Lustre vs. Glossy

DavidTO

I just got an order of prints back, and there was one of my parents that admittedly is a touch too magenta.

The 4x6 glossy showed this pretty accurately, and I was OK with it, since it's just slightly magenta. The 8x10 lustre of the same shot is noticeably more magenta, making the picture unuseable. Is there a difference in color quality between the two finsihes?

Baldy

DavidTO wrote:

I just got an order of prints back, and there was one of my parents that admittedly is a touch too magenta.

The 4x6 glossy showed this pretty accurately, and I was OK with it, since it's just slightly magenta. The 8x10 lustre of the same shot is noticeably more magenta, making the picture unuseable. Is there a difference in color quality between the two finsihes?

Hi David,

Thanks for bringing this up. Lustre paper has deeper saturation than matte, on a par with glossy, but theoretically matte, glossy, and lustre have the same color.

I say theoretically because we see prints that measure out the same on a colorimeter but by looking with your eyes you'd swear they were different colors. One culprit is the paint chip effect, where larger prints appear more saturated than small ones. If a small one has an irritating magenta shift the large one can look positively bad even if a colorimeter measures the same colors on both.

The other is EZ Prints has many machines and each has a tolerance, so there can be slight shifts between machines.

If you're seeing a big shift, however, there was a mistake somewhere. We're happy to replace the order and it would be interesting to hear if they come out different the second time.

I routinely print matte, glossy, and lustre of our calibration prints to see if we can tell any difference and so far, the answer's no, but I did get an order of prints the other day that I thought had some magenta shift.

Thanks,
Baldy

DavidTO

Baldy wrote:

If you're seeing a big shift, however, there was a mistake somewhere. We're happy to replace the order and it would be interesting to hear if they come out different the second time.

Thanks,
Baldy

How do I go about that?

Baldy

DavidTO wrote:

How do I go about that?

Hi David,

I went to re-place the order, but just to check and make sure I'm doing this right:

It looks like there are 3 versions in 4x6 gloss and 1 8x12 in lustre, and that the original of the 8x12 does indeed have quite a bit of magenta.

The rule of thumb we generally use is yellow should be at least 2 percentage points higher than magenta. On the 8x12 lustre version (left image, below) it looks like magenta averages about 7% higher on the forehead and 15% higher on the nose than yellow does.

On one of the 4x6 versions (right image, below) the forehead has 2-3% more magenta than yellow and the nose is 7-8%.



We're very happy to replace the prints but I'm afraid you'll end up with the same issue as before unless we choose the tanning salon option, which was designed for this situation, or the originals are adjusted. If you'd like, I can send one of each -- true color and tanning salon to compare.

All the best,
Baldy

DavidTO

Baldy wrote:

Hi David,

I went to re-place the order, but just to check and make sure I'm doing this right:

It looks like there are 3 versions in 4x6 gloss and 1 8x12 in lustre, and that the original of the 8x12 does indeed have quite a bit of magenta.

The rule of thumb we generally use is yellow should be at least 2 percentage points higher than magenta. On the 8x12 lustre version (left image, below) it looks like magenta averages about 7% higher on the forehead and 15% higher on the nose than yellow does.

On one of the 4x6 versions (right image, below) the forehead has 2-3% more magenta than yellow and the nose is 7-8%.



We're very happy to replace the prints but I'm afraid you'll end up with the same issue as before unless we choose the tanning salon option, which was designed for this situation, or the originals are adjusted. If you'd like, I can send one of each -- true color and tanning salon to compare.

All the best,
Baldy

That would be great. I could change it too. Like I said, my main question was why there was a difference between glossy and lustre, but it sounds more like a diff. between 4x6 and 8x12. Interesting.

Just a note, I didn't adjust color on the shot, just the white balance. I shot RAW with a fill-in flash. I processed my parents with the flash setting for WB, and the background with the daylight setting, then composited the two. I wouldn't have expected it to be off by so much, and of course the monitor is more forgiving of it.

I would love to see a comparison. I really wasn't asking for a replacement, but some clarification. Whatever you can do would be great.

Baldy

DavidTO wrote:

Just a note, I didn't adjust color on the shot, just the white balance. I shot RAW with a fill-in flash. I processed my parents with the flash setting for WB, and the background with the daylight setting, then composited the two. I wouldn't have expected it to be off by so much, and of course the monitor is more forgiving of it.

No worries, David, we're happy to reprint.

I think you'll find that if you go back to the RAW file and choose shade for the white balance setting, the skin tones will come out well. Their faces are in the shade and the flash is only fill, so the dominant light on their skin is the color of shade.

Of course, the shade white balance setting is just someone's guess as to what your shade was like and doesn't take into account things like whether the sky was overcast.



To really know, you have to measure the magenta & yellow values using photoshop's eyedropper.

For a most of TV production and a lot of digital photography of people, warm cards are the ticket, imo:

http://www.warmcards.com/

With warm cards, you're going to get skin tones most consumers like. They want to be flattered and look like Indiana Jones. Wonder why the folks on Survivor always look so good? They set the white balance of their cameras with warm cards.

Most people feel like digital cameras produce images that are too cool even if you shoot a white card.

DavidTO

Baldy wrote:

No worries, David, we're happy to reprint.

I think you'll find that if you go back to the RAW file and choose shade for the white balance setting, the skin tones will come out well. Their faces are in the shade and the flash is only fill, so the dominant light on their skin is the color of shade.

Of course, the shade white balance setting is just someone's guess as to what your shade was like and doesn't take into account things like whether the sky was overcast.



To really know, you have to measure the magenta & yellow values using photoshop's eyedropper.

For a most of TV production and a lot of digital photography of people, warm cards are the ticket, imo:


With warm cards, you're going to get skin tones most consumers like. They want to be flattered and look like Indiana Jones. Wonder why the folks on Survivor always look so good? They set the white balance of their cameras with warm cards.

Most people feel like digital cameras produce images that are too cool even if you shoot a white card.

Interesting. I'm thinking that the biggest problem is that I've been adjusting every aspect of the shot in RAW except the saturation. I'm reprocessing some of the shots and only pulling back the saturation. I'm going to repost and reorder those shots to compare. It's obvious that my prints are oversaturated, and once I pulled them back on the monitor, I could see that they had been there, too.