Help with Soft Proofing

Mike Kalcevic

When I view the soft proof version using the new EZ prints 2007 ICC, the image looks very washed out and the colors look off. Two screen grab examples are below. I'm pretty sure I have everything set right.

Standard view:
http://mekphotography.smugmug.com/gallery/3954995#229913199-A-LB

EZPrints 2007 soft proof view:
http://mekphotography.smugmug.com/gallery/3954995#229913191-A-LB

Please give me some suggestions as to what to do next. I'll be adding more contast with Curves, but I need suggesions on how to fix the colors back to where they were.

billanders

Mike,

Where did they go?

I only see two images in that gallery, each ending in ...752 and ...246, not the ones that you linked to.

I'm curious to see responses to this. I'm seeing a trend in mine where green's are oversaturated all the time with the same ICC profile.

-bill

I'm slow on news around here. I didn't even know that they released a new ICC. The new one definitely resolved some of the most horrendous green issues I've had recently.

Mike Kalcevic

billanders wrote:

Mike,

Where did they go?

I only see two images in that gallery, each ending in ...752 and ...246, not the ones that you linked to.

I'm curious to see responses to this. I'm seeing a trend in mine where green's are oversaturated all the time with the same ICC profile.

-bill

<edit>I'm slow on news around here. I didn't even know that they released a new ICC. The new one definitely resolved some of the most horrendous green issues I've had recently. </edit>

I took them down. I think I figured out what the problem was. I was soft proofing from aRGB to the EZPrint icc. Once I converted to sRGB before proofing the problem was fixed, more or less. Then it was just an issue of contrast and saturation adjustments. The ones that are up there now, I ordered prints of for a test of the new profile. If they're good, into the book; if not, back to the books...

Icebear

Smug Mug galleries vs SM prints
Moderator, if there's a better forum for my post please move it.

I thought that no matter what color space I worked with in LR & CS3, when I uploaded the .jpgs to Smugmug, they converted them to sRGB. The photos look great in my Pro-account SM galleries.

I just got about 20 8x10s from SM yesterday evening and they're horrid. Way too saturated. High contrast. Neon looking greens. Weird aliasing kinds of artifacts in photos with near vertical or horizontal lines. Was that because I ordered Auto Color instead of True Color?

I can't deliver these to my client. I know SM will do whatever it takes, but GOSH it's frustrating to not have things come right the first time. I sure hope someone can tell me what I need to do to have my prints from SM look like my galleries. I naively thought that would be a given. Oh, and I do have a calibrated monitor.

pathfinder

Icebear, I am sorry for your difficulties, but they will get worked out.

You will want to discuss this with Andy - I will pass this along to him also.

It is true that image tags other than sRGB will not be recognized, but the colors will not be correct unless you convert your files to sRGB BEFORE uploading to smugmug. That is how I do it, and the prints I receive from EZPrints are dead accurate.

If you upload aRGB, the profile is stripped and your images will look very flat online and will not print correctly. Do you know what your profile in Lightroom is?

Did you soft proof your images with a profile from Smugmgug/EZPrintsf first?

Icebear

pathfinder wrote:

Icebear, I am sorry for your difficulties, but they will get worked out.

You will want to discuss this with Andy - I will pass this along to him also.

It is true that image tags other than sRGB will not be recognized, but the colors will not be correct unless you convert your files to sRGB BEFORE uploading to smugmug. That is how I do it, and the prints I receive from EZPrints are dead accurate.

If you upload aRGB, the profile is stripped and your images will look very flat online and will not print correctly. Do you know what your profile in Lightroom is?

Did you soft proof your images with a profile from Smugmgug/EZPrintsf first?

I use ProPhoto in LR and CS3, then convert to sRGB when I export the JPEGs. So when I send them to SM they're already sRGB. I have no issue with the way the JPEGs look in my SM galleries. They're not flat. I think what's happening is that they get "juiced" when I ask for "auto color" in printing. Before I calibrated my monitor, I'd been disappointed in prints that I'd done as "true color" and was advised to use "auto color". I'm guessing I need to go back to "true color" now.

Won't save me on this job. The client needed the images, so I spent the day printing them up on my Epson Photo R800 (from the .tiffs using LR). They look great, so at least I haven't disappointed a client. Not how I wanted to spend the better part of a day though.

No, I didn't soft proof. I'm not clear enough on that process to rely on it. I suppose that's a lame excuse, but there's so much to learn and so little time.

Mille grazie for your response. Gosh, I love this place.

pathfinder

Icebear, I haven't really answered your question just yet, and Andy is on a plane back to NY, I believe, recovering from the 5th anniversary party at Smugmug headquarters in the Bay Area. So it may be a day before he responds.

Meanwhile, you might contact the Help desk and see what they say about this issue. You may be correct, because if your files are tagged sRGB correctly - by Converting to Profile -> sRGB, then they should print fine, mine always seem to that way anyway. I have not experimented with True Color as Auto Color has been adequate for my prints I have had made.

Andy

Icebear wrote:

I use ProPhoto in LR and CS3, then convert to sRGB when I export the JPEGs. So when I send them to SM they're already sRGB. I have no issue with the way the JPEGs look in my SM galleries. They're not flat. I think what's happening is that they get "juiced" when I ask for "auto color" in printing. Before I calibrated my monitor, I'd been disappointed in prints that I'd done as "true color" and was advised to use "auto color". I'm guessing I need to go back to "true color" now.

Won't save me on this job. The client needed the images, so I spent the day printing them up on my Epson Photo R800 (from the .tiffs using LR). They look great, so at least I haven't disappointed a client. Not how I wanted to spend the better part of a day though.

No, I didn't soft proof. I'm not clear enough on that process to rely on it. I suppose that's a lame excuse, but there's so much to learn and so little time.

Mille grazie for your response. Gosh, I love this place.

Hey, happy to help if I can - send an email to our help desk http://www.smugmug.com/help/emailreal ATTN: Andy and I'll dig in with you, okay?

jdryan3

Icebear wrote:

I use ProPhoto in LR and CS3, then convert to sRGB when I export the JPEGs. So when I send them to SM they're already sRGB. I have no issue with the way the JPEGs look in my SM galleries. They're not flat. I think what's happening is that they get "juiced" when I ask for "auto color" in printing. Before I calibrated my monitor, I'd been disappointed in prints that I'd done as "true color" and was advised to use "auto color". I'm guessing I need to go back to "true color" now.

I do mine a little different. I use aRGB 16bit as my 'normal' workspace in CS3. Before creating jpegs, I change to 8-bit, convert the profile to sRGB, soft proof with the ICC profile, and then 'Save As...' [filename].jpg. I don't use the 'Save to web'.

If I'm batch processing stuff in ACR, I go straight to sRGB from RAW and 'Save As ...' .jpg. Occasionally I'll open up one in CS3 and softproof if I think it is likely end users will print it (rather than just view in the gallery). But they seem to always come out correct, so I don't do it very often.

On the true/auto color, I'm not sure about EZ Prints, but I know all my ICC profiles for my Canon printers push thru from PS - printers do NO color management whatsoever. The Canon's have a 'vivid' feature on one of the printer property tabs, and I always have to go in and turn it off when I create the printer profile for the paper's ICC profile. It is on by default.

If I forget to turn it off? Garish is an understatement! :bluduh

One last thing...Is it safe to assume you have profiled your monitor? It makes a huge difference, especially with soft proofing.

Icebear

jdryan3 wrote:

One last thing...Is it safe to assume you have profiled your monitor? It makes a huge difference, especially with soft proofing.

I'm going to display my ignorance here. Nothing new there. When you refer to profiling my monitor, is that the same thing as calibrating it? I use a Spyder 2.

arodney

Icebear wrote:

I'm going to display my ignorance here. Nothing new there. When you refer to profiling my monitor, is that the same thing as calibrating it? I use a Spyder 2.

Sort of, although, technically you first calibrate a display (put it into a known and well behaved behavior), then you profile it (build an ICC profile that describes that calibrated behavior).

Andy

SO Ice, howzit going?

Icebear

I just want to go on record here that Andy has been corresponding behind the scenes with me on my printing issues. I've never dealt with any business, in any industry, at any time, that is any more customer service oriented than SmugMug. Right up there with Lexus, LL Bean, Exposures, and USAA.

pathfinder

Yowza!!

jdryan3

Icebear wrote:

I'm going to display my ignorance here. Nothing new there. When you refer to profiling my monitor, is that the same thing as calibrating it? I use a Spyder 2.

arodney wrote:

Sort of, although, technically you first calibrate a display (put it into a known and well behaved behavior), then you profile it (build an ICC profile that describes that calibrated behavior).

Andrew is correct. That is what I meant. When you calibrate your monitor, you're creating a profile for computer/video card to use. I used the terms interchangably.