Color reproduction

[Fast 0]

Ok so I have a dilema.

I am looking to make pictures that are of a higher quality than inkjet. I so far have tried the Target photo lab. What I ran into there was poor color. The pictures look NOTHING (color wise) like the picture I printed off my home inkjet. The actual "print" quality is better, but the picture looks worse cause the color isn't what I want.


Anyone have suggestions on a place that would have good color reproduction, low cost, low turnaround? I am trying to sell prints and I don't want it to take more than 1 week to get them to the jumper buying them. I could do the printing on my inkjet (it is a decent one) but I am thinking the pictures will be more color fast if I have them printed more "professionally"

Thoughts comments?

Anyone have ideas on file settings on the export to optimize having the color be closer to what it looks like on the screen?

The picture I had printed at target came out with much more red color and no true blues in it. Like the color temperature was changed in the printing process. Maybe I had a bad run?

I don't have a lot of experience in having prints made. I did some post processing and I don't know how much I can get away with before it makes the file look bad.

~D
Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me.
Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

[DSE 3]

First, you might want to be sure your monitor profile is correctly calibrated. Devices like the Spyder, Pantone Huey, and the Eye1 are totally useful and somewhat needed for accuracy if you're going to do a lot of this sort of work.
Beware of compression. If you're starting with highly compressed images, you run the risk of having all sorts of resampling errors when you recompress the image. Start with high quality, and you may already be doing so.
Bear in mind that with a quality color printer on high end paper will likely be about the same as what Target is using if you're providing them dig images vs negatives.
It could also be as simple as you might be working in CMYK mode, and Target prints RGB, but I'd wager you're probably working in RGB.
It could be you've got your monitor at an incorrect color temp.
Check out the bottom of the page for some helpful Photoshop files that will help you understand color transfer and gamut better.
HTH

[Fast 0]

Quote

First, you might want to be sure your monitor profile is correctly calibrated. Devices like the Spyder, Pantone Huey, and the Eye1 are totally useful and somewhat needed for accuracy if you're going to do a lot of this sort of work.
Beware of compression. If you're starting with highly compressed images, you run the risk of having all sorts of resampling errors when you recompress the image. Start with high quality, and you may already be doing so.
Bear in mind that with a quality color printer on high end paper will likely be about the same as what Target is using if you're providing them dig images vs negatives.
It could also be as simple as you might be working in CMYK mode, and Target prints RGB, but I'd wager you're probably working in RGB.
It could be you've got your monitor at an incorrect color temp.
Check out the bottom of the page for some helpful Photoshop files that will help you understand color transfer and gamut better.
HTH

Thanks, some things to think about.

I am working RGB in Photoshop. When I hold the printout from the inkjet up to the monitor, it looks similar when I do the same with the printout from the store it looks way different. As for the pictures, they are going into photoshop as RAW and being worked on as PSD files. I save them off to jpg for printing at the store, and print from PSD on the computer (maybe i should try printing my jpg and see what happens)

Monitor is an LCD on a laptop, can't change the color temp and I don't know what it is.

As for my inkjet printing it is with a Canon i960 and Kodak Photo paper.

~D
Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me.
Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

[DSE 3]

You can change the color temp on *most* laptops, but I doubt this is your issue. It could well be that something got screwy at Target. On the occasion that we need workprints, I've taken a thumbdrive to Walmart, and they've always been pretty good in color repro, although green is always intensified. Maybe they had a bad profile stored?
Anyway, your description of what you've got, what you're getting at home, and what tools you're using would point me more towards Target being the problem. Try sending them .tiff files with no compression, or TGA for more accurate result. I don't know if Target takes TGA?
It also could be that you stored the .jpgs with odd compression or header information, so before I'd get too worked up, I'd try a couple more test prints. Take in a print from your computer, and compare it with them standing next to you when you make the comparison.
Hard to beat the Kodak paper and a good desktop printer these days tho, unless you're going to a photograph processing facility and they treat it like a photo image. We use Nichols for high end work, my understanding is that they take images over the web from anyone and send them out. They do a lot of movie line prints for us.
But again...before worrying too much, I'd run a disc of the same image in a few formats, and see if you or they made an error.
Finally, if you plan on doing a lot of prints, it's pretty important IMO, to calibrate your monitor profile, and there are a lot of great tools for doing just that. Plan on spending a couple hundred bucks for a good calibration tool.

[skyfly 0]

Not sure what you're working with but if you're working with photoshop for example you can set a the workspace to a certain camera YMCK profile - so that your monitor will sync to the printout. there are a set of printers profiles in photoshop, and some places also have printer profiles for download incase you dont already have one for that specific printer - you should check with the lab you're using what printer they are using - and if they have a setting that you can use to preview the coloring of that printer on your monitor.

Be Simple, Be Creative, Bee!
Sharon.

[quade 3]

Quote

The picture I had printed at target came out with much more red color and no true blues in it. Like the color temperature was changed in the printing process. Maybe I had a bad run?

Different companies ues different systems to ensure consistant colors from camera to monitor to printer.

Apple uses a system called ColorSync.

Windows uses a system called ICM

Both require a certain amount of calibration of the computer monitor and all programs that "touch" the image must be able to deal with whatever system is being used.

Check your computer, programs and printing house for compatability issues.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[DSE 3]

Digital camcorders don't shoot CMYK, but you can of course, use a CMYK profile. I'm not sure where you'd want to unless you're going for news or book proofs.
Desktop computers by far and wide, are RGB.
Using a calibration device as mentioned above, assures that the system regardless of which color management profile you might be using, will match across the board. This is the predominant benefit of using an EYEOne or even the cheap Pantone Huey. They take a couple minutes to use, but they lock up your monitor, printer, and application profiles to one setting. You can change it, of course. Additionally, if you're spec'ing the work for professional print/offset print, or for negative print, you can embed the calibrated profile information in the document for sending to the print house.

HTH

[Bazair2air 0]

And then the final step. When you upload at Target, Walmart etc. you have to make sure to click the "Auto Color Adjust" off or tell them directly that you do not want auto color adjustments. It is on by default on almost all quick print vendors.

If you adjust your image the way you want it and then THEY adjust your image, you will never have consistent color on your prints.

[Fast 0]

I had some prints made at a walmart and they turned out better, all be it on much lower quality paper. I changed some things in how I do my post processing and also found out that I can just leave the pictures in Adobe RGB when I take them to walmart to be printed and I will keep a richer looking color.

Going to do one more test run at Target (its closer to my house by a large margin, uses Kodak paper, not fuji, and is higher gloss) and see what I get.

~D
Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me.
Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

[Laszloimage 0]

I would take DSE's advices and in addition I would also buy a good printer (Epson R-1800, Canon I-9900, or one of the better HP) Beleive it or not with those printers you can get a LOT better quality prints than Target's or Wal-Marts's. But as I started take DSE's words and make sure all your settings are ok from the monitor to the printer, back to the computer...
-Laszlo- www.laszloimage.com

[Fast 0]

Quote

I would take DSE's advices and in addition I would also buy a good printer (Epson R-1800, Canon I-9900, or one of the better HP) Beleive it or not with those printers you can get a LOT better quality prints than Target's or Wal-Marts's. But as I started take DSE's words and make sure all your settings are ok from the monitor to the printer, back to the computer...
-Laszlo- www.laszloimage.com

I want to pick up one of the new canon printers that has the Chromalife 100 ink, they are coming out with new models so I am going to wait a bit.

As for the other things of note, excepting the monitor calibrating tool, which i don't have money for, i am looking into it.

~D
Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me.
Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka