are uncompressed (best advised to compress)! JPG files will be fine.

Tif/jpg/psd is unlikely to make any difference when printing so long as they are set up right all can produce good or bad results.

What will make a difference is the colour space, the monitor calibration, the print profile and the oaoer type.
 
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Definitely look at calibrating your monitor. If your monitor is too bright then the images you print will look dull when they come back from the printer. Also, contact your printer to see what formats they use and what they prefer. If you can use a TIFF file instead of a JPEG, you'll be sending them an uncompressed image with all the formatting and detail you created in the original.
 
printisnotdead said:
Definitely look at calibrating your monitor. If your monitor is too bright then the images you print will look dull when they come back from the printer. Also, contact your printer to see what formats they use and what they prefer. If you can use a TIFF file instead of a JPEG, you'll be sending them an uncompressed image with all the formatting and detail you created in the original.
Click to expand...

That is not true. TIF images are generally lossless COMPRESSED images although you can save as uncompressed - but all that does is give HUGE file sizes needlessly.

Printing with a TIF will NOT provide any greater quality than a JPEG processed from that same TIF file (unless you use a HUGE amount of compression.
 
Firstly get your screen calibrated. Then contact the lab and ask for a profile. This should improve things and give a better match. If using more than one lab get profiles from each but remember to change these in your software when alternating labs.
 
I had this problem my screen was to bright . Calibrate as well the Pantone Huey is the cheapest option but it doesn't work very well with massively over bright screens in my experience. I have some test prints out at the moment to hopefully sort this
 
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