ICC Profiles. What do you recommend?

ajpnphoto

I'm new here so . . .

I have been working on photos for a gallery and I am wondering if I should use sRGB or if I should assign an actual profile from Bay Photo to my images.

What if I want to make it so people can choose between Bay and eZ themselves? Or is that not recommended? Or even possible?

Personally I prefe to set up print jobs myself, but with a lot of the events I shoot people just want to order prints on their own time and not have to contact me, so I am adding this smugmug option to my site,

I am familiar with Bay photo, but I do not use them on my own. So what I am asking is for any and all advice on my situation.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Great thanks in advance.

thaKing

someone with more knowledge will probably jump in, but go with sRGB..only use the profiles from the labs for soft-proofing...

SteveM

ajpnphoto wrote:

I'm new here so . . .

I have been working on photos for a gallery and I am wondering if I should use sRGB or if I should assign an actual profile from Bay Photo to my images.

What if I want to make it so people can choose between Bay and eZ themselves? Or is that not recommended? Or even possible?

Personally I prefe to set up print jobs myself, but with a lot of the events I shoot people just want to order prints on their own time and not have to contact me, so I am adding this smugmug option to my site,

I am familiar with Bay photo, but I do not use them on my own. So what I am asking is for any and all advice on my situation.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Great thanks in advance.

Hi,

King is absolutely right. You'll want to work in sRGB, and embed that colorspace to your images. The ICC profiles for Bay and EZ Prints are only previews used for Soft Proofing. An ICC profile is kind of a roadmap that tells other devices what that device is capable of. In this case, it tells your monitor and Photoshop what Bay and EZ Prints' printers are capable of.

While there's no 'blanket' profile, sRGB is close. Most modern labs stick to sRGB, since it most closely matches the capabilities in printed output. The variation between Bay's and EZ Print's ICC is extremely minimal.

I hope this helps! Shout with more questions.

denisegoldberg

ajpnphoto wrote:

What if I want to make it so people can choose between Bay and eZ themselves? Or is that not recommended? Or even possible?

Each gallery goes to only one lab - your choice, not the customer's. If you want to give them a choice of labs you would need to place your photos in two (probably identical) galleries, one set to print at Bay Photos and one at EZPrint.

It really should be your choice. How would you tell your customer which lab they should choose if you decide to load duplicate galleries?

--- Denise

devbobo

When you upload your photos to SmugMug, if a colour profile other than sRGB is embedded...the original image will be modified and the embedded profile will be replaced with the sRGB profile.

ajpnphoto

Wow
Wow. Thank you. Really great help and suggestions. I appreciate it.

I will go with sRGB. I see when I assign one of the other profiles it basically does make it look like what I might expect from a print.

What about the differences in print quality from Bay as opposed to eZ. What's the general consensus?

Chris O

I've ordered prints from both Ez and Bay... they're both awesome. Honestly I'd just use Ez and pocket your savings. I'll use Bay if I want them to be hand corrected (weddings mainly).

Yes use sRGB, all the labs I've dealt with ask for it. I shoot in sRGB now instead of AdobeRGB. Technically aRGB has a bigger gamut if I remember correctly (technically it does, but doesn't act like it in the real world), but just using sRGB across the board keeps things simple. It'll be much more consistent.