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05/04/2008 05:08:47 AM · #26 |
Originally posted by pix-al:
They have just launched their new site though and it is currently really slow and much more difficult to navigate than their previous version. A bit off-putting... |
Gosh, that's in the last few days. I ordered prints last Sunday and it was the old site! Will now take a look. |
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05/04/2008 05:14:00 AM · #27 |
So - what colour space do you guys send your files to Photobox ?
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05/04/2008 05:20:16 AM · #28 |
sRGB...
I think it says to send as sRGB somewhere on the site. |
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05/06/2008 12:14:17 AM · #29 |
My 2 cents
I am a photo lab manager for a ritz owned photo lab and 2 simple solutions to your problem that arise in my lab. We edit every picture for color, brightness, and contrast, if it is needed. However fuji provides us with this program called image intelligence that is a auto correct function, it works great on horrible photos but at the same time it will destroy already edited photos as well. So you could go in and ask them to remove all corrections before printing. Also, the lab should be running density tests a few times a day on all of its paper, depending on amount of use. This wouldn't be the reason for the white glare but it would explain color and contrast differences. I know that my lab isn't even professional and I would have never let that photo out of the store. So if it is a pro lab, get it fixed. |
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05/06/2008 05:47:16 AM · #30 |
I took the pictures back yesterday, and they are going to reprint the whole lot. I'll let you know how they come back again. It is a proper silver halide process, which was news to me, for some reason I always assumed digital files were printed using pigments/inks.
Thanks again for all the help! |
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05/06/2008 07:21:28 AM · #31 |
Please be sure to report on the second printing.
The off colored line on the prints definitely sounds like the chemicals were off at the lab so that is the most likely cause for their poor print quality.
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However, there is another possibility...
Your prints have that 'out-of-gamut look' to me. I've seen it and had to correct for it in my own prints before. If this is your problem, then the second batch will be just as bad as the first.
Let me explain. Your image is processed under a color space profile. It will be something like sRGB or Adobe RGB or Prophoto RGB, etc. The range of colors and tones in a color space is called its gamut. Each color space has its own gamut. Some color spaces have a lot wider gamut than other color spaces. Printers typically use narrow color spaces or gamuts.
Lets suppose for a moment that you processed and saved your picture using a gamut with a wide color space like Prophoto RGB. Lets further assume that the printer uses a narrow gamut color space in its profile. That is typical.
Under these conditions the printer will encounter colors from your file that are outside the range of its own color space profile. These are called out-of-gamut colors. Under those conditions the printer will attempt to interpret the out-of-gamut colors from your picture and help you by substituting what it thinks is right from its own color profile.
Here is the kicker... under these conditions, without exception, the substitution colors will be wrong! It will make your pictures look like... wellll... like your prints where the tones are all screwed up and there is loss of image detail because color tones are scrunched together into one substituted color.
How do you deal with this?
Under the "View" menu in Photoshop CS+ there is a selection called 'Gamut Warning'. It is a toggle you can turn on and off. When checked it will display in grey the areas where there are out-of-gamut colors. You do not want to see large patches of grey in that display because that indicates a lot of out-of-gamut colors. They will not be handled well when printed even though it might look OK on the screen.
The problem, though, is that ideally you need to proof your print file using the ICC profile of the lab's printer and then check the 'gamut warning'. Most of the time we don't have the option to do that. Every lab has its own printers, papers and bunches of ICC profiles for them.
That is where kirbic's often made suggestion to use sRGB comes into play. sRGB is a narrow color space and within the gamut of most printers. So if you make sure to change your picture's profile to a destination space of sRGB before saving it off as a print file, just like you do for web graphics, then you will probably not experience any out-of-gamut color problems during printing.
Is that sufficiently confusing? ;) LOL!!!
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05/06/2008 08:26:37 AM · #32 |
| Thanks for the detail, all my shots are in sRGB and not overly saturated, so hopefully there should not be a problem. |
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05/06/2008 09:09:43 AM · #33 |
| ^^ FYI modern machines rarely have chemical problems, they have stabilizer problems. Chemical problems would come from a direct human error, like spilling. And regardless, often with small problems they can work themselves out surprisingly. What people think are chemical problems is usually lack of densitometer testing, which looks chemical. |
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05/12/2008 07:38:24 AM · #34 |
Well they did them again, and they were rubbish again, so I got my money back. Although the guy argued for ages about how it was the reflected light making the shots come out like that...? Most of them were outside without a flash so I think he was just talking &^%$.
So I'm looking for an online service in this thread:
//www.dpchallenge.com/forum.php?action=read&FORUM_THREAD_ID=776498
thanks again for all the help! |
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