HELP! How do these look on your Monitor?

anonymouscuban

I setup the booth again this year at my Company's fall festival. This is my 3rd year. I charge $10 for an 8x10 print. I donate all the proceeds to the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. Well, I sent these to Costco for print and my wife picked them up today. The skin tones look horrible on the prints. Before I take them back, I want to make sure it's not my fault. BTW, please don't critique anything else because I know these are not great. LOL

How do these look on your monitor? Do the skin tones look blueish-gray?

1- Girl only. Boy has makeup on.


2 -


3 -


4 -

Dr Calohandre

On my monitor, they appear to be about 1/2 to 3/4 a stop overexposed. I think you needed a little less on your primary light and a little more on a kicker.

reyvee61

They look fine on my display
Do you have the printer profile info from Costco?
It wont matter how good your files are if the printer is set to a different color profile.

novicesnapper

AC, to me they look ever so slightly hot, but all in all just fine. I see no blue on any of the kids.

divamum

+1 Very slight cast on the camera right kid in first shot, but I'm pretty sure it's his makeup. Everybody else looks fine.

Hackbone

Exposures seem a little hot. When you go to sams, walmart, cosco their machines have a button for auto color correction. It is always checked, you need to uncheck it and your prints should look better. Generally for some reason their 8x10's are not as accurate as 5x7's and down.

PS.....welcome to the world of professional photography. We've all been there.

Spudnik

I think they could be warmed up a tad but for $10 you don't give or expect masterpieces. They're acceptable.

anonymouscuban

Good to know guys. Like I said, color wise, they look perfect on my end. I know some of the shots may be a tad hot but when you're burn and churning like I was with these, I really am not too concerned with it. There are no blinkies on the histogram so I'm good.

I'm gonna return the prints and have a second go at them. I will see about that color correction button Hack.

Argghh.. there is no way I'm delivering the prints as is, even for $10.

Hackbone

Make sure the box is NOT CHECKED.

anonymouscuban

Hackbone wrote: »

Make sure the box is NOT CHECKED.

Right but I went through the photos again and I don't think it's a problem on my end because there are a few that look good. I print 52 photos and of those about 8 of them look good. Thing is that I batched processed these in LR so WB is the same on all of them.

One thing I did notice is that when I exported them as JPEG out of LR, I had the resolution set to 90 pixels per inch. I guess the last export I did was for FB and I forgot to reset it to 240. Could that have affected the print color?

Sam

Alex,

They look off off to me, but I think lowering the exposure will help somewhat. I can't copy your image from fire fox and paste into PS5 and get a color match. So unless you send me the files I can't see the actual file to evaluate.

What color space are you using for processing? What color space are you converting to for printing? Is your monitor color calibrated? How about luminance?

Have you tried soft proofing the the Costco icc profile?

Downsizing to 90 ppi won't effect the color at all but will effect the quality of the print.

Definitely make sure you turn off their auto color correction.

For people / skin tones Bay Photo is pretty da gone good. If you use their color correction they will manually adjust every image and can get the best skin tones.

Sam

anonymouscuban

Sam,

I downloaded the costco profile last night and soft-proofed all of them. Colors look fine in the proofs but the highlights in some were a bit hot. I made some adjustments and re-uploaded to their site. I'm gonna go in today to return the other prints and place the new order.

And yes, my monitor is calibrated. I processed and converted in Adobe RGB.

reyvee61

Hackbone wrote: »

Exposures seem a little hot. When you go to sams, walmart, cosco their machines have a button for auto color correction. It is always checked, you need to uncheck it and your prints should look better. Generally for some reason their 8x10's are not as accurate as 5x7's and down.

PS.....welcome to the world of professional photography. We've all been there.

I wonder if it's the difference at those places between a printed image for larger sizes vs and smaller processed images when it come to color rendering.

reyvee61

Hope the second go is a success

Sam

anonymouscuban wrote: »

Sam,

I downloaded the costco profile last night and soft-proofed all of them. Colors look fine in the proofs but the highlights in some were a bit hot. I made some adjustments and re-uploaded to their site. I'm gonna go in today to return the other prints and place the new order.

And yes, my monitor is calibrated. I processed and converted in Adobe RGB.

Alex,

You can process in any color space you like but should convert to sRGB prior to uploading to Costco for printing.

Sam

anonymouscuban

Thanks guys and thank you Sam. I know you're an authority on printing. I should just send you the files and have you print them for me. Can you do them for $1.50 each?

Mitchell

I've befriended my local Costco photo dept. manager after he refused to make prints for me because they looked too professional. I use them occasionally to fulfill large local orders like you have here.

As you've been told, the key at Costco is to uncheck the box that allows auto color correction and download their printer profiles.

These do look a bit cool, but I wouldn't think the prints would be objectionable as displayed here.

anonymouscuban

Hey all. Went to Costco. It was that they color corrected them. I had them reprinted with the color correction off and they look great. Thing is I used their online upload gallery and ordered from there. I checked and didn't see any where to unselect Color Correction. The manager told me that there is an option to turn it off but couldn't tell me exactly how. I guess I'll have to check next time I order. Honestly, its easier for me to use the kiosk at the store to do it.

Thanks for all the help.

Sam

anonymouscuban wrote: »

Thanks guys and thank you Sam. I know you're an authority on printing. I should just send you the files and have you print them for me. Can you do them for $1.50 each?

Pretty much no one can beat that kind of pricing, but they can't touch my quality.

Sam

PS: Glad all worked out for you.

anonymouscuban

Sam wrote: »

Pretty much no one can beat that kind of pricing, but they can't touch my quality.

Sam

PS: Glad all worked out for you.

I was kidding Sam. Yup... no one can touch Costco's print prices but from what I've seen, I would never have anything important printed there.

OH... BTW, while I was standing at one of the kiosk computer transferring my images from an SD card there was a lady on the kiosk next to mine ordering 4x6 prints of photos I am almost positive were proofs she probably grabbed off the photogs site. I made a comment to my wife about people stealing photos from site without paying me loud enough for her to hear and I could tell she was uncomfortable.

Some people have absolutely no integrity.

Dreadnote

aktse

You can also change it for each order on the screen before you submit, but changing your preference is your safest option.

anonymouscuban

Awesome guys. Thanks.