Help with prints

Panfoto

I seem to have gotten myself in a bit of a pickle. You see I'm relatively new to photography as a whole and very new to getting prints done. I wanted to see the differences between auto and true in this photo:



So as a test I ordered some prints through smugmug. When I got them back one looks pretty much like my monitor. The other looks, well, muddy. Like all the contrast is gone from everything except the sky. It took a minute, but I soon realized that I had no way of telling which was which. The codes on the back of the prints are exactly the same. For what it's worth I have tried to calibrate the gamma on my LCD, but the backlight is very bright and there doesn't seem to be much I can do about that. I'd love to print out one of those nifty new fotoflots but I don't want to spend a bunch of money just to find out I should have chosen the "other" printing option.

Any ideas how I can tell which is which?

Thanks so much!

Andy

The brighter (not muddy) one will be Auto. Fotoflot doesn't have the same 'auto' that we do at our lab, so we'll want to get that perfectly processed before you send it off to them
We'll help if you want.

Panfoto

Andy wrote:

The brighter (not muddy) one will be Auto. Fotoflot doesn't have the same 'auto' that we do at our lab, so we'll want to get that perfectly processed before you send it off to them
We'll help if you want.

Ok, my monitor must be pretty out of whack then. Not the answer I was hoping for, but the one I was pretty much expecting

Stop me when I'm getting cold. My monitor is too bright so what looked right to me was too dark. SmugMug auto correct bumped up the brightness (among other things?) to compensate. If I can't trust my monitor I'm guessing that I need to rely on the histogram to prepare my images. Auto-levels makes the image darker which I don't want. I'm guessing that the best way to correct this at this stage in the game is the gamma slider on the color levels dialog. Any suggestions as to how I can verify the results? Short of ordering a 4x6 each time I make a change that is!

Attached is the logarithmic levels dialog:

Dogdots

Panfoto wrote:

I seem to have gotten myself in a bit of a pickle. You see I'm relatively new to photography as a whole and very new to getting prints done. I wanted to see the differences between auto and true in this photo:



So as a test I ordered some prints through smugmug. When I got them back one looks pretty much like my monitor. The other looks, well, muddy. Like all the contrast is gone from everything except the sky. It took a minute, but I soon realized that I had no way of telling which was which. The codes on the back of the prints are exactly the same. For what it's worth I have tried to calibrate the gamma on my LCD, but the backlight is very bright and there doesn't seem to be much I can do about that. I'd love to print out one of those nifty new fotoflots but I don't want to spend a bunch of money just to find out I should have chosen the "other" printing option.

Any ideas how I can tell which is which?

Thanks so much!

I ordered a bunch of 4x6's not to long ago in True as most were landscapes and they came back muddy. Smug was nice to re-run my photos again using Auto I was surprised that some came out looking like the True photo when I compaired them next to each other while some came out better in the Auto setting. I did lose the nice blue sky in the Auto prints tho :cry

I don't have a calibrated monitor which is going to change soon...I just need to figure out which is the best to get. Thats a hard decision since there are so many different opinions. I posted a link in this section not to long ago on how to set up my software...ICC from ezprints for soft proofing and now I just need a calibrator.

When I use the ICC from ezprints for softproofing am I seeing a sample of what the photo will look like printed in Auto or True when printed? I hope someone can answer that for me...it would help a lot.

Smug and dgrin are really good at helping you out so don't hesitate to ask.

Panfoto

Well, I did some more tinkering with my display settings. I reduced the video gamma, reduced the monitor contrast, and increased the monitor brightness a tad. I used the smugmug calibration print for reference (my monitor seems more saturated but I have no idea how to correct that). I have a feeling it's better but not quite there yet. What do you guys think?

Sam

Panfoto,

I don't know whether this will help you out or not, but if you like I will take a look at the full size image on my calibrated monitor, and let you know how it looks on my monitor. Dark, bright, low / high contrast, saturation, etc.

If your interested send me an e-mail.

Sam

Dogdots

Looks alittle brighter and sharper on my monitor, but mine isn't calibrated. I'm curious what Sam see's if you let him try it out on his calibrated monitor.

I'm ordering my calibrator tomorrow

Panfoto

Dogdots wrote:

Looks alittle brighter and sharper on my monitor, but mine isn't calibrated. I'm curious what Sam see's if you let him try it out on his calibrated monitor.

I'm ordering my calibrator tomorrow

Sam did take a look at it and he had some very helpful comments.
I'll be making some changes and updating here soon (time permitting).

Which calibrator are you planning on getting? I have a feeling it's the kind of thing that pays for itself pretty quickly if you make enough prints, but it's not in the cards for me just yet. Maybe after the holiday bonus rolls in

Dogdots

Panfoto wrote:

Sam did take a look at it and he had some very helpful comments.
I'll be making some changes and updating here soon (time permitting).

Which calibrator are you planning on getting? I have a feeling it's the kind of thing that pays for itself pretty quickly if you make enough prints, but it's not in the cards for me just yet. Maybe after the holiday bonus rolls in

I look forward to seeing the changes you will be making to your photo. It will be interesting to see what Sam saw that we don't see on an uncalibrated monitor.

I was all ready to order the Eye One Display 2 calibrator then I read a few postings on fred miranda's site last night that it sometimes has problems running with Vista. Seems like all three that I have been looking at have had some sort of problem. Its more expensive which has me bummed as I was hoping to get the Huey instead, but that had some color problems that I know I'm not knowledgeable enough to deal with.

Sam would you be so kind to help us out on the question -- which one? Its so confusing being so new to this.

Sam

Marry,

I have the Monaco EZcolor, made by x-rite, and have received good results using this, but if I had to purchase a new system today I probably would be just as lost with all the new offerings.

What I do know is that my prints match what I see on my monitor pretty well.

Sam

Dogdots

Sam wrote:

Marry,

I have the Monaco EZcolor, made by x-rite, and have received good results using this, but if I had to purchase a new system today I probably would be just as lost with all the new offerings.

What I do know is that my prints match what I see on my monitor pretty well.

Sam

Thank you Sam for letting me know what you use

Panfoto

Panfoto wrote:

Sam did take a look at it and he had some very helpful comments.
I'll be making some changes and updating here soon (time permitting).

I think I'm getting close to what I want. C&C welcome.

Dogdots

Wow...that is a big difference from your original.

Can you share how you did this?

Panfoto

Dogdots wrote:

Wow...that is a big difference from your original.

Can you share how you did this?

Well, I really wish I'd written everything down as I did it. After I was done I remember thinking the exact same thing "now what exactly did I do".

I used the levels tool to give it more contrast in the darker regions, and I bumped up the saturation. I think it lost a lot of the original saturation in the processing. I used automated tools to merge 3 bracketed shots for each frame and spit out an LDR for each. I'm guessing the washed out colors in the original are from that process. Aside from the global saturation boost I also selected the deep greens by color and increased their saturation a tad. This was over a few iterations, watching the histogram to make sure I wasn't blowing out anything in the process.

I have a feeling that with more practice there won't be as much back and forth between levels and saturation. Well, I really shouldn't have lost all the color before the stitching. I spent so much time on that and it still came out bad. Luckily it was salvageable.

Now, to see if I can work up the courage to try it out on a 5x25 FotoFlot. If it comes out well then my grandmother gets something better than crossword puzzles for Christmas! If not, then well my closet could make do with some decorating :P
(That's her old farmhouse and barn btw)

Dogdots

Panfoto wrote:

Well, I really wish I'd written everything down as I did it. After I was done I remember thinking the exact same thing "now what exactly did I do".

I used the levels tool to give it more contrast in the darker regions, and I bumped up the saturation. I think it lost a lot of the original saturation in the processing. I used automated tools to merge 3 bracketed shots for each frame and spit out an LDR for each. I'm guessing the washed out colors in the original are from that process. Aside from the global saturation boost I also selected the deep greens by color and increased their saturation a tad. This was over a few iterations, watching the histogram to make sure I wasn't blowing out anything in the process.

I have a feeling that with more practice there won't be as much back and forth between levels and saturation. Well, I really shouldn't have lost all the color before the stitching. I spent so much time on that and it still came out bad. Luckily it was salvageable.

Now, to see if I can work up the courage to try it out on a 5x25 FotoFlot. If it comes out well then my grandmother gets something better than crossword puzzles for Christmas! If not, then well my closet could make do with some decorating :P
(That's her old farmhouse and barn btw)

I know the feeling of not writing down things down. I learned the hard way. Didn't write something down and couldn't remember how I did it so I could do it again :cry

Your Grandma will love it...lucky her. I doubt it will end up decorating your closet.

Levels.....I'm going to have to try that as it looks like it works How far did you have to boost the saturation? I'm always worried I may push it alittle to far.

Hope it prints out well for you.