Color correction - yes or no?

ghealy

Background:
I use Lightroom 5.2 (LR) and various plug-ins to process images. I have a colour calibrated monitor using ColorMUNKI display. I do not print anything my self. I have used Costco locally using their printer profiles. After softproofing in LR and making adjustments as necessary, the resultant JPG prints turned out quite well. (The print shop was informed to make no automatic photo enhancements or adjustments)

I have a Power user account on Smugmug which means any prints I order will be done by EZ Prints.

Questions:

It is suggested in SmugMug's documentation that if one does not wish to use the automatic colour correction, one should order test prints first.

Should the test print be the same size as the final print. I'm interested in 12x18 & 20x30 inch prints. It can get costly ordering and having shipped to Canada.

Or should I simply forget about Printer color management and let EZ Print lab do the colour correction?

And what about sharpening? For my prints done at Costco, I used onOne's Perfect Resize 7.5 (Originally Genuine Fractals ) and was extremely pleased with the outcome.

Finally, should I do the up-sampling (originals are typiclaly 3900x2600 pixels) or let the Lab do it?


I know Smugmug's documentation gives recommendations, but I'd like to hear how some actual users handled these questions


Thanks in advance for any feedback.

Andy

Do not use SM Auto Color after you have made all of the adjustments that you describe. Print using True Color.
Do not upsample (the lab will do it as needed).
You should definitely sharpen your files for print.

ghealy

Thanks, Andy

Can you also comment on Test prints? Do they need to be the same as the final image or can they be smaller, i.e. can I ask for 4x6 when I intend to have a final print at 20x30?

Appreciate the help.

Andy

Make 100% crops of portions of your images and print them on 4x6s.....

ghealy

Aha! Makes sense (when you know what you're doing) Again, thanks, Andy