Help needed printing photos.

[Limey72]

So I am new to underwater photography and got what I thought were some great pictures in catalina 2weeks ago. Some of these pics were jpegs and some were lifted from video as bit maps and converted to jpegs in paint. All had there color adjusted slightly post. Now the problem is the pictures look great on my laptop and ipad but I used the Walgreens app to send them to be printed and the prints seem very bull compared to the digital image and some detail is lost, I do not have this problem with above water shots. Does anyone know a fix for this?

as always many thanks in advance

 

[danvolker]

Part of this is the need to have the screen calibrated to the printer..... At a pro level, there would be a precise calibration between the two....For your present situation, using a general calibration profile for your screen, one that the printer at walgreens will recognize, would seem to be the way to go..... I don't use Walgreens for this, so I can't help you with specifics for them.

Some monitors are much better for printing than others...and amazingly, which monitor you have when the photo was edited/corrected, has a great deal to do with the print result!!!!

 

[Limey72]

That makes sense I think I am going to try shutterfy

 

[nimoh]

one thing you might try is to open the image on your computer screen, and adjust the color/brightness/contrast settings of your monitor until the image looks similar to that which was printed at walgreens.

Then open paint (although I would recommend getting GIMP, its free) and modifying the picture to what you would like it to look like.

As Dan suggested, you need color calibration, and this is basically a brute force color calibration between your screen and walgreen's printer (assuming they use the same printer next time).

 

[Tigerman]

Youll need to get the screen calibrated to srgb or adobe rgb and you ALSO need to make sure you tell the print shop NOT to add any processing to your pictures.
Most consumer screens you wont stand a snowballs chance in hell to calibrate anywhere near adobe rgb, but srgb you can get close to with the right monitors and its "good enough" for the vast majority of mere mortals..

Screen calibration tools is not horribly expensive so getting one is definetly worth it if you take a lot of photos and play with them afterwards.

also to remember is of course that some photo developers are just better than others, regardless of the files you hand over to them..

 

[DiveLvr]

Youll need to get the screen calibrated to srgb or adobe rgb and you ALSO need to make sure you tell the print shop NOT to add any processing to your pictures.
Most consumer screens you wont stand a snowballs chance in hell to calibrate anywhere near adobe rgb, but srgb you can get close to with the right monitors and its "good enough" for the vast majority of mere mortals..

Screen calibration tools is not horribly expensive so getting one is definetly worth it if you take a lot of photos and play with them afterwards.

also to remember is of course that some photo developers are just better than others, regardless of the files you hand over to them..

Wow this is complicated! Can't I buy a better monitor that meets this adobe rgb? I started digital photos to get away from the photo shops now I'm being dragged back. While on the topic, is there a better printer/printer paper to produce better pictures at home?

 

[Tigerman]

Wow this is complicated! Can't I buy a better monitor that meets this adobe rgb? I started digital photos to get away from the photo shops now I'm being dragged back. While on the topic, is there a better printer/printer paper to produce better pictures at home?

Yeah, sure you could buy a $1k monitor and get that calibrated for adobe rgb and jump all the hoops that full-size print professional photographers do to make the colors match exactly - I kinda wouldn't though as its beyond overkill (and can your lab even accurately print it for you?)
SRGB is all you need and a tool like the datacolor spyder you can install and calibrate just about any screen with. Some cover the srgb space better than others of course, but as I said in the previous post - it'll be good enough.
The part of telling the shop NOT to allow the printing to post-process after you have done so yourself is however quite important. It slipped my mind once and that turtle covered in green algae got VERY green on the printout