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Archive 2013 · Monitors and calibration

  
 
Bill Ley
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Monitors and calibration


I've recently retired, so I was hoping to spend all of this free time I now seem to have on improving my photography skills (or lack of I should say)

I just upgraded my LR3 (which I maybe used about a half dozen times) and now have LR 5 and and PS CS6. I still have a long way to go with both programs, but I have been practicing and I recently edited a few and wanted to print them to see how they would look. I thought I had the colors looking fairly decent on my monitor, but when I got the prints they were just awful. They were dark and had a greenish tint to them. Now granted I got them printed at a SamsClub, so that may be the problem too.

When I look some of the photos here on the forums, I think the colors look great. I was wondering how many actually use something like a ColorMunki to calibrate. I guess if you really want your photos to look correct, this is a necessity?
This is one of the photos I had printed. It's of my niece. I know it's not the greatest photo, but I was curious how the colors look to others here on the forums. Maybe I'm getting carried away in LR and PS?

Thanks,
Bill

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3741/11015189274_6d829b6d3d_c.jpg



Nov 23, 2013 at 03:04 PM
howardm4
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Monitors and calibration


Certainly NOT green-ish and dark on my laptop screen. If anything, it leans toward magenta.

If you're going to get serious, you should get a calibrator and they can be had for fairly short $$ like the Colormunki Display ($150ish) or the same unit w/ faster/better software the i1Display Pro. Perhaps they'll even be on sale/rebate due to time of year.



Nov 23, 2013 at 03:19 PM
Bill Ley
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Monitors and calibration


Thanks Howard. I think I will be looking into that. Does anyone think my problem could be the way the photo is being saved? I saved as a jpeg where maybe I should have had it printed from the tiff or psd file

For example, if PS if I got to Edit/Assign Profile it has the 'Profile' option selected with the profile of ProPhoto RGB. I thought I read somewhere that it should be sRGB?



Nov 23, 2013 at 05:04 PM
colinm
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Monitors and calibration


JPEG should be fine (as should any other format Sam's will accept) as long as it's converted to sRGB. Depending on the Sam's, other color spaces might be okay, but sRGB without an embedded profile is the lowest common denominator that'll work anywhere.

I'm seeing the same thing Howard is; a hair on the magenta side, definitely not green or dark. If the photo department workers don't all look like disaffected teenagers, you might try taking your prints and the file back in and asking what's up. It could be as simple as someone forgetting to undo setting changes they made for another customer.



Nov 23, 2013 at 06:10 PM
Eyeball
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Monitors and calibration


When using a service like Costco or Sams, the image should always be converted (not assigned) to sRGB. The minilabs they use are virtually always geared to sRGB or something close.

What you posted here has an embedded sRGB profile but if what you delivered to Sams was in Prophoto, that might account for the dark green.

Some minilab equipment can also have problems with embedded color profiles, even if they are sRGB. I believe that that problem is much less common these days but if you still have problems, you might want to try converting to sRGB but NOT embedding the profile.

If you are spending time editing the image to your preference in PS or LR, it is also usually worth instructing the Sams folks to "NOT make any automatic adjustments to the image". That will help insure that your hard work won't get auto-adjusted away during printing, although the operator may or may not actually read or pay attention to your instructions.

Hardware calibration and profiling can be helpful. It just depends on how picky you are, how much you want to spend on your photography, and how out of whack your monitor is to begin with. I do not believe that lack of calibration and profiling was the major culprit in this particular case though. In other words, if the only thing that changes in the scenario is you using a hardware-based calibrator/profiler, you will likely still get dark green prints at Sams. Something else needs to change somewhere.



Nov 23, 2013 at 06:37 PM
FLSTCSAM
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Monitors and calibration


The image as posted is somewhat on the red / magenta warm side and in my opinion looks fine.

I do believe it would print on the dark side, as to color, if the printer used any type of auto color correct and tried to use the shirt top as white to set the temp it will put a green cast on it.

And yes you do want to calibrate your monitor.

I use one luminance value for normal computer / internet / etc use, but use a much lower luminance value when editing an image for print.

Sam




Nov 23, 2013 at 08:30 PM
mr.jboy
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Monitors and calibration


Absolutely calibrate your monitor... Mine is and I print at Costco and as long as the AUTO ADJUST option is turned off they are ok. With calibration software, when you submit a file your pp adjustment and monitor profiles are sent with the file, of course when using these labs they may not be spot on.. I did have an issue of late with a large print, maybe because I used Adobe RGB instead of sRGB, haven't talked to them yet about it, anyway that is my experience.

John



Nov 24, 2013 at 08:27 PM
Bill Ley
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Monitors and calibration


Eyeball wrote:
When using a service like Costco or Sams, the image should always be converted (not assigned) to sRGB. The minilabs they use are virtually always geared to sRGB or something close.

What you posted here has an embedded sRGB profile but if what you delivered to Sams was in Prophoto, that might account for the dark green.



Thank you everyone for the tips. Hopefully I'll get this right next time. I'm just not clear on what is meant by converted and assigned as mention above? When I installed LR, I didn't change anything from the default settings. Should I have?

Bill

Also, one other question, although I probably should start a new thread for it, but I just removed all of my catalogs and I want to delete any and all edits and start from scratch. Do I just delete the Libraries/Pictures/Lightroom folder? (Windows77)



Nov 25, 2013 at 03:05 PM
Ken_K
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Monitors and calibration


Bill I've got a calibrated monitor and have had the same problem with prints at a certain Costco. Last year I had 60 photos printed for inclusion in Christmas cards. They all came back with a horrible green cast. I had them printed at a different Costco and they were great. I used jpegs converted to sRBG.
BTW, you image look great on my monitor but leaning a bit toward magenta. Nice pic !



Nov 25, 2013 at 03:18 PM
danski0224
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Monitors and calibration


Picture looks fine to me.

I suspect that the magenta comments may be from the color reflected by the blanket onto her face.

There is no coloration in the rest of the image.



Nov 25, 2013 at 03:33 PM





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