 BetterPhoto Member |
Print Quality of Digital Images When I had some digital images printed at the local photo store, some of the images (faces) had a distorted color appearance. It seems that certain areas of the picture had too much color. The photos were taken with a Canon A95 Powershot and were enhanced (image size, color, red eye, cropping) with MS Picture It. I copied the images to a CD for developing. The pictures do not look the same as they do on the computer. Any ideas about what I am doing wrong?
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robert G. Fately |
Mary, what you see on your screen and what comes out of a printer can be rather different (different even from coming out of multiple printers). It sounds like the colors printed as oversaturated (red dress is "too red" etc.) - this could be a function of the way the photo store's printer read your digital files. Perhaps when you were doing adjustments in Picture It the software changed color values? There is a whole craft and science to what is called calibration - where you first use special software and reader on your monitor to "teach" the computer what this certain shade of red really is, then you load so-called "profiles" for each printer/paper combination so the computer can translate that shade of red into the numbers the printer needs to reproduce the same shade. But that can take a bit of effort ... perhaps you can ask the folks at the lab to tone down the colors in a reprint or something?
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BetterPhoto Member |
Try making a print from the original and then see what comes from the unaltered file. Then make adjustments as you see fit, but without a calibrated monitor, it may be difficult to anticipate what your prints might look like. Many things can affect monitor color: ambient light around the monitor, brightness, image size, file viewer, and on and on. If you get your monitor calibrated, do so according to the specs of your most-often-used photo printer, so that you will see what they will print for you. Chris Walrath Walrath Photographic Imaging http://home.comcast.net/~flash19901/wsb/html/view.cgi-home.html-.html
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Autumn Hernandez |
I have found that a lot of the "quick print" photo labs have different qualities to their photos. Costco, for example, doesn't do anything to the pictures to fix them and will print as is. Kits, on the other hand, automatically uses their software to fix exposure so the pictures often look different from what you see on your computer. Plus, everyone calibrates their printers differently. Some are very careless about it. In my photography class, my teacher suggested taking one particular photo, of a pink rose or something with one basic color, to all the different labs in the area to see which place gives the truest to actual color photo. Hopefully, you can find one that you like. You can have the perfectly toned photo and everything could be right, except for the printer. :/ Unfortunately, sometimes it's the luck of the draw with the fast printing places.
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Denyse Clark |
Mary- this issue was the very thing that kept me from going digital for quite some time! I had a friend w/ digital, and their prints always came back with these totally obnoxious colors that looked fake. I assumed it was just how digital was. NOPE, it was the cheap photo finisher. I don't know about all the monitor calibration stuff everyone was talking about, but I went to a professional photo printer and the color is outstanding, so my experiment tells me that's a huge factor. I like Autumn's suggestion of taking the same pic to a few places and checking out the results, great idea!!
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Steve Mescha |
Just to concur, it's not your files, Mary, it's the lab! I'm sure you'll find one that does a better job!
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anonymous A. |
Absolutely the lab. If you are not happy with the results, ask for a reprint, explaining what it is that you don't like. If they won't reprint (free or at minimum cost) go somewher else. Or get a decent printer and do your own! The cost is similar and you are in control; you may have to experiment to get just what you want, but once you have, you should get consistent, predictable results.
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Joe drapeau |
MARY I HAD THE SAME PROBLEM WITH A LAB THAT I USE TO DEAL WITH,THE PRINT ON MY PRINTER OF THE SAME PHOTOS WERE FINE, TURNS OUT THIS LAB HAD AN OLDER MACHINE ,REFITTED FOR DIGITAL ,AFTER COMPLAINING THEY PUT A SOFTWARE PATCH IN THE MACHINE WICH HELP SOME. I JUST GO TO RITZ NOW FOR ENLARGEMENT THEY HAVE THE NEWEST MACHINES ,THE COLORS ARE CLOSE TO THE SAME AS MY SCREEN .
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Andrew Laverghetta |
Just wanted to share my good experience with my local walmart supercenter. Now, I won't take film enlargments there but I feel good about taking my digital files there. They print my files exactly as I have saved them. Usually I bring them in on a CD and have done all the editing and resizing on my computer how I need it. Some of what I've done are four musical instrument 8x10s through them in which I used PS CS to match the color among the four seperate shots and they were exactly how I saved them. It was great to finally have that control that I didn't have when I was going for a specific color hue with color negative film. I've also had to take some photo directly out of my 20D this winter when I didn't have access to a computer and the colors that I was going for while shooting were still maintained in the prints. Anyway, if there's a walmart, try it out with a few different photos. If yours prints digital one hour well, you can get a great 5x7 for just under $2. Fantastic!!
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robert G. Fately |
To Andrew's comment - it's good that your local Wal-Mart did a nice job for you, but be aware that not all Wal-Marts have the same equipment. The ones with Fuji Frontier lab equipment generally produce the better results, but those haven't been rolled out to all stores. For that matter, the training level of the techs using the equipment also have great impact on the color consistency and accuracy that is provided. The point is - you need to find a convenient lab that you can trust - if it's Wal-Mart, then groovy, but it might be Costco or Sav-On or a camera store. It depends on a lot of variables, not just the store name.
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Susan L. Vasquez |
I've tried several online services. Shutterbug, Ophoto, Imagestation, Snapfish, and Photoworks. Out of all of these I'm most pleased with Photoworks. I buy matte prints from them and they look amazing. It maybe a preference on my part, but to my eyes the colors are great and the prints are nice and sharp.
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A C |
It is great that Andrew's Wal-Mart prints turn out great . . . my Wal-Mart prints turn out terrible, sometimes. I used to go to a local grocery store but the colors are dull. I now go to a local photography studio that also has a one-hour photo. The prints turn out beautifully (as long as I don't let them color correct because they don't know what the heck they're doing!)
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Alton I. Vance |
You've probably heard enough in this area but here is my experience. I had serveral adjusted PS files saved in JPEG that I took to Target. They did a great job the first time. But I took the same files back a second time to the same store and ran them through the same Kodak machine and they came out with way too much contrast, similar to your experiene. I took back my original prints they had done the first time and showed them the difference. The operator was amazed at the difference in quality from the same machine. Until then the new ones looked O.K. to the casual oberver. She kept both copies of one print and showed the technician when he came back the next time and he was amazed at the difference in quality but gave no explanation as to why there was such a difference in detail quality. I haven't been back to see if the quality has improved since. But the point is, you can't always depend on one place. You might get good prints one time and bad ones another. I think it depends a lot on how the software is set in the machines and if someone has changed it since the last time you were ther. Of course a calibrated monitor helps but unless the machines are calibrated in the same way that still doesn't guarantee accurate color reproduction. When it comes to really large blow ups (8 x 10 to 20 x 30 of even larger) I have had great success with Laser Light Photographics in Aptos CA. http://www.laslight.com/ They tell you how they want their monitors calibrated and their reproductions come out fantastic.
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robert G. Fately |
Alton makes a good point - that the low priced places may not have consistent output due to lack of training of the techs and/or sloppy handling of the equipment or sporadic refreshment of the chemistry. Pro labs (on-line or local) who make their reputations on being able to supply the same output over time cost more, but you're paying for he consistency. WHich is not to say that CostCo or Target et al always does lousy work - only to say that you need to test things out with your local outlet since things can be very very different from store to store.
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