So my only alternative is to have my images printed by someone else. Any suggestions? I'm shooting with the 5D MK III , 50 1.4.. Trying to edit and print from Light Room 4.. My old epson R1800 has been sitting in my hot attick 3 years now. It prints..But the images are quite desaturated and just look different.. Ive done this all before.. Been shooting film all these years and 5 years ago I sold most all my gear and bought new. 20D, 5D and a shit load of L glass. Some of you have the stuff.. Long story short-------just as I was getting comfy with the new digital toy's my wife was diagnosed with stage 4 B-cell lymp... Rollercoaster the next 18 months.. Sold all my new gear.. Nothing left but this stupid R1800 epson I can't get to print "jack"! ... spent everything i have on my new 5DIII, and I just ordered the 7-200 2.8L II! Woohoo! Now I can't afford PS CS6.... So guy's? Whats my best route. MPIX? Should I invest in the stuff for profiling printers? Over my head I'm afraid.. Buy a new printer? Oh.. I got a crappy monitor.. ASUS LCD.. And my neice wants me to do something for her with "grunge" to it.. WTH! Grunge.. Who ever heard of such a thing.. I am not a portrait photog... Just learning.. So can I give this PIC some grunge? <cringe>
Very sorry about your wife. You should look for some help with the grunge look in the many post processing sites you can find with google. Just google grunge look. And then I would send it out to print. Don't waste your time/money with home printing unless you have a lot of both.
Once you have color management down printing is easy. Just use profile for paper soft proof and correct then print. I rarely have to redo a print. sWith colormunki or print fix pro if before 3 glenn'Livette's. and a beer if you can move the device in a strait line you can make a printer profile. But if you don't intend to print loads Mpix or somewhere similar is a great option.
I was having trouble with color management. I got my colormunki Monday. I was a little worried about profiling but it was really simple and took just about an hour to figure it out and be done. With using OCP inks, Ilford Pearl Paper, I am getting terriffic and consistent results. So far I am very happy with it. I think the worst part was figuring out all the places to turn off color management in the Canon software and drivers. The nicest part is using different applications to print and having the results be consistent using my profile.
The only issue so far is the ambient light being slightly off. I think I may need to go back and try calibrate my monitor using the advanced.
You know! LMAO.. Give me a platoon of M1 Abrams and 15 bad-@$$ armor crewmen. Hoooaahhh! Oh. sorry. <<--- digging through the closet ---"where the hell did I put that F1? Where is my A1? ^^%^%65##@#@#@ ... Hey! Here's that bottle of Fiddich Iv'e been looking all over for....
Try cranking the clarity way up high in Lr 4. That should ruin it nicely but there's sure to be other techniques too.
If your monitor is neither calibrated nor profiled then you're fighting an uphill battle with all editing let alone printing. If the monitor side is ok then either buy a colour munki for profiling your prints (advantage is that you can then make a profile for every paper/ink combination you ever use) or else do the printing through an external party.
... spent everything i have on my new 5DIII, and I just ordered the 7-200 2.8L II! Woohoo! Now I can't afford PS CS6.... So guy's? Whats my best route. MPIX? Should I invest in the stuff for profiling printers? Over my head I'm afraid.. Buy a new printer? Oh.. I got a crappy monitor.. ASUS LCD.. And my neice wants me to do something for her with "grunge" to it.. WTH! 
<<--- digging through the closet ---"where the hell did I put that F1? Where is my A1? ^^%^%65##@#@#@ ... Hey! Here's that bottle of Fiddich Iv'e been looking all over for.... 
