In slight panic mode

Painterskip

My question is about my picture quality and processing. So if I've posted in the wrong place, please advise...

Here goes...

I recently took on my first dance studio job...the photos I call 'class pictures'. Most were taken in the studio. I used 2 Alien Bees and a raw muslin backdrop. And I pretty much paying attention to what I was doing, apparently, even though I thought I had everything set up just right...

Long story short, the first night went really well and the photos turned out great, for the most part.
Night two, I must have been asleep. Almost all the photos were about 2 stops underexposed, so I ended up editing all of them. And they don't look bad....on my screen. In fact, I had a few printed locally and some looked good, some not so good...but I thought the difference was that, on a whim, I had a few processed at a WalMart, just to see some samples. A few looked great. Otehrs looked bad, in my opinion. I took the same photos to a local camera store and pro processor. Big difference.

So today, I wanted to have some 5x7s printed quickly and they had a sale, so I had about 40 of them printed. Almost all had too much contrast in addition to being too dark.

So I'm worried now. Even though one of the dancers already ordered some 4x6s and showed them to me...they looked great. (EZPrints). But I'm still worried that what I'm seeing on my screen isn't going to be what I receive.

I installed the SmugMug icc profile and loaded one of the images into Photoshop to see if it was off. I could see no difference when clicking on 'proof colors' in Photoshop (CS3).

So I'm wondering if I could upload and share one of the images just to see if anyone can tell me if the image quality is acceptable. Not so much a critique, but just to see if maybe I'm looking at something totally different here.
I will be going back to the lab tomorrow to see what they think...based on what I'm seeing on my screen, I think they screwed up. But I'd feel better if I had more info....

Oh...at first I thought that I had saved them all as Adobe RGB, but they are sRGB. Would that make a big difference?

Skip

Steve Cavigliano

Hi Skip,
The Help Desk can help :-) Just send us an email with a few links to the photos (or gallery) in question. We will have one of our Print Specialists get back to you with suggested courses of action. We are here for you 365 days a year :-)

The order from today was for downloads. So they can be edited if necessary. To my eyes, line item #s 2, 3 and 4 are too dark to print well, as is. 1, 5, 6 and 7 should print fine, without correction or editing.

Please bear in mind that, photos will display 1.5-2 stops brighter, on today's highly backlit monitors. Than they will print. And they will also print with much less dynamic range (highlight and shadow detail): http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/93365 This is due to being backlit versus being viewed under reflective lighting. This isn't your fault, our fault or the lab's fault. It's just the nature of the beast. And the difference between viewing with backlighting, or under reflective lighting.

Regarding colorspace. We convert Adobe RGB colorspace files to sRGB when you upload : http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/93362 So there shouldn't be a problem there.

I hope this helps.

Have a wonderful evening Skip
Cavig

Painterskip

Thanks very much for the reply. I took the set of 5x7s back to the lab today and the 'regular guy', the one that knows better, agreed that they were not printed, or rather adjusted properly. It took him literally a minute or two to see the problem, correct it and send to reprint. But I don't have that luxury when someone downloads or I think, even if I have printed through here, until I receive them.

Oh...and looking at the order that you referenced, the photos you mentioned that might be dark were taken at the recital, so I know that they might be a little dark..that venue had terrible lighting. It was the studio photos that I was concerned about.

I'll follow your suggestions and thank you very much...
Skip