Toronto Photography Meetup Group

Hey wise people of TPMG, I have a question.

I just sent a photo of mine to print. The original is here:


Sunflower! II by mike.tan, on Flickr

and a scan of the print is here:


scan of a print by mike.tan, on Flickr

Obviously, the scanned print is not going to look like the digital, but I was wondering why the print came out with petals that looked almost translucent, when my original did not.

Could it be that I oversaturated/over-brightened the yellow, and ended up with an unprintable colour?

How could I rescue this situation? I've lowered the brightness and sent another copy to print. I hope this one turns out better.

More importantly, how do I make sure this does not happen again?

Thanks for any input everyone!

Did you edit the photo with the colour profile for the printing service you're using?

that's what i was thinking. Otherwise it looks like their blue color got jacked up for some reason and bled through?

See if you can get a color profile from your printer, and soft proof on Photoshop,I'm sure you'll notice the issues right away.
It looks to me like there are some contrast & vibrancy issues here. luster/gloss media has the most receptivity capabilities, so it would be better suited to deal with such a high color and contrast. Also search the high end photo paper brands as they'll offer more gamut to aide on you gradients transition.

In sRGB you have color issues around your dark greens, but proof in Epson Premium Luster 260@1440 you're just fine.

Thanks for the quick comments!

I got this printed at Pikto, on Endura matte paper.

Ok, after the fact, I just turned on proofing with the ICC profile from Pikto, but the result is not the same as the print; it's bad in that there is no detail left in the petals, but on screen, no blue bleeds through the yellow.

Could 16bit-8bit conversion affect this? On screen, there is no perceptible difference when I convert from 16->8.

Gerardo: what do you mean when you say "In sRGB you have color issues around your dark greens, but proof in Epson Premium Luster 260@1440 you're just fine."?

As in, how do you know? On screen, the overall image looks a bit darker, and some areas I can see a lack of detail, but otherwise the difference is not too dramatic.

Hmmm. Another something to learn about. Interesting. Now, if one is intending the final output to be in print, would there be a reason to not do the entire edit process in soft proof condition using the printer ICC profile?

Did you turn on your out of gamut warning when you soft proofed http://www.underwaterphotography.com/ph ... /help.html

It's usual to check and correct for out of gamut colours before you print rather then work in the printer colour profile.

For instance lets say you print on one printer paper combination and then you decide to change the paper to metallic or the printer to an inkjet then you have to use a different profile for each paper device combination. Each soft profile may have different out of gamut areas. Basicaly an out of gamut area represents a colour that the screen or printer can't reproduce therefore it replaces the colour with the nearest in gamut colour. These replacement colours might not be that close or maybe even cause over-saturated flat spots on the print. Depending on what 16 bit profile you are using converting to an 8 bit jpg can also cause out of gamut colours.

This site has some sound tutorials on the subject which you might want to read http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutori ... ement1.htm

Just like Ryan pointed. Once you open your image in photoshop, make sure you have the gamut warning selected. Some nasty magenta or dark gray areas on you image should appear indicating the need to adjust or correct by adjustment layers.

Also, as you figured out, when editing towards print you should consider color gamut and levels in order to achieve better results.

Thanks everyone! Time to do some research!