printing out photos?

[jonahfab]

I'm still new to this photo world, so maybe stupid questions. I've been taking photos with a oly digital camera. I've started printing some of the photos out 8.5 x 11 and they are coming out much darker on the glossy photo paper then they appear on the screen, and for the most part they look look better on my computer screen. What can I do to get them to print out as they appear on my moniter, if that is even possible? thanks for any help.

 

[aabond]

With out spending money on getting a calibration tool for you monitor, you can try adjusting the brightness and contrast of the image so that it prints the way you want it to come out. However, IIRC, adjusting the gamma on you monitor under the display properties in the control panel, you might be able to match up the monitor to display colors the way they appear when they are printed out.

I'm not an imaging expert by any means, but i've had some experience with adobe photoshop, which by the way is an excellent piece of software.

 

[DesertEagle]

Check the printer drivers. Make sure that it's set for glossy paper. It may also help to use paper from the printer manufacturer.

 

[jonahfab]

I used your advice and seemed to help alittle, but pictures still seem to be losing some of the crispness. I'm using a hp photo printer so I don't think it is the printer or could it be?

 

[SeaYoda]

The match between computer and printer for color and brightness is always a challenge, they speak different languages. Are you using any editing software? Adobe has some adjustments you can make to the monitor to better match your printer. I get prints made at Walmart and I ended up just sending some trial 4x6 shots to get as close as I could. Trial and error may be all you have unless you buy the calibration software. So far I'm too cheap to invest the $$$ .

 

[rixemailfl]

You might want to try uploading your shots to one of the online photo places that actually print your photos with the same machine they use for film prints.

I work for Walgreen's part time in the photo lab & they now have a place on their website where you can upload your photos to be printed at your nearest Walgreen's store. It only runs around $0.20 per print.

I've seen some good shots coming from surface pictures, haven't seen any scuba shots yet.

 

[RonFrank]

Unfortunately this is a rather advanced topic.

Every device operates in a different color space. The color space used by a camera will be different from the color space that is used by the monitor, and that will be different from the color space used by a printer. To add to the confusion, each paper type may represent colors in a different manner. Ink is also a factor, and if you are using an aftermarket ink, that may lead to more issues.

Software applications may or maynot be color aware. Many software applications do not recognize different color spaces. An example of a color space is sRBG, or Adobe RBG. With my D1x I can shoot in Adobe RBG, and then can process the image using that color space in PS. While the two spaces may not be 100% matching, they are close.

To get these things all in alignment requires calibration tools, and color aware software to process the images. Spyder makes a lot of these types of products, but they are not all that inexpensive especially if one wants to be able to profile various papers for a given printer.

Most printers come with a standard set of profiles for given paper types. My Epson 2200 provides profiles for each type of paper they sell, for example Epson Premium Luster.

If one does not want to purchase calibration tools, Adobe offers the Gamma option which will do a reasonable job of helping get the monitor setup so that it represents colors as shot. Adobe CS provides a lot of options for adjusting color when printing in the advanced options. If you are using non color aware software to adjust your images, and print, you may have a very difficult time making the adjustments necessary to get a close color match between the monitor, and the print.

Manufactures have been attempting to address this issue, which impacts one hour labs, professional labs, and consumers alike. Color profiling is likely the biggest challange in labs today. Where there were a very finite number of film choices in the past, there are as many color spaces in digital as there are digital models available to the consumer. This has posed a BIG challange for professional, and one hour labs alike. PictBridge and DPOF are two examples of how manufactures are attempting to align color space. However even using a Pictbridge camera with a pictbridge printer may not make the image viewed on the monitor acurate against what will be produced by a printer.

I'd suggest getting a MacBeth ColorChecker image from somewhere, and work with this. View it on the monitor, print it out, and then adjust your print settings as needed until the colors are similar between the monitor, and the printer. Adobe CS provides adjustment of brightness, saturation, Contrast, Yellow, Magenta, and Cyan to help accomplish this. If you have no control of adjusting your print settings, you can try adjusting the monitor.

As others suggested, make sure you are using the right paper based on the printer profiles provided by your manufacture. In addition, many high end papers provide a profile with the paper either in the box, or that can be downloaded. Keep in mind that the more specific the profile to the printer and paper the better. Downloading a Canon profile for Epson Premium Luster paper to an HP printer would be a bad idea. To give you some idea of how specific a profile can be, there are services that allow the photographer to profile THEIR printer. Not just the model, but the exact printer in use, and these custom profiles will vary between printers of the same make and model. For most of us, that type of custom profile is not required, but this illistrates that printing really is an art, and to do a great job in a lab environment takes equipment, and skill.

I wish this was an easier topic, and I've tried to keep this less technical than it is as there is actually a LOT more involved like when to use perceptual vs. absolute colorimetic, and what is black point compensation.

I wish there was an easy answer, but unfortunately there is not. The good news is that once you get your workflow setup, it is a repeatable process. I can generally get a good print in one shot.

 

[RonFrank]

You might want to try uploading your shots to one of the online photo places that actually print your photos with the same machine they use for film prints.

I work for Walgreen's part time in the photo lab & they now have a place on their website where you can upload your photos to be printed at your nearest Walgreen's store. It only runs around $0.20 per print.

I've seen some good shots coming from surface pictures, haven't seen any scuba shots yet.

This is certainly a solution, however you may not get much better resuts at a place like WallMart. There is a site the lists all of the Costco printers, and includes profiles that one can download.

A professional lab will take care of color correction for you, however you then have lost control of the process, and you will be at their mercy which may not be a bad thing if they do a good job.

Many professionals send profiles to the lab they use so that they can retain the control over their color in prints when outsourcing printing.

At the $.20 a print a lot of the one hour places are charging, you have little to loose by trying this approach. However don't expect to get great results right away, and you many have to still do a fair amount of color adjustment before you get a good print. However once you do find a process that works, it should be repeatable.

 

[PapaBob]

Wow Ron! Great information and a good reference. I am going to be a little more basic. Jonahafab, I use Photoshop with a calibrated monitor and custom icc profiles for the paper I use. Even if you have everything calibrated and you have all your software controls set just right, your printed image will never fully match what you see on your screen. The reason is that projected light in RGB (red, green and blue "light" primary colors) always has a wider gamut (number of colors faithfully produced) than light reflected off of ink in CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black ... the “ink” primary colors). You will also experience some clipping, that is the screen will project detail in the highlight and shadow areas of your photo that cannot reproduce with ink and paper. This will make your printed image look darker. The goal is to get the colors on screen to match the colors from the printer as closely as possible without major shift or color cast. Some of this has to do with the quality of the equipment, and if you let us know your printer model and image software some of the members my have some specific suggestions. Full version Photoshop has features for gamut warning and proofing that lets you get a better feel for how the screen image will look when printed. Every once and a while I will have a print that looks great on the screen but is just too dark in print. I hate to say it, but except for brightly exposed macro shots, this is a common problem for underwater photos. The easy quick fix is to go back to your image in Levels and adjust the middle slider (sometimes called the gamma slider) to lighten the image and see if this works. Steer clear of the brightness and contrast adjustments which I have found largely useless. Hope this helps some.

—Bob

 

[jonahfab]

All the information has been a little overwhelming, but fascinating, and has put me on quite a path of research into a area that until now I knew very little about. The printer I use is the hp photosmart 7700, and unfortunately the only editing software I have at the moment is what came with my camera so it is very limited in what I can do with that. So that seems like step one for me is to upgrade that software first. thanks for all the info so far, definitely learning a lot!