Yesterday I printed some pics for testing my new monitor in ShopperDrug Mart's instant machine. the result is horrible, all pics are over saturated like pics I saw in non color-managed photo viewer on screen. I spoke to the manager of photo printing department in Mississauga,Ontario,Canada for asking for profile file. Unfortunately they don't have these information to provide...
I heard Blacks photo has the best quality in printing, then I called them today. But they don't have profile either. All they can provide is,their printer is Fujifilm LP2000SC and using Fuji color Crystal Archive paper....
Currently I just leave soft-proof in mode of simulating device: Windows CMYK- U.S. Web coated (SWOP) v2 since I have totally no idea what printer profile the print shop is using.
I wonder where do you guys in Canada do printing work before you have your own printers. thanks.
You want RGB not CMYK, save that for offset printing. Most store printers are set to sRGB, assume that unless otherwise told. The Chromira printer I used wanted aRGB, and the Kodak kiosk printer in my local CVS seems to want aRGB, go figure.
Anyway if you are editing in CMYK you have greatly depressed your color gamut so it is no wonder the images are blowing out on you. After never liking what I was getting from printers I bought my own 17 inch Canon.
I never liked using a Photoshop converted CMYK when I was doing layout, the printers I delt with could always do the conversion better. There was always some crusty guy who would roll his eyes at me when I said I converted the images in PS.
tomm101, I assume you know what soft-proof is, I never converted any pic to CMYK or edit in CMYK... but thanks anyway.
and I decided to buy print from smugmug which my webpage belongs to, they provide "EZ print" more details here : http://www.smugmug.com/help/display-color
I do think without profile, you won't be able to control what you will get in print. I don't wanna waste time and money on unreliable lab. If it comes in near future, I will consider to buy my own printer- Canon i5100.
On thing that you didn't mention was if the lab you were printing at had the option to turn off their color correction on your files. If you have your images balanced to your liking, then you can print the images straight if you can have the lab turn off their color correcting and you should get prints bang-on to your balance *if you have your monitor calibrated*.
I have gotten quick printing done at a local lab when I needed something ASAP. without fail if they turn their correction off I get images that are almost identical to my monitor. And I am one picky wench when it comes to my images. :o)
At my local CVS, the insta kiosk is a thermal printer and looks SO incredibly bad and over saturated.
The 1 hour CVS kiosaks use Kodak photographic paper... It's not near as bad as the termal but compared to my lab and my monitor, the images are undersaturated. Perhaps it is just because it is an older Noritsu priner. I did test prints on a fuji Frontier 330 once with srgb argb and their drycreekphoto.com profile....The srgb looked by far the best. If I remember correctly, image was taken in argb then converted to srgb and the drycreek photo in PSCS2.
I find that every lab and every printer is so different, I must calbrate differently to compensate for each of them.
Sorry this doesn't help you much. Just letting you know my experience. good luck!
good luck!