Help need from photo shop whizes

jennyzhou

I am in the process of decorating my home office and would like to use some prints (24"x36") of the pictures during my travel. Unfortunately, the prints did not come out good enough, they look kinda washed out.

I sent an email to the support in smugmug. Chris from smugmug kindly suggests that I might get some help from this forum.

Here are the photos:

http://cmac.smugmug.com/gallery/461660/1/18661833

The photos 1 and 3 are the originals I took. Photos 2 and 4 are enhancements Chris did for me.

I appreciate that someone can help me out on these pictures.

Thanks a lot!

Jenny

BTW, I reserve the copyrights of these photos.

wxwax

Hi Jenny, welcome to dgrin!

I'll tell you right away that I'm not going to be able to help you. This business of calibrating monitor and printer, and printing what you see on your screen, is amazingly complicated.

It's also been discussed a bit here, albeit in very technical (read non-wxwax ) terms. While waiting for an answer, you should try a few searches of the forum, see what you can find.

FWIW, looks like Baldy (Chris) boosted your exposure, saturation... and he sharpened the heck out of those shots!

Andy

can you tell us more?
what color space do you use in camera? did you shoot raw?

jennyzhou

andy wrote:

can you tell us more?
what color space do you use in camera? did you shoot raw?

I am a newbie and do not understand a lot of jargon. I put the saturation to the maximum when I shot the picture. I think I shot raw. However, when I upload the pictures to my computer, I can only get JPG format.

Andy

jennyzhou wrote:

I am a newbie and do not understand a lot of jargon. I put the saturation to the maximum when I shot the picture. I think I shot raw. However, when I upload the pictures to my computer, I can only get JPG format.

do you have color on your 20d set to sRGB or Adobe RGB?

Andy

i've called in some reinforcements, jenny... stay tuned to this thread, ok?

jennyzhou

andy wrote:

i've called in some reinforcements, jenny... stay tuned to this thread, ok?

I just came home from work and double checked my camera setting. It is sRGB. I will stay tuned.

This is such a friendly place, I like it!

Jenny

Andy

jennyzhou wrote:

I just came home from work and double checked my camera setting. It is sRGB. I will stay tuned.

This is such a friendly place, I like it!

Jenny

'nother question which will help us: what editing software do you have? photoshop? which version? elements? version? paintshop?

tell

jennyzhou

andy wrote:

'nother question which will help us: what editing software do you have? photoshop? which version? elements? version? paintshop?

tell

I have an old photoshop which I seldom use. It is version 5.0.

Jenny

Shay Stephens

On my monitor, the images look good for printing. Now I don't know how well your monitor is calibrated, so you may be seeing these photos darker than they really are (possibility).

One thing that may help is taking a picture of the photo you got back that is washed out and posting that photo. It should make for an interesting comparison.

As it stands now, I don't see a problem with the photos that would lead to a bad print.

By washed out, what do you mean. Could you describe what it is about the print you don't like? Be as specific as you can.

jennyzhou wrote:

I am in the process of decorating my home office and would like to use some prints (24"x36") of the pictures during my travel. Unfortunately, the prints did not come out good enough, they look kinda washed out.

jennyzhou

Shay Stephens wrote:

On my monitor, the images look good for printing. Now I don't know how well your monitor is calibrated, so you may be seeing these photos darker than they really are (possibility).

One thing that may help is taking a picture of the photo you got back that is washed out and posting that photo. It should make for an interesting comparison.

As it stands now, I don't see a problem with the photos that would lead to a bad print.

By washed out, what do you mean. Could you describe what it is about the print you don't like? Be as specific as you can.

I've order the waterfall one in big print(24"x36"). The water in the print in not as white as it show on the screen. Most area from the top of the waterfall look greyish.

The lake picture is one I just added to print in big size in case there is nothing we can do on the waterfall picture. I have not printed it in big size, only in 8x12. It looks pretty good. I guess it would look nice in big print, too. I just wonder if there is anything we could do to it to make it look even better.

Jenny

rutt

Nice shots! I can see why printing them, especially the first might be challenging. Those very light yellows and pinks are very difficult to print. The tend to look a lot better on the screen than in print.

I don't know that much about smugmug's press. And I don't actually know what you mean by washed out. But you can add drama to these shots in PS. I like to use LAB for this sort of thing. I wrote something about this that might help, but then again, it might not. It's here.

Anyway, I tried to do something to help the first shot. Here is my edit:



Am I on the right track? You don't have to print it out to see that I've added contrast in the highlights and increased overall saturation. I did this moving the image to LAB and applying the following curves:



After this move, you can take the image into CMYK and play with the magenta mid-highlights to add more drama to the leaves. But this is really something you'll have to do yourself as it a matter of taste.

I'm pretty sure this will print well on Canon professional inkjet printers, but I'm not very familiar with Smugmug's press. But this might be a starting point for you and Chris.

rutt

Oh, it's the waterfall you care about. Why didn't you say so?

I took a look at it. I think the problem you may be describing is that it really has no true shadow and actually the only highlights are the reflections in the water. This shot has areas that really should be black and are not and the water highlights lack detail and drama. You can blow some of those reflections in order to get more L curve steepness (contrast) and lightness in other parts of the water.

Does this look any better to you:



Here are the LAB curves I wrote for it:



There are various ways to approach this. You may want all the water lighter than I have made it. In general, though adding contrast to the parts of the image that are important may help here. Having a true shadow will definitely help.

jennyzhou

Wow! I am very impressed by the effects you have created. It looks much sharper than my original photo. Do you mind send me a copy of your enhancement in the original size so that I can print it out on smugmug? My email address is jennyzhou at gmail dot com.

If you need a print of this photo, please let me know. I will send it to you.

Thanks!

Jenny

Baldy

Nice work, Rutt!

So I'm the Chris who did the quick & dirty on them and fired a note back to Jenny inviting her here so people like Rutt and Andy would jump in.

The the EXIF says the images were shot with a 20D and the lake was exposed at f22 ISO 100 exposure 0.6 seconds 40mm lens.

I made the comment that it was a little bit washed based on the levels:



Rutt did a very nice job of taking care of that.

What concerns me a little is to produce a 24x36 image she has plenty of pixels but any motion at that shutter speed of the camera, water, or foliage will create unsharpness that will get more visible as the photo gets larger. And any unsharpness in the lens at f22 could be a factor.

The waterfall was at a higher shutter speed but showed some of the same level issues, hence the water not being white.

In terms of our presses, the 24x36 images are made on Durst Lamdas, which are stunning. No worries about pixel resolution because they are continous tone. They have a narrower color range than a 7-ink ink jet, but it doesn't matter since these were shot in sRGB anyway. But they have greater shadow detail than ink jets. Matching the colors should be no problem.

Thanks,
Baldy

Baldy

jennyzhou wrote:

Wow! I am very impressed by the effects you have created. It looks much sharper than my original photo. Do you mind send me a copy of your enhancement in the original size so that I can print it out on smugmug? My email address is jennyzhou at gmail dot com.

If you need a print of this photo, please let me know. I will send it to you.

Thanks!

Jenny

He's got a smugmug account, so he can just upload it there. You're lucky that The Lab Man jumped in for these prints. clap

rutt

jennyzhou wrote:

Wow! I am very impressed by the effects you have created. It looks much sharper than my original photo. Do you mind send me a copy of your enhancement in the original size so that I can print it out on smugmug? My email address is jennyzhou at gmail dot com.

If you need a print of this photo, please let me know. I will send it to you.

Thanks!

Jenny

You can download them directly from my smugmug account:

http://rutt.smugmug.com/photos/18669328-O.jpg
http://rutt.smugmug.com/photos/18671543-O.jpg

You'll do better making such a large print if you start with the closest thing you have to an original and apply the curves I showed yourself followed by sharpening. Are the images you pointed us at at the start of the thread as close to original as you have? Was there any in-camera sharpening? If they really are the originals and there was in-camera sharpening, then I think I have given you the best thing (almost) that you can get. I suppose a lossless format like tiff or jpeg-2000 would be a little better, but I don't think smugmug printing can do anything with that anyway. Chris?

Andy

shay, baldy, rutt
you guys are awesome.

jenny - now do tell all your friends about dgrin, will you?

jennyzhou

andy wrote:

you guys are awesome.

jenny - now do tell all your friends about dgrin, will you?

Yes, I will!

Thank you all!

As I said, if any of you would like a smugmug print of these pictures, just drop me a line.

Have a great evening,

Jenny

Baldy

rutt wrote:

I suppose a lossless format like tiff or jpeg-2000 would be a little better, but I don't think smugmug printing can do anything with that anyway. Chris?

IT looked like the images were straight off the camera, so I think the ones you uploaded are the best bet.

Theoretically a lossless format should be better than JPEG but in practice we've yet to find the person who can tell the difference between a tiff and Photoshop jpeg settings of 12, 11, 10, or 9 in blind tests.

In nearly a million prints passed through smugmug, we've yet to find one where jpeg compression was an issue if the number was 7 or above.

rutt

Baldy wrote:

IT looked like the images were straight off the camera, so I think the ones you uploaded are the best bet.

Theoretically a lossless format should be better than JPEG but in practice we've yet to find the person who can tell the difference between a tiff and Photoshop jpeg settings of 12, 11, 10, or 9 in blind tests.

That's good to know, Chris. I've always believed it, myself, but there are a lot of professionals who don't trust jpeg. I saved these with compression 12, so I probably did no harm. (Restrain youself, Rutt, from comparing these professionals to high end audio fans. Restrain yourself from comparing visual reality to live concerts and photos to reproduced sound. There. I did it.)

A real issue is sharpening. Can you tell if there was any in-camera sharpening? I didn't look hard, but it seems there might have been. If not, a little sharpening of some sort might help these images. Reproduced so large, this will require a light hand. I don't have a huge amount of experience with sharpening above 17x24. Maybe not worth it.

rutt

jennyzhou wrote:

Yes, I will!

Thank you all!

As I said, if any of you would like a smugmug print of these pictures, just drop me a line.

Have a great evening,

Jenny

Jenny these are beautiful images and yes I would like prints, but only if you sign them! I would print them myself and send them to you for signature, but I want to see if Chris' press does a better job than I could. Thanks very much. I'll drop you that line.