Will this pic work for a large print? [Heavy Post/Large Image]

elfving73

Howdy friends!

Took a few sibling portraits the other day. This is the pic of their choice (christmas present for their mom!) Ufortunately, by mistake, it was shot at ISO 400. I shot it in RAW, converted to a 16 bits ProPhoto RGB in native size (3072 by 2048, 6.3 MP). I cropped it just a little (very little). Did some PP and when I was done, I upsized it (Biqubic smoother) to 7087 by 4724 at 300 dpi. That's the combination for a 40X60 CM print I'm after. Saved it as a TIF.

This is the picture in full size, but a 8 bits Jpeg saved in Quality 10 in photoshop: (I figured it was better to add a link instead!)

http://elfving73.smugmug.com/photos/46216774-O.jpg


Thanx in advance / Matty

A small version:

pathfinder

Matty, WHen you upload images to smugmug they MUST BE in the sRGB color space. Converting your RAW files to ProPhoto space is fine for editing in PS - I frequently do that - but before you send them to smuggy, you must hit Edit>Convert to Profile> sRGB yadda yadda. IF the images are not sRGB, the profiles are discarded or ignored, and the colors go whacky as in the link you displayed above.
Your image in the post above is beautiful and will make a lovely gift, but the file you upload to smuggy HAS to be sRGB.

There has been a lot written in books and articles advising using Adobe RGB and ProPhoto RGB as much larger color spaces and that is true as far as it goes. But the web expects sRGB, as do the web based printers - The print you will get from smuggy WILL look exactly like your image IF is tagged with the sRGB colorspace. Baldy has written quite abit about this here http://www.smugmug.com/help/srgb-versus-adobe-rgb-1998

Baldy

Hi Matty,

Nice shot and great present!

So I have some good news and bad. The good is, for all the things everyone talks about in Photoshop books and on forums — pixels, JPEG compression artifacts, and high ISO noise — the shot looks great.

The bad news is the people who actually buy prints and hang them on their walls never notice those things. At least, in my three years of seeing almost 2 million prints be made like this one, I don't recall anyone complaining about not having enough pixels, seeing JPEG artifacts, etc.

The bad news is there is one issue that few people talk about in the forums or the books, but buyers of the prints and most especially the people pictured on the prints have incredibly sensitive radar to. It's the reason 99% of prints like this are returned when they are: skin tones, especially when they're too red.

And unfortunately, these skin tones are too red.

The two danger points are, (1) when magenta % falls below yellow % on the skin and (2) when cyan gets two low.

Here's a help page about that: http://www.smugmug.com/help/skin-tone

If you look at the cyan channel for this shot, it looks like this:



Unfortunately, cyan is going to zero on the highlights of their faces — cheeks, noses, chins and forehead. The only two colors left are magenta + yellow, which when added together = red.

Here's the shot that is unadjusted except for half the face of the guy on your left:



Depending on your monitor, it may look subtle but I can almost promise that in print the people in the photo will go for the less red version of their skin. If you do decide to do further adjustments, I'd be happy to fire off a couple of proofs to you.

Thanks,
Baldy

pathfinder

Baldy is right again, Matty. I looked at your image with my eyes, but did not measure the pixels and I should have. Too red. But it does need to be sRGB also.

I downloaded the image posted in this thread and pulled it into PS and then printed it on my Epson 4000. The print looks just a little reddish in their faces.

The redness depends on the illumination the print is examined under to a certain extent. I use an Ott-light - a full spectrum - light to examine prints, and the closer this image is to the light, the redder it seems, but it does match my monitor very closely. That just goes to show the difference between transilluminated and reflected images.

elfving73

Hey Pathfinder and Baldy! Thanx for takin' your time to help me out! I really appreciate it! Now I've converted the image back to sRGB and I've dealt with the the magenta problem. I have study the article about skin tones at http://www.smugmug.com/help/skin-tone. Very interesting and useful! I got the hang of how to correct this problem using levels and Hue/Saturation. But I'll have to study the "How the fancy people doit"-way a little more. I'm not sure how to do the calculations. I'll just have to read it again!

Here is the fixed full size version, does the skin tones look ok now?
http://elfving73.smugmug.com/photos/46054154-O.jpg

So, should I get stick to the sRGB even when ordering prints?

Now I'll have to sleep! )

Once again - THANK YOU!

(Hmm... looking at it again, I wonder if it screams YELLOW now, instead? This is slightly confusing! Hahahaha)

pathfinder

Matty - I'm gonna drive you nuts here!

I downloaded the full sized new image and the facial tones are definitely better in that the yellow is slightly ( 5-15% roughly) more than the magenta. Even above the collar at the neckline of the little boy, there is slightly more yellow than magenta, and he is very fair skinned indeed.

I resized your full sized file as a PSD and sent it to my printer via a RIP program called ImagePrint and used a profile for Premium Lustre. I then compared this new print against the one I did earlier for you under an Ott-Lite ( a full spectrum light specifically used for color evaluation by many folks - including Michael Reichman)

The skin tones are less red. No doubt about that. The background, however, is no longer a smooth even black like earlier, but a blotchy dark green in places, and the shirts look ever so slightly yellow compared to the original print. In some ways I prefer the original even though the faces are slightly too magenta in the first print.

If it were me, I might try layering the first image on top of the second one, and blend them with a mask, trying to retain most of the facial correction and regaining the previous background and shirts tones.

Rutt may step in here now and tell us how to handle this all in LAB, with a pair of A -B curves. But I'm simple guy and try to do things the easiest I know how, and layers and masks aren't that hard. Was this shot in RAW perhaps? I would like to see the RAW file if it exists.

I showed both images to Nightingale ( SWMBO) under the Ott lite and she corroborated my impressions about both images. In thinking about skin tones in images of Caucasians, it occurred to me that the although there are suggested numbers such as Baldy gives, that skin tones of most Caucasians living in temperate climates vary quite considerably by season - Duh!! They get tan in the summer, but Scandinavians in the winter probably are not very tan near the winter solstice ( It is a few weeks away I know - I am exaggerating just a little )

That is why I suggested trying to blend the two images you have posted and seeing if with a little masking you can have the best of both of them.

It you will PM me your address, I will send both images to you by post - It may take a few days, but you might like to see them for yourself. The prints I have are about 7 x 9 inches on 8 x11 Red River UltraPro Satin paper. Otherwise I wll shred them and delete your files as well, as a matter of courtesy.

I find images are hard to evaluate on screen at times, even from a calibrated monitor like mine. I just HAVE to see the print. I do know that some of the professional printers who frequent the ImagePrint Yahoo group state the same thing, and they are doing printing for fine art galleries and commercial concerns, so maybe I am in good company.

I'd like to think I have learned a little bit more about printing here with your images. Merry Christmas and a Very Happy New Year!

elfving73

Oh man! What are ya doin' to me! *Haha* Naa, just kidding! I wrote it before, and I'll write it again - I'm very thankfull for your help!

Yes, it is shot in RAW, I'll be glad to send it over to ya, if you'd like to take a peek at it! I think I'll start it all over from scratch again - and this time I'll get stick to sRGB from the beginning!

I actually did the background on the second version a bit blotchy and less smooth on purpose. I had desaturated the background, that was on a separate layer, but when I did the color adjustment I had already flatten the image, so I figure the greenish tint came as a result of that. Anyway, I noticed that if I do it too smooth and black, it doesn't feel like there is a background, more like that the motif had been cut out and pasted on a black layer. Know what I mean? Then the images look very flat. My purpose was to keep the feeling of deapth, so to speak. Catch my drift? : The problem from the beginning is that I used a wrinkled black sheet, and if I had ironed it and kept it more "stretched", and if I had positioned them further away from the backdrop I would have saved myself some time. It's stupid and too easy to think "Well, I just smooth that out in photoshop!", don't ya say! *Haha*

I'd be very glad if you'd send me the prints! How much do ya think it'll cost to post them?

Regards / Matty