Panic stations on nudes...

lynnma

I'm panicking this morning.. picture looks fine on my monitor bit when I print it out on high quality kodak paper I get this scaley mottley effect where there are shadows, under the chin, arms etc. I printed in rgb and cmyk, rgb was better but cmyk was awful. I'm taking the disc to the printer (this is for a calendar) soon and need to fix this.. Help all print folks out there, printing is all new to me. My profile is the normal srgb and my paper is good.. whats wrong?

I've cropped my model (she is wearing a flag) for modesty at this point..

lynnma

this is a scan of the printout... see the problem?

cmr164

lynnma wrote:

this is a scan of the printout... see the problem?

Lynn;
Make a print from an image with no processing and in particular with no
sharpening. Assuming you shot the pics in raw mode, make sure that the
in camera sharpening is reversed in the conversion/import of the raw image.

If that gets rid of the scaling then go back and do your image enhancements but without the sharpening and let us know the results

I will be off to shoot some marathon pics soon but will check in this evening

lynnma

cmr164 wrote:

Lynn;
Make a print from an image with no processing and in particular with no
sharpening. Assuming you shot the pics in raw mode, make sure that the
in camera sharpening is reversed in the conversion/import of the raw image.

If that gets rid of the scaling then go back and do your image enhancements but without the sharpening and let us know the results

I will be off to shoot some marathon pics soon but will check in this evening

I did'nt use any sharpening at all, I did gaussian blur tho... I'm not sure I know how to reverse the the sharpening on importing raw image (I did shoot in raw).
I'll try ...:cry

cmr164

lynnma wrote:

I did'nt use any sharpening at all, I did gaussian blur tho... I'm not sure I know how to reverse the the sharpening on importing raw image (I did shoot in raw).
I'll try ...:cry

Even though I am using a 'Canon' it is one of the Kodak DCS cameras. Kodak has always had better s/w than Canon. Kodak had the first pro cameras and Canon has been playing catch up. Even so, I would be surprised if the PS import module did not include a sharpening ajustment to turn off or tune the in camera sharpening.

zero-zero

Lynn,

can I see a 100% crop of the affected areas from the original file instead of the print? we can go from there.

Why someone would prefer to be given 2nd-gen prints for repro escapes me, unless he's trying to cover his back.

lynnma

here is my photoshop processing done
nothing shows but when I print I get that awful tan pigment grain thing going... I have 12 of these women to do and losing sleep at this point.. I think it must have something to do with saturation.. I don't sharpen it, or it's the blur.. or something.

wxwax

Lynn, if it's any comfort, I get the sense that there are a lot of pitfalls in the path to successfully creating a print that looks like what you see on your screen. Whatever advice Z-Z can give you is worth its weight in gold.

A basic is just having paper that's compatible with your printer - that alone makes a huge difference, and is why many people use paper branded by the manufacturer of the printer.

Also, people pay a lot of money for software to calibrate monitor and printer.

Any chance you can send your printer a demo file and see what it looks like for them?

rutt

lynnma wrote:

here is my photoshop processing done
nothing shows but when I print I get that awful tan pigment grain thing going... I have 12 of these women to do and losing sleep at this point.. I think it must have something to do with saturation.. I don't sharpen it, or it's the blur.. or something.

I'd play with this a little, but it's not worth doing without access to a full sized original. Do you have a smugmug account or something?

rutt

lynnma wrote:

I've been worrying about this for days...
My plan is to give the printer a disc with the shots on, not a print out but will his printer show these faults? I'm not familiar with this (yet) and in a tizzy..

here is the original with nothing done to it at all except optimizing to jpg.

It depends on who your printer is and how much you are willing to pay. For example, if you use Portland Color, you will pay almost 5X what you would pay for an EZ print. But they manually correct each picture and the results are great. It's like using a color pro shop in the old days. Also, even the best inkjet can't compete with what they have, which uses a real photographic process and real photographic paper. They will also print proofs and take your input (for $$).

If you use EZ print or similar, you are likely to get whatever happens. If your image is too light or too dark, that could be an issue. Perhaps the smugmug prints (EZ Print, really) with the enhance option will fix. This is cheap enough to try both ways.

zero-zero

Can't bet on it, really, Lynn, but I know my monitor (which I use for designing and prepressing a whole magazine, among others) does not show anything out of the ordinary. You should be just fine - I can only attribute that to a profile mismatch (or lack of proper profiling, probably the case).

If you'll sleep better, have some small prints done on a Durst Lambda or a Fuji Frontier machine. Ask a photographer in your area where to have them done.

lynnma

zero-zero wrote:

Can't bet on it, really, Lynn, but I know my monitor (which I use for designing and prepressing a whole magazine, among others) does not show anything out of the ordinary. You should be just fine - I can only attribute that to a profile mismatch (or lack of proper profiling, probably the case).

If you'll sleep better, have some small prints done on a Durst Lambda or a Fuji Frontier machine. Ask a photographer in your area where to have them done.

Phew, I'm relieved to hear you say you can't see anything too untoward on your monitor.. thanks for looking Roberto, you're a gem.
Lynn

lynnma

rutt wrote:

It depends on who your printer is and how much you are willing to pay. For example, if you use Portland Color, you will pay almost 5X what you would pay for an EZ print. But they manually correct each picture and the results are great. It's like using a color pro shop in the old days. Also, even the best inkjet can't compete with what they have, which uses a real photographic process and real photographic paper. They will also print proofs and take your input (for $$).

If you use EZ print or similar, you are likely to get whatever happens. If your image is too light or too dark, that could be an issue. Perhaps the smugmug prints (EZ Print, really) with the enhance option will fix. This is cheap enough to try both ways.

Hi Rutt, the printer is a local press/print shop that I'm told does good work (we'll see) I'm supposed to be in on the first proofs to correct color etc (we'll see) and as this is all a first for me it's all very exciting. I'm not paying for any of this, I'm just taking the shots and the charity is footing the bill for publisher and such. I'm just in it for the fun and experience. I'm nervous of course, first public exposure (apart from dgrin..lol, doesn't count) thats why I want them to be good.. I'm going to go into my printer color profiles and see if I can fix the prints, just for my own pictures.
thanks for help.
Lynn

lynnma

wxwax wrote:

Lynn, if it's any comfort, I get the sense that there are a lot of pitfalls in the path to successfully creating a print that looks like what you see on your screen. Whatever advice Z-Z can give you is worth its weight in gold.

A basic is just having paper that's compatible with your printer - that alone makes a huge difference, and is why many people use paper branded by the manufacturer of the printer.

Also, people pay a lot of money for software to calibrate monitor and printer.

Any chance you can send your printer a demo file and see what it looks like for them?

Thats exactly what I'm going to do Sid. I've basically told the publisher (small town) that I need to see this first shot printed so I can process all the others and be within the deadline of twelve calendar pages by end of July (put me foot down I did) I can just see me July 28th trying to fix 12 middle aged glamour blurred pictures all at once and have 12 pillars of the communtiy hating my guts cos they look so awful... :lol .

I have been using Kodak paper.. I'll get some Canon and see if it's better.
I have been doing a tutorial with www.vtc.com
a training course online.. fabulous but it's 25.oo a month, worth every penny, less than travelling to school. I'm learning about color profiles... I'm sure my printer is wrong. Seems to me you calibrated your monitor did'nt you???

Lynn

lynnma

rutt wrote:

I'd play with this a little, but it's not worth doing without access to a full sized original. Do you have a smugmug account or something?

I do Rutt but I'm reticent about putting a half naked friend of mine on the web so soon...

rutt

lynnma wrote:

I do Rutt but I'm reticent about putting a half naked friend of mine on the web so soon...

Just don't make the gallery public. Then you can still link your dgrin posts to it, but nobody who doesn't already have the URL can find it.

lynnma

zero-zero wrote:

Can't bet on it, really, Lynn, but I know my monitor (which I use for designing and prepressing a whole magazine, among others) does not show anything out of the ordinary. You should be just fine - I can only attribute that to a profile mismatch (or lack of proper profiling, probably the case).

If you'll sleep better, have some small prints done on a Durst Lambda or a Fuji Frontier machine. Ask a photographer in your area where to have them done.

I've been thinking... again.. I've changed my color management in my printer from CNBJPRN what ever that was.. to sRGB Color Space Profile.icm and with going too far into it I think it looks better. Should I be changing the profiles to CMYK.icc for work thats going to a commerical printer? to get a better idea of the finished color?
Lynn

pathfinder

lynnma wrote:

I've been thinking... again.. I've changed my color management in my printer from CNBJPRN what ever that was.. to sRGB Color Space Profile.icm and with going too far into it I think it looks better. Should I be changing the profiles to CMYK.icc for work thats going to a commerical printer? to get a better idea of the finished color?
Lynn

Lynn - I'll second what wxwax said about brands of paper. I use an Epson 2200 and I find that I cannot use many brands of paper including Kodak without getting funny ( darn bad ) results. Not to pick on Kodak - their paper is better than most and I am sure works well with some printers. But on mine I get bronzing at times if I don't use appropriate Epson papers. Canon printers are dye based and may not be so fussy, but I think maybe you are not interested in experimenting right now, but proofing, and for proofing - if it was me, I'd use paper made and rec'd by the printer manufacturer only!
As for file type for the commercial printer - ask them what they require or can use - they may well be able to use a standard sRGB or Adobe RGB or a .psd or may want CMYK tiff. Let them tell you their needs

sRGB color space has a little more constricted hue than AdobeRGB or Colormatch but is probably adequate for your calendar image needs needs.

Zer0-Zero - if anything I have said here is not 100% correct, please feel free to correct it so than I do not give Lynn any misinformation. Thanks

lynnma

pathfinder wrote:

Lynn - I'll second what wxwax said about brands of paper. I use an Epson 2200 and I find that I cannot use many brands of paper including Kodak without getting funny ( darn bad ) results. Not to pick on Kodak - their paper is better than most and I am sure works well with some printers. But on mine I get bronzing at times if I don't use appropriate Epson papers. Canon printers are dye based and may not be so fussy, but I think maybe you are not interested in experimenting right now, but proofing, and for proofing - if it was me, I'd use paper made and rec'd by the printer manufacturer only!
As for file type for the commercial printer - ask them what they require or can use - they may well be able to use a standard sRGB or Adobe RGB or a .psd or may want CMYK tiff. Let them tell you their needs

sRGB color space has a little more constricted hue than AdobeRGB or Colormatch but is probably adequate for your calendar image needs needs.

Zer0-Zero - if anything I have said here is not 100% correct, please feel free to correct it so than I do not give Lynn any misinformation. Thanks

Thanks Pathfinder,

all this info is great great great... I'm forever in your debt..
Lynn

pathfinder

lynnma wrote:

I'm panicking this morning.. picture looks fine on my monitor bit when I print it out on high quality kodak paper I get this scaley mottley effect where there are shadows, under the chin, arms etc. I printed in rgb and cmyk, rgb was better but cmyk was awful. I'm taking the disc to the printer (this is for a calendar) soon and need to fix this.. Help all print folks out there, printing is all new to me. My profile is the normal srgb and my paper is good.. whats wrong?

I've cropped my model (she is wearing a flag) for modesty at this point..

Your portrait looks great - that attitude in her face, the glow in the complexion, the blurred flag for a background - I think this is just first rate work - Hard to see where you have anything to improve - Im'm jealous - Good work Lynn - just let us see your images when you are through.- oK?

jimf

pathfinder wrote:

I use an Epson 2200 and I find that I cannot use many brands of paper including Kodak without getting funny ( darn bad ) results. Not to pick on Kodak - their paper is better than most and I am sure works well with some printers. But on mine I get bronzing at times if I don't use appropriate Epson papers. [...]

sRGB color space has a little more constricted hue than AdobeRGB or Colormatch but is probably adequate for your calendar image needs needs.

I guess I'm not happy to hear that Kodak paper doesn't work well with the Epson printers either. I tried Fuji (this with an Epson S300) and the results were worse than awful; I have been hoping that Kodak would work. I don't really mind buying Epson paper except that it's a lot harder to find.

Anyway, I've been using sRGB color space (ie, not bothering to change the color space) and achieving reasonable results so I don't believe this is a color space issue. On a home printer it could be lots of things, including printer profile mismatch or overprocessing. I would guess the latter since this print looks a heck of a lot like what I got out of my printer when trying to print using Canon's printing software -- I got a nasty yellow cast very similar to this, although I didn't get the banding effect you see (which looks like overcontrasting to me).

It turned out that the Canon print software (Film Factory) was trying to do color management and so was the color management software on the Mac. I had to go in and disable the management in the print software. If you're using Film Factory then go to Retouch -> Auto Retouch Settings and set Color Balance to OFF. That dramatically improved the output for me.

Using Photoshop Elements to do the printing also avoided the color cast, but as of this point I have not figured out how to get it to print anything but 8x10s with it. (And I probably never will, since Photoshop CS is so superior that I've stopped using Elements.)

Regarding outside printing, I remarked in a different thread that I tried a local printer giving them JPG and TIFF versions of the same image. In every case the JPG files were adjusted for printing, usually with relatively poor results. I would suggest supplying them with TIFF files which I found delivered both accurate color (within the tolerances I can detect anyway :-) and much sharper images.

I would absolutely NOT supply images to the printer that were created with Photoshop's Web Image converter. That is optimizing for screen display, not printing. Convert them with something else, or give them TIFF. I would recommend TIFF.

lynnma

Molsondog wrote:

Without seeing the problem area up close, it looks like your issue may be printer ink/paper related. Using a magnifying glass, look closely at the mottled area. Does it look like the ink puddled on the paper? If so, the drainage rate of the inks is slower than the drainage rate of the paper. In that case, the ink is unable to fully get into the coated surface of the paper and puddles up on the surface, creating an effect that looks similar to what I can see from the pix. The solution is to match the paper to the printer. When H-P, Epson, Canon and the others market a paper for their printers, they build a drainage rate into the paper for their inks. I use cheapy paper for proofing, then the printer manufacturer's paper for the final print.

Make sense? A good test is to run a print with lower quality settings (less ink) then a print with best quality settings (more ink) and compare. If the best quality puddles more, it shows that you have exceeded the ability of the paper to absorb ink when you piled it on in best quality setting. Give it a try and tell us the results.

thanks molson, thats a good solution. I'm learning so much here it's amazing.
Lynn

lynnma

jimf wrote:

I guess I'm not happy to hear that Kodak paper doesn't work well with the Epson printers either. I tried Fuji (this with an Epson S300) and the results were worse than awful; I have been hoping that Kodak would work. I don't really mind buying Epson paper except that it's a lot harder to find.

Anyway, I've been using sRGB color space (ie, not bothering to change the color space) and achieving reasonable results so I don't believe this is a color space issue. On a home printer it could be lots of things, including printer profile mismatch or overprocessing. I would guess the latter since this print looks a heck of a lot like what I got out of my printer when trying to print using Canon's printing software -- I got a nasty yellow cast very similar to this, although I didn't get the banding effect you see (which looks like overcontrasting to me).

It turned out that the Canon print software (Film Factory) was trying to do color management and so was the color management software on the Mac. I had to go in and disable the management in the print software. If you're using Film Factory then go to Retouch -> Auto Retouch Settings and set Color Balance to OFF. That dramatically improved the output for me.

Using Photoshop Elements to do the printing also avoided the color cast, but as of this point I have not figured out how to get it to print anything but 8x10s with it. (And I probably never will, since Photoshop CS is so superior that I've stopped using Elements.)

Regarding outside printing, I remarked in a different thread that I tried a local printer giving them JPG and TIFF versions of the same image. In every case the JPG files were adjusted for printing, usually with relatively poor results. I would suggest supplying them with TIFF files which I found delivered both accurate color (within the tolerances I can detect anyway :-) and much sharper images.

I would absolutely NOT supply images to the printer that were created with Photoshop's Web Image converter. That is optimizing for screen display, not printing. Convert them with something else, or give them TIFF. I would recommend TIFF.

Thanks Jim, I was planning on a flattened Tiff file. So much to learn hey?
Lynn

rutt

lynnma wrote:

thanks molson, thats a good solution. I'm learning so much here it's amazing.
Lynn

Let me summarize:

1. Your desktop printer and a professional printer are very different in terms of ink limits, gamut, etc.
2. For your desktop printer, the easiest thing is to use the manufacturer's paper and ink and use a profile proveded by the manufacturer. Alternatively, you can deal with an expert third party paper/ink supplier like inkjetart. This probably won't save you any money, but you may find something you like better than the manufacturer's offerings. (It might save you money if you print a lot and are willing to buy into continious flow inks, but that's another story altogether.)
3. Make sure you haven't exceeded ink limits before you print. (Probably doesn't matter except in CMYK, where the ink police will get you at somewhere between 280 and 300 depending.)
4. For professional printing, supply them with a lossless version of your image. Tiff, psd, jpeg2000. But don't make a new jpeg encoding.
5. Higher priced professional printers will manually rebalance color for their own press. If your photo has white & black points and some skin (no problem!), this will be easy for them and you don't have to worry to much about color management.

So I guess the summary of the summary is don't panic.

lynnma

pathfinder wrote:

Lynn - I'll second what wxwax said about brands of paper. I use an Epson 2200 and I find that I cannot use many brands of paper including Kodak without getting funny ( darn bad ) results. Not to pick on Kodak - their paper is better than most and I am sure works well with some printers. But on mine I get bronzing at times if I don't use appropriate Epson papers. Canon printers are dye based and may not be so fussy, but I think maybe you are not interested in experimenting right now, but proofing, and for proofing - if it was me, I'd use paper made and rec'd by the printer manufacturer only!
As for file type for the commercial printer - ask them what they require or can use - they may well be able to use a standard sRGB or Adobe RGB or a .psd or may want CMYK tiff. Let them tell you their needs

sRGB color space has a little more constricted hue than AdobeRGB or Colormatch but is probably adequate for your calendar image needs needs.

Zer0-Zero - if anything I have said here is not 100% correct, please feel free to correct it so than I do not give Lynn any misinformation. Thanks

Path, would I set my printer on AdobeRGB or AdobeRGB wide gamut and what is the difference please.
Lynn

rutt

By the way, did anybody say that the picture is great? Not only is the image technically great, but very expresive. I like the contrast of subject and setting. Giving an ordinary person a treatment ususally reserved for super models or playmates makes a startling statement.

lynnma

rutt wrote:

By the way, did anybody say that the picture is great? Not only is the image technically great, but very expresive. I like the contrast of subject and setting. Giving an ordinary person a treatment ususally reserved for super models or playmates makes a startling statement.

Youre a peach Rutt and l love ya...:D

luksamedia

You need to check and see what resolution your printer supports and match your image to that. Should come out ok. I don't think most will print 16bit only 8bit. However, I may be mistaken. I never produce prints on my printer. I have a lab do them.

Hope this helps.

Thomas

lynnma

Still panicking on my partially nude models (sorry to be so boring everyone). I got my "match print" back from the printer and it looks like the areas that I had an orangy color cast and somehow fixed in ps have come out more magenta in the match print. The overall color is good and I'm thrilled.. they can't take out any more magenta as the other red parts will fade to orange so my question is:

1. should I go back to my raw photo and redo it and not saturate, warm, etc etc so drastically now I'm more familiar with print problems and have another match print done ($30 a pop... not my bill). Even tho I will still have shot it outside with a bad mix of Tungston and natural light, (I may still have the cast).

2. shoot the whole thing again with my new speedlite flash and Lumiquest Ultrasoft and then have another match print done..

What do you experts think...I'm working on the raw while waiting for advice.
Thanks in anticipation an awe of the hopefully forthcoming sage advice..

grovellingly yours
Lynn
p.s. I've attached a scanned (horrible) cropped image which is MUCH better in reality to show the red areas (which are more red in reality)
thanks for listening to this long tirade...

rutt

I don't think you should reshoot. The shot is so great and her look is so great. You will never capture that again. Don't panic, there really is nothing that can't be fixed "post".

Are the problem spots on her arms?

lynnma

rutt wrote:

I don't think you should reshoot. The shot is so great and her look is so great. You will never capture that again. Don't panic, there really is nothing that can't be fixed "post".

Are the problem spots on her arms?

Hi Rutt, I just sent you a private message on this, thanks again for your help. This is the new version which looks very blah optimized for the web but looks better in real life.

The printer says this looks better and will come out with more magenta looking warmer ( I hope so) so Im waiting for the second match print be done before I cave in and reshoot. The main problem lies with the fact that I augmented the natural light outside with tungsten and caused a nasty cast... we live and learn..can't undo that I'm afraid..