printing & colour management

[lashboy]

Hello all, I'm after some advice on printing photos and colour management please.

I've taken good photos using my 550d, then spent a little time in Lightroom tweaking them. However once printed, they aren't a true representation of the screen version. Common problem I know.

I'm shooting in raw and my colourspace is Adobe 1998.

If I take my photos to a high street photo kiosk such as at Jessops or Boots, will the instore printer use its own colour management profiles and therefore mess with my images or not?

I know I need to stop processing on a laptop and also use a colour calibration tool for the screen. Aside from this, do the pro printers from Canon / Epson etc allow you to print off small 6 x 4 prints on small sheets of photo paper as well as A4 etc?

Thanks for any advice given.

Nick

[Colin]

Re: printing & colour management

Colour management is a whole large can of worms. There are lots of good articles around on the web about it. Printers only work to the SRGB colour gamut have a look at this article http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tut...obeRGB1998.htm. (Many other good bits on this site)

IMHO you won't get anywhere until you calibrate your screen. Once you have done that then you know that the correct colours are being displayed on your screen then and only then can you compare your printed output with the screen image.

Printing to a printer is controlled by the computer so most printers allow you to use any paper size that is in the printer driver, whether they have a suitable paper tray for that sized stock is a different matter. Have a look at the manufacturers websites / review sites they usually detail all the paper sizes that the printer will cope with.

[lashboy]

Re: printing & colour management

Cheers Colin, much appreciated.

Will look to purchase a new desktop and calibration solution in the near future, as well as start shooting in srgb seeing as most printers and print labs prefer it.

Nick

[colin C]

Re: printing & colour management

Colin's have to agree with each other and this is no exception.

First change your colour working space to sRGB. Adobe 1998 should be better on paper with its wider gamut, but nobody uses it except Adobe, so stick with sRGB

Second, get the screen calibrated. Screens are not set up for photography and printing, but to look good and punchy to the average computer user. Generally, that means too red and too bright. Which will print with a greenish cyan cast and too dark. Whatever adjustments you make in Raw, are based on your judgement of how right they look on screen. If the screen is wrong in the first place, you haven't got a chance to get it right.

If you use a commercial printing company, they will use their profiles for their paper, based on calibrated equipment, but if you have tweeked the images to look right on your uncalibrated screen, they are still not going to come out exactly right.

Finally, the majority of printers from Canon and Epson will print down to 6 x 4. My Canon printer will go up to A3+, but I can still knock out a few 6 x 4's for the inevitable family snaps.

Hope that helps?

Colin

[lashboy]

Re: printing & colour management

Yes thankyou, excellent advice from both of you.

Ive a high-end Sony laptop at present that Im editing photos on. However, I suppose the screen isnt ideal to edit on, or to view and calibrate on as it lacks the controls of a dedicated monitor.

So instead of buying a whole new system which was my intial intention, Im now looking at whether I can output to a second monitor from my laptop ( my graphics card supports this.. I think ) and then use the external screen for editing and calibration. Obviously this option would save me a massive amount of money!
Ive got a HDMI output on the laptop as well as the older DVI output so I imagine it should be fine. The native laptopm screen doesnt support HD however.

First step though as you say is to calibrate the screen once the new monitor is purchased. Looking at the Spyder 3 device, any other suggestions on this front?

Cheers,

Nick

[colin C]

Re: printing & colour management

Hi Nick

I use the Spyder 3 Pro. Perfectly good tool and easy to use.

If you have a decent graphics card in the laptop, there is no reason why you can't use the Spyder 3 on the laptop. It may be good enough, but certainly worth a try.

Colin

[Colin]

Re: printing & colour management

Nick, That set up should work fine. IIRC you ought to use the DVI connection on the laptop to the DVI on a monitor rather than HDMI but I can't remember the reason why (getting old you know).

I use a Huey pro as I have a 2 monitor set up and use Lightroom for most of my editing and this works well. I suspect there is little to choose between all calibration hardware, the key thing is to get something and use it.