p.2 #2 · WHCC.com’s printing and QA/QC has become unacceptable
Jeff wrote:
Right, I got that. But how would one go about setting the brightness in a way that you know it is the same? It's virtually impossible to 'eyeball' the slider, and it's been my experience that 'click' settings (on the keyboard) may or may not be consistent, esp. over time.
jhapeman wrote:
What MBP do you have? The new Apple silicon ones with the new Liquid Retican XDR displays now have different reference modes you can choose.
I'd seen that awhile back and messed around with it, I'm just not convinced my MBP monitor actually holds brightness settings consistently (yes, I have all the nanny-modes turned off). Same with the two Apple Studio monitors I have; the fly in the ointment there is the stupid keys on the keyboard not being locked out. Brightness calibration to 80 requires a setting that is 'in between' click stops, so once you accidentally hit the key, there's no way to return to the (calibrated) brightness setting. That I know of, anyway.
p.2 #4 · WHCC.com’s printing and QA/QC has become unacceptable
Jeff wrote:
I'd seen that awhile back and messed around with it, I'm just not convinced my MBP monitor actually holds brightness settings consistently (yes, I have all the nanny-modes turned off). Same with the two Apple Studio monitors I have; the fly in the ointment there is the stupid keys on the keyboard not being locked out. Brightness calibration to 80 requires a setting that is 'in between' click stops, so once you accidentally hit the key, there's no way to return to the (calibrated) brightness setting. That I know of, anyway.
They 100% hold, that's why they are called reference modes. I use them on Studio displays and my ProDisplay XDRs. I'm not sure what you are saying about the keyboard not being locked out. It is for me, if I'm in a reference mode that has fixed brightness, I can't change it with the keyboard.
p.2 #5 · WHCC.com’s printing and QA/QC has become unacceptable
Back on track to the subject of the thread, I also need to shop around for a printer for customer-grade prints. I've always liked Mpix, good balance of quality and speed of delivery, but lately I've had quite a few of their prints arrive too big for appropriately sized frames and require trimming.
I ordered a few prints with borders from them and they were totally uneven around the image as well. Quality control is just seemingly non-existant.
For what it's worth, prints from Darkroom have always been my favorite. I'm ordering a few proofs to make sure their quality is still up to snuff.
p.2 #6 · WHCC.com’s printing and QA/QC has become unacceptable
Jeff wrote:
BayPhoto has pretty similar products, use the ROES ordering platform, and have always been my other go-to. They are still a great option for this kind of printing.
I've only printed for personal use and for friends, and only photo prints (up to 20x30), but I've never had a bad experience with Bay Photo. Would happily second this with my recommendation.
p.2 #8 · WHCC.com’s printing and QA/QC has become unacceptable
jhapeman wrote:
They 100% hold, that's why they are called reference modes. I use them on Studio displays and my ProDisplay XDRs. I'm not sure what you are saying about the keyboard not being locked out. It is for me, if I'm in a reference mode that has fixed brightness, I can't change it with the keyboard.
p.2 #9 · WHCC.com’s printing and QA/QC has become unacceptable
Jeff wrote:
I'll give it another shot!
The problem with those reference modes are that you cannot adjust any of the parameters, so if you're ambient conditions aren't the same as how they set those up in there lab, you're out of luck. You may need the screen to be lighter or darker or have a different white or black point. I mean, those reference modes are what I consider to be *close*, but just that - close. They're close enough for me to shoot tethered or view images on line, but they are not anywhere in the same neighborhood of the CG line of Eizo's despite some claims to the contrary.
p.2 #10 · WHCC.com’s printing and QA/QC has become unacceptable
Peter Figen wrote:
The problem with those reference modes are that you cannot adjust any of the parameters, so if you're ambient conditions aren't the same as how they set those up in there lab, you're out of luck. You may need the screen to be lighter or darker or have a different white or black point. I mean, those reference modes are what I consider to be *close*, but just that - close. They're close enough for me to shoot tethered or view images on line, but they are not anywhere in the same neighborhood of the CG line of Eizo's despite some claims to the contrary.
...Show more →
Actually you can adjust all of them. Just use one of them as a starting point and there's quite bit you can hard set, and then you can also use Apple's calibration tool to tweak it even further if you want. I personally use a tweaked version of the Photography profile for all of my Mac screens and it's *very* consistent between all of them.
I'm sure it's not quite like using a hardware calibration tool with an Eizo, but it will get you 95% or more to that point, and let's face it for most of the world that's more than enough. In my experience there's vastly more variance in individual's potential to even perceive color so while many of us here can get caught up in the perfection of that last few percent, most of the world won't notice or care.
p.2 #11 · WHCC.com’s printing and QA/QC has become unacceptable
jhapeman wrote:
Actually you can adjust all of them. Just use one of them as a starting point and there's quite bit you can hard set, and then you can also use Apple's calibration tool to tweak it even further if you want. I personally use a tweaked version of the Photography profile for all of my Mac screens and it's *very* consistent between all of them.
I'm sure it's not quite like using a hardware calibration tool with an Eizo, but it will get you 95% or more to that point, and let's face it for most of the world that's more than enough. In my experience there's vastly more variance in individual's potential to even perceive color so while many of us here can get caught up in the perfection of that last few percent, most of the world won't notice or care. ...Show more →
You obviously don't work with the art directors that I do. Yes, those last few percentage points are what make all the difference, and y'know, the Info Palette to confirm. And it's also the ability of the screen to actually show you that last little bit of detail in the deepest of shadows - and trust me, you'd think that stuff won't print but when you get a big poster on press and you see a line in what you thought was black, you'll change your tune. Now of course, on an inkjet or whatever chemical printers these labs are using these days, it doesn't matter as they crush everything below about ten anyway, but offset is a wholly different ball game, and generally a tiny bit more expensive. And with so much of what I do these past years, there are no proofs. The monitor is the proof, so it better be as good as you can get.
As I said before, these new Apple displays are pretty good overall but they're not really good enough for me to do the highest quality work. They might be fine for you and that's great. We just have different clients and standards.
And yes, I did look at the referenced pages at Apple but to be quite honest, it's just so much easier, and far more accurate to do the initial setup in Color Navigator where you plugin the exact white point, black point, run the monitor at wide open gamut, set the luminance and press the calibrate button, and then every 200 hours, it re-calibrates automatically while you're sleeping. And you can store custom calibrations if you want or need. To quote the bard from Duluth, "You go your way and I go mine".
p.2 #12 · WHCC.com’s printing and QA/QC has become unacceptable
I used bumblejax in Sodo area of Seattle for my recent gallery exhibition. They printed 30x30" and 30x45" acrylic mounted images and the quality was very high. Their prices were pretty much the same as online, and I liked that they were just down the road to check out the prints and surfaces in person.
