Print Quality

FACzen

OK, I'm about to test BayPhoto's output service. I posted a few new pictures for testing, then I downloaded the icc profile for their printer and ran a soft proof onscreen in CS5.

YUCK.

No blacks. All washed out. I couldn't even figure out how to correct it within reason. And I wonder if I should. Could it be that I should be seeing this onscreen but the prints will come out?

Here's a test image: It's a pretty extreme night shot. Would you attempt to correct it further?

http://faczen.smugmug.com/Professional/Gallery-Series/15119779_qdoDq#1130358176_P6c6X-A-LB

Glenn

Icebear

Looks pretty good to me.

pathfinder

Lovely shot of the house at night with the starry sky.

Your blacks in the sky, are black, they do read 1,1,1 or 3,3,3.

But your highlights, even your specular highlights of the lightbulbs themselves, are merely grey.

Specular highlights should read should read north of 250,250,250 as should the stars in your sky. Yours do not read so on my monitor screen. I think you need more pop in your highlights, a steeper curve in the upper highlights, so that the stars are truly white or even specular, unless it wasa foggy night that you are wanting to capture.

Some of these choices come dawn to artistic intent, of course, but lights and stars should not usually read as light greys, but as white or specular highlights, I tend to think. I do see the color in your stars, but they still look flat to me. Most images are best rendered taking advantage of the full black to white range of the paper 0,0,0 to 255,255,255

Your thoughts about my suggestions?

Andy

PF is right. This image will print very, very dark. Something like this is in order (scroll right to compare)

catspaw

if you are seeing 'washed out' ... I'd grab a color monitor STAT.

FACzen

Thanks, folks. FWIW, I have two Spyder calibrated monitors but as I said, when I tried to soft proof the image in CS5 it showed up as muddy grey with no solid blacks. Andy points out that it will print very dark. Hmmm. BTW, Andy, your version looks just like the one I had created by adding an adjustment layer. I had discarded it because i thought it would be TOO bright! I guess I'm going to make a couple of version and send them to Bay Photo in a reasonable size so I can evaluate them. As I write this, I'm uploading 103 images on the other computer -- this one was the most extreme so I used it as a point of discussion. I'll order a couple of larger format prints of other images and if you want, report back here as to how well they came out.

Thanks again!

Glenn

NormanPCN

What options did you use for Soft Proof? Preserve RGB numbers should be off. That can wash things out.

-Norman

arodney

FACzen wrote: »

OK, I'm about to test BayPhoto's output service. I posted a few new pictures for testing, then I downloaded the icc profile for their printer and ran a soft proof onscreen in CS5.
YUCK.

Since they probably demand you send them the data in sRGB and not using the output profile, its a moot point. Its another lame workflow where labs want you to think they are implementing color management when they are not. If someone provides an ICC profile, they should let you use it fully; control rendering intent, Black Point Compensation and conversion using (ideally) the ACE CMM. We have no idea if they even use that profile for conversion (unlikely) or if the profile represents the actual output device (unlikely).