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I am sure that there are several people tired of these questions, but I am having a hard time finding anything to address my specific problems in the Knowledgebase, the FAQ’s, or with searches of the forums. So, I hope you all will forgive me if my questions are redundant and either direct me to the information I need or be willing to take the time to answer my questions. Also, I am going to give some background so that it might help you to help me, so please bear with me; I have spent weeks trying to find the information to fix this on my own and I can’t seem to get anywhere by myself…
OK, I am a professional photographer and about a year ago I switched labs. At the time I was doing my editing with Photoshop Elements 6. I had recently photographed a wedding (JPG image capture) and took some of the image files in for test printing and matching. Right out of the gate everything looked great; tonal range, color matching, and saturation were all either right on or very close to what I expected going from a LCD monitor to paper prints. Then, I did a family session (RAW image capture) and the color fell apart. My images had severe problems rendering blues specifically, but the worst part was the color banding which also was worst in the blue areas of the print. I tried and tried to remedy the problem, but couldn’t. Finally, I purchased CS3 hoping that the ability to work with 16-bit color would take care of it. My camera shoots a 12-bit RAW file, and when I opened in CameraRAW I applied: 16-bit depth and a sRGB profile to it. With that and a less destructive technique on a vignette, the prints came out great again and I thought my problems were taken care of.
Unfortunately, that is not the case. Over the course of the last several months I have been unable to get everything to match consistently again. I was using a ColorVision Spyder2Express at the beginning of this process, and have since purchased a HueyPRO to see if that would make a difference; but there was no improvement (or difference for that matter).
What happens is that I open a file in Photoshop and edit it, then I save one copy as a psd with its layers and a copy of that file that has been Flattened, converted to 8-bit depth, and saved as a jpg. This is the file for my lab to print. My images start with a sRGB embedded color profile, I have tried using a sRGB and an AdobeRGB Working Space (although it seems like that shouldn’t matter for my problem), and then when I save the ICC Profile for sRGB is checked. If my Working Space is AdobeRGB and I told the document to convert when opening, I convert it to sRGB before saving. All seems like this should work, as near as I can tell.
However, if I send it to my lab for straight printing, the image comes out very dark and very saturated. If I open the jpg in any Windows application it looks very much the same as the final print. Like crap. I can set my Proof Setup to Custom and choose sRGB as the device to simulate and there is no visible difference on the screen with the soft proofing. If I check the Proof Setup as MonitorRGB as my soft proofing option, then I see what I am going to see when I view the image anywhere else in Windows, again my prints are close to this. I have spent countless hours trying to work with my lab and we are at a loss as to what to do; but it seems to us that the problem must be in a setting or something that I have inadvertently screwed up in Photoshop. ?? It is also probably pertinent to note that I have seen my image files on the labs monitor and that what they see is what they get. My files viewed on their screen look the same as when printed. They are using Photoshop CS2 and a LightJet 430 printer, if that matters.
Continued in next post…
OK, I am a professional photographer and about a year ago I switched labs. At the time I was doing my editing with Photoshop Elements 6. I had recently photographed a wedding (JPG image capture) and took some of the image files in for test printing and matching. Right out of the gate everything looked great; tonal range, color matching, and saturation were all either right on or very close to what I expected going from a LCD monitor to paper prints. Then, I did a family session (RAW image capture) and the color fell apart. My images had severe problems rendering blues specifically, but the worst part was the color banding which also was worst in the blue areas of the print. I tried and tried to remedy the problem, but couldn’t. Finally, I purchased CS3 hoping that the ability to work with 16-bit color would take care of it. My camera shoots a 12-bit RAW file, and when I opened in CameraRAW I applied: 16-bit depth and a sRGB profile to it. With that and a less destructive technique on a vignette, the prints came out great again and I thought my problems were taken care of.
Unfortunately, that is not the case. Over the course of the last several months I have been unable to get everything to match consistently again. I was using a ColorVision Spyder2Express at the beginning of this process, and have since purchased a HueyPRO to see if that would make a difference; but there was no improvement (or difference for that matter).
What happens is that I open a file in Photoshop and edit it, then I save one copy as a psd with its layers and a copy of that file that has been Flattened, converted to 8-bit depth, and saved as a jpg. This is the file for my lab to print. My images start with a sRGB embedded color profile, I have tried using a sRGB and an AdobeRGB Working Space (although it seems like that shouldn’t matter for my problem), and then when I save the ICC Profile for sRGB is checked. If my Working Space is AdobeRGB and I told the document to convert when opening, I convert it to sRGB before saving. All seems like this should work, as near as I can tell.
However, if I send it to my lab for straight printing, the image comes out very dark and very saturated. If I open the jpg in any Windows application it looks very much the same as the final print. Like crap. I can set my Proof Setup to Custom and choose sRGB as the device to simulate and there is no visible difference on the screen with the soft proofing. If I check the Proof Setup as MonitorRGB as my soft proofing option, then I see what I am going to see when I view the image anywhere else in Windows, again my prints are close to this. I have spent countless hours trying to work with my lab and we are at a loss as to what to do; but it seems to us that the problem must be in a setting or something that I have inadvertently screwed up in Photoshop. ?? It is also probably pertinent to note that I have seen my image files on the labs monitor and that what they see is what they get. My files viewed on their screen look the same as when printed. They are using Photoshop CS2 and a LightJet 430 printer, if that matters.
Continued in next post…
How to Master Sharpening in Photoshop
Give your photos a professional finish with sharpening in Photoshop. Learn to enhance details, create contrast, and prepare your images for print, web, and social media.