Skin Tone for Prints

seeker

So I ordered up a test print a week or so ago of the following picture:



I was totally oblivious at the time to the need to fix up the photo before sending it off to print, or else the skin tone would be too warm. Sure enough, when I received the photo, the skin tone was definitely too warm.

No big deal - I read the thread on adjusting the tone (making sure that the Y was always greater than the M) and loaded the pic into photoshop. Much to my surprise, the skin tone was *already* just fine according to this scale. There wasn't a point I sampled where the M value exceeded the Y.

This leaves me in a bit of a quandry at this point, as the couple are ready to order some rather large prints (20x30), and I am unsure as to how to get the print to come out close to what I see on the screen.

Help! :dunno

- Brian

rainforest1155

I hear you. I'm myself not sure about the skin tone stuff. The picture looks okay to me, but better wait for another oppinion on that.

What you can still do is getting a calibration print in order to calibrate your monitor and photoshop to the printers from ez-prints. Here's the help entry with all the relevant links.

Sebastian

seeker

rainforest1155 wrote:

I hear you. I'm myself not sure about the skin tone stuff. The picture looks okay to me, but better wait for another oppinion on that.

What you can still do is getting a calibration print in order to calibrate your monitor and photoshop to the printers from ez-prints. Here's the help entry with all the relevant links.

Sebastian

I downloaded and installed the ICC profile. When I click the "preview" button on/off, I see a very *slight* difference in the image, nothing to write home about, and certainly nothing that would demonstrate the "sunburned" effect that I got when I ordered this print on Smugmug.

Is there anyone at Smugmug checking this forum that can give me some assistance? I have to order these prints fairly soon.

- Brian

rainforest1155

seeker wrote:

Is there anyone at Smugmug checking this forum that can give me some assistance? I have to order these prints fairly soon.

When you need quick assistance, just sent off a mail to the helpdesk.

Sebastian

seeker

Well, it has been 5 days ...

rainforest1155 wrote:

When you need quick assistance, just sent of a mail to the helpdesk.

Sebastian

... since I posted this question, and no response from any smugmugger. I don't need "same day service" or anything like that, so I didn't email the help desk. It just seems odd that nobody has addressed this issue as of yet.

Perhaps I will email the help desk tomorrow.

- Brian

rainforest1155

seeker wrote:

... since I posted this question, and no response from any smugmugger. I don't need "same day service" or anything like that, so I didn't email the help desk. It just seems odd that nobody has addressed this issue as of yet.

Andy's doing such a good job around here you happen to see when he's off for a couple of days. He left a note on the forum, but maybe you haven't seen it.

What just came to my attention regarding the photo: It seems to have a slight gray border on the left side. You still should be able to crop it out without running in any trouble.

Sebastian

Mike Lane

Hey Brian,

So I looked at your image info (I turned on the camera info option in your gallery customization, checked out the exif, and then turned the camera info back off) to see if I could tell what color space the file is in. It looks to me like your color space is not sRGB. My guess is that you simply unchecked the attach colorspace box when you saved your file as a jpg in photoshop.

But I may be wrong, so can you tell us, what colorspace is your image in and what process do you use in photoshop to manage your colorspaces?

Andy

seeker wrote:

... since I posted this question, and no response from any smugmugger. I don't need "same day service" or anything like that, so I didn't email the help desk. It just seems odd that nobody has addressed this issue as of yet.

Perhaps I will email the help desk tomorrow.

- Brian

I have been away. I will look into this now for you.

Andy

seeker wrote:

This leaves me in a bit of a quandry at this point, as the couple are ready to order some rather large prints (20x30), and I am unsure as to how to get the print to come out close to what I see on the screen.

Help!

- Brian

i2e is great - nearly perfect! That's what we use for our auto color.
http://smugmug.jot.com/WikiHome/PrintingAutoOrTrueColor

But there are some certain images it won't improve the way you want. This is one of them. I agree, our default i2e is just a tad too warm in this case. But the image needs adjusting.

If you show me your other files you wish to print, I can advise further, okay?

seeker

Agreed

rainforest1155 wrote:

Andy's doing such a good job around here you happen to see when he's off for a couple of days. He left a note on the forum, but maybe you haven't seen it.

What just came to my attention regarding the photo: It seems to have a slight gray border on the left side. You still should be able to crop it out without running in any trouble.

Sebastian

You are correct, Sebastian - Andy has been nothing but helpful to me on a number of occassions. I was expressing confusion more than anything else. Thanks for letting me know about the note - I unfortunately didn't see it .

- Brian

seeker

Here are two images

Andy wrote:

i2e is great - nearly perfect! That's what we use for our auto color.
http://smugmug.jot.com/WikiHome/PrintingAutoOrTrueColor

But there are some certain images it won't improve the way you want. This is one of them. I agree, our default i2e is just a tad too warm in this case. But the image needs adjusting.

If you show me your other files you wish to print, I can advise further, okay?

Hey there Andy - thanks so much for looking into this for me. Here are the two photos that my client wants large prints from.





Just a guess, but I suspect i2e might have the same problem with these two, as they are fairly close in colors to the other one I had problem with.

If I need to do some additional processing in order to prep these for printing, I am more than happy to do it. I'm just not sure what the next step is, and I want to be sure they will print with an acceptable level of "warmth" before ordering them up.

Thanks!

- Brian

seeker

Mike Lane wrote:

Hey Brian,

So I looked at your image info (I turned on the camera info option in your gallery customization, checked out the exif, and then turned the camera info back off) to see if I could tell what color space the file is in. It looks to me like your color space is not sRGB. My guess is that you simply unchecked the attach <whatever> colorspace box when you saved your file as a jpg in photoshop.

But I may be wrong, so can you tell us, what colorspace is your image in and what process do you use in photoshop to manage your colorspaces? <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/ear.gif&quot; border="0" alt="" >

Hi Mike!

I used CS2 to touch this up (I have since upgraded to CS3). When I look at my color settings in CS2, it says I am using sRGB. In addition, my camera is set to sRGB for its color space.

With that said, these photos were shot in RAW (NEF) + JPEG mode, and were saved to my Epson P3000 while I was "in the field". From there, they were imported into Aperture. They were touched up using CS2, and saved back to Aperture. When I uploaded them to SmugMug, I used the Aperture plug-in "ApertureToSmugMug".

Oddly enough, when I view my "Expanded - EXIF" information in Aperture, it says that the file is using "Adobe RGB (1998)" as the "Profile Name".

Perhaps the multiple steps I go through (D200->P3000->Aperture->CS2->Aperture->ApertureToSmugMug) is causing something to get messed up?

- Brian

Mike Lane

seeker wrote:

Hi Mike!

I used CS2 to touch this up (I have since upgraded to CS3). When I look at my color settings in CS2, it says I am using sRGB. In addition, my camera is set to sRGB for its color space.

With that said, these photos were shot in RAW (NEF) + JPEG mode, and were saved to my Epson P3000 while I was "in the field". From there, they were imported into Aperture. They were touched up using CS2, and saved back to Aperture. When I uploaded them to SmugMug, I used the Aperture plug-in "ApertureToSmugMug".

Oddly enough, when I view my "Expanded - EXIF" information in Aperture, it says that the file is using "Adobe RGB (1998)" as the "Profile Name".

Perhaps the multiple steps I go through (D200->P3000->Aperture->CS2->Aperture->ApertureToSmugMug) is causing something to get messed up?

- Brian

I'm not familiar with Aperture. But with all those steps you'd better take great care to make sure that things like colorspace are getting handled properly. Try on an image or two just using photoshop and make sure that your image is only in sRGB the whole time. Well, at least make sure you convert it to sRGB (convert not assign) before you save it.

Then upload it using the normal uploader and see if that fixes any of your color woes.

seeker

Mike Lane wrote:

I'm not familiar with Aperture. But with all those steps you'd better take great care to make sure that things like colorspace are getting handled properly. Try on an image or two just using photoshop and make sure that your image is only in sRGB the whole time. Well, at least make sure you convert it to sRGB (convert not assign) before you save it.

Then upload it using the normal uploader and see if that fixes any of your color woes.

Alrighty, I guess I can do that when I get home this evening.

It would be helpful for me to have someone (perhaps Andy, or someone else) to check the files that I have uploaded *prior* to me ordering prints, waiting for them to arrive, etc. I am certainly happy to try a different workflow to see whether this is the problem, but I would prefer to have someone at SmugMug check the files before printing.

Thanks - Brian

Andy

seeker wrote:

Alrighty, I guess I can do that when I get home this evening.

It would be helpful for me to have someone (perhaps Andy, or someone else) to check the files that I have uploaded *prior* to me ordering prints, waiting for them to arrive, etc. I am certainly happy to try a different workflow to see whether this is the problem, but I would prefer to have someone at SmugMug check the files before printing.

Thanks - Brian

Send me email to our help desk, with a gallery link, happy to do it! Put ATTN: Andy in the subject line plz