TomRA wrote:
Thatīs interesting! In what way does sRGB benfit over RGB in the printing process?
It doesn't. One more reason to do it yourself.
I am not a fine art photographer. I shoot celebrity, fashion, and commercially. I do all printing in house for a few reasons.
1. Control. While you can calibrate your system (I use an Eye One Pro and build my own printer profiles). You still can't realistically know exactly what you are going to get from a lab. At least by doing it yourself, you can make an adjustment without having to upload, re-order, and wait.
2. Speed. See above. I usually only have to print once. I know what my output will look like. Even for 4x6's that are ordered in portrait sessions I just let them roll out "4 across" and cut as needed.
3. Quality. Today's Inkjet technology is nothing to snub. In most cases the modern ink sets can reproduce more colors than photo paper and depending on the media, have blacker blacks. Most labs including Millers and WHCC accept 8 bit sRGB files. My workflow allows me to print 16 bit ProPhotoRGB based images,
3. Cost. Contrary to popular belief, there is a point if you do enough printing and selling, that you can do it cheaper and quicker than Mpix or WHCC. I pointed this out in another recent thread. Printing roll media significantly reduces cost.
Remember, the labs are making money and you should be building your retouching time and other effort into the cost of prints for resale. I've read a lot of threads where people are passing Costco prices on. Not totally related. but seems odd to me.
I know that not everybody can justify the time and money to DIY. I just found in my situation, that there were diminishing returns in sending them out when I listed the pros. cons, and competitive economics. I'm seeing a lot of people throwing in the towel, when it's not really that hard to do. Your individual results will vary
Just for reference, I use an Epson 4880 with a variety of media. Calibrated from input to output via an Xrite Eye One Photo SG system.
Jodi Nelson wrote:
Getting the print to look like what is on my monitor is just what I'm struggling with right now. I purchased a Spyder2Pro to help with calibration but I'm still not getting the correct output from a pro lab. Don't know what to do at this point.
You need more information from your print lab. They need to tell you what gamma and white point to set on your colorimeter software. Your calibration system will give you a monitor profile to set into your operating system (in windows, Color Management is under monitor Settings> Advanced when you right-click on the desktop).
Then you must get a printer profile from your print lab. You set the print profile in your editing software "soft proofing" controls (in Photoshop CS, it's under the View menu).
Adjust your color when your softproofing is turned on. But be sure to do this under subdued room lighting. Bright room lighting will still throw off your perception of the image on the screen.
Most professional labs can accept several different color spaces (aRGB, sRGB, Prophoto, et cetera), as long as you "embed" the color space in the image file. There isn't any benefit in sending them anything other than sRGB if they're going to print it on Kodak or Fuji paper.
However, some inkjet and art paper combinations can make use of the wider aRGB and Prophoto gamuts.
TomRA wrote:
Thatīs interesting! In what way does sRGB benfit over RGB in the printing process?
It doesn't. One more reason to do it yourself.
I am not a fine art photographer. I shoot celebrity, fashion, and commercially. I do all printing in house for a few reasons.
1. Control. While you can calibrate your system (I use an Eye One Pro and build my own printer profiles). You still can't realistically know exactly what you are going to get from a lab. At least by doing it yourself, you can make an adjustment without having to upload, re-order, and wait.
2. Speed. See above. I usually only have to print once. I know what my output will look like. Even for 4x6's that are ordered in portrait sessions I just let them roll out "4 across" and cut as needed.
3. Quality. Today's Inkjet technology is nothing to snub. In most cases the modern ink sets can reproduce more colors than photo paper and depending on the media, have blacker blacks. Most labs including Millers and WHCC accept 8 bit sRGB files. My workflow allows me to print 16 bit ProPhotoRGB based images,
3. Cost. Contrary to popular belief, there is a point if you do enough printing and selling, that you can do it cheaper and quicker than Mpix or WHCC. I pointed this out in another recent thread. Printing roll media significantly reduces cost.
Remember, the labs are making money and you should be building your retouching time and other effort into the cost of prints for resale. I've read a lot of threads where people are passing Costco prices on. Not totally related. but seems odd to me.
I know that not everybody can justify the time and money to DIY. I just found in my situation, that there were diminishing returns in sending them out when I listed the pros. cons, and competitive economics. I'm seeing a lot of people throwing in the towel, when it's not really that hard to do. Your individual results will vary
Just for reference, I use an Epson 4880 with a variety of media. Calibrated from input to output via an Xrite Eye One Photo SG system.
I just picked up a Kodak 8500 to start doing my own in-studio and on-site work, It was between that and a Shinko - I recommend both, decent prices, awesome quality.
Cheers
If you are looking for a printer, I suggest you check out "Nash Editions". They seem to be a premier but slightly pricey print house dedicated to doing a great job.
Jodi, regarding the difference between inkjet and lightjet you might want to take a look at this article. It's fairly old but still non-the-less relavent to your question. Also keep in mind, in the 6-7 years since the writing of that article, inkjet technology has made tramendous leaps in advancement in image quality and print longevity.
For myself, I make my own prints for many of the reasons that pmacino does. One of the biggest reasons I choose to make my own prints is because it gives me total control of my final output. I don't currently print to make a living but I am in the process of trying at least get some income from providing a custom high-end print service for a few friends who are professional photographers as well as allow myself to practice my hobby. Although I have no one else to please but myself (at least at this point in time), print making is as much an art in and of itself as photography is and that's one of the main reason that I decided to start making my own prints. I find that the process of print making is often times as much, if not more enjoyable than creating the image in the first place.
Do keep in mind that this doesn't all come cheaply. Purchasing a Canon iPF6100 is quite an investment both in time, money and real estate and that's partly why I plan on augmenting my costs by doing small print jobs on the side. As far as quality is concerned, the comfort of knowing that I have total control of every single print I release is a great thing. Being able to print using 16bit plugins (the printer hardware actually prints at 10bit) with the largest color space available on a very wide colour gamut and on whatever paper I fancy is a great freedom to have as an artist.
hello, sorry to OP, I just wanna ask some my own questions here.
To Pmancino,beewee, I love your portfolio! I have one question for you guys.
I am thinking of getting my own professional printer in near future(epson 4880 or canon i5100). but I don't wanna invest on printer profile for anther thousand dollars. I am using NEC LCD2690WUXi-BK-SV(with colorimeter,built-in 12bits LUT).my question is, after my monitor has been calibrated properly and I got the third party's printer profiled for my printer, what if I see the output in softproofing mode and RGB mode are different? I guess what I can do is, adjusting the color to make them look closely as possible as it can be? I hope I stated my question clear enough,thanks in advance and happy new year to all of you guys here!
Aaron from my limited experience so far with the iPF6100, I've gotten very good results both on real prints as well as test prints from Bill Atkins/Outback Print using profiles from Hahnemuhle. The iPF5100/6100 has its own built-in calibrator (not a profiler) and this basically makes sure the printer is working to spec. What this allows is for generic profiles to work very well and very consistently with the printer. From the test prints I've made with the Hahnemuhle Fine Art Pearl and Photo Rag papers using the profiles on Hahnemuhle's own website, the only weakspot I see is green channel for the FAP profile has a very small and barely noticable gradation inversion. Also both papers need to have their black values shifted (for FAP, it's from 0 (black) to 4) before sending it to the 16bit plugin.
I haven't gotten around to getting a custom profiler like the xrite i1 photo so I can't directly compare hahnemuhle's profile to custom made ones however I can say that from the prints I've made with hahnemuhle's profiles, they're pretty darn good! The other paper manufacturers haven't been as quick with releasing profiles for the iPF6100 and so am planning on getting an i1 Photo soon so I can make prints on non-hahnemuhle papers.
One more reason to do it yourself.