Toronto Photography Meetup Group

So everyday I am dissapointed as I print my photos and they don't look half as good as I see them on the computer ( not just mine every computer) why is that? what is gong on am I doing something wrong? It can;t just be every monitor is uncalibrated. Should I switch to cmyk when I know I'm going to print? whats the tricks of trade? any info?? Yesterday I took a full res photo made a new document in photoshop 8x10 dragged the photo into the new document and "control t" transfered it to make it smaller I printed it and it came out very bad quality... Would that have any effect on the photo or is it other matters?

1 - hardware calibrating device
2 - no CMYK, unless specified by publisher
3 - stick to sRGB in the end (that's what Black's uses)
4 - see point #1
5 - see previous point and point #1

What do you mean by "they don't look half as good as I see them ..." - in terms of what? Resolution? Colour accuracy? Are they consistently off ... e.g. the prints are always warmer than my monitor?

Colour/sharpness "that POP" , vibrancy

Haha very nice

As someone has already said, monitor calibration, otherwise you are just guessing in the first place. Then it is all about knowing your printer. Find an icc profile for it and read up on softproofing.

Also depending on your tastes you may find that you need to over sharpen to get the same apparent crispness in the print and give it a bit more of saturation kick to get the rich colours.

You have to learn how to recognize the image that will look good in print on your monitor, not what looks good on the monitor, it might look "wrong" on the monitor but prints to what you want. A monitor and a print are two very different mediums, a print reflects light a monitor projects light they have different characteristics.

Keep in mind that the ONLY folks who have calibrated monitors are serious photographers/hobbiests or people who do this for a business. It's not as common as you think. Heck I know some pro photo hacks that don't calibrate their monitors and sell clients substandard work.

Also keep in mind that prints are "reflective" ie, they're not backlit like viewing a slide on a light table or looking at a digital image on a monitor.

Are you letting the printer control the colour or the software handle the colour when printing?

I've had to print some stuff by the Blacks near my workplace on occasion and they came out pretty close to what I saw on the screen.

There's a lot to learn about printing and settings you can tweak...the biggest ones are the colour space you're working in (most basic printers work in sRGB mode), the paper and the amount of ink you select (dpi setting in the printer config screen) make a difference too.

There are lots of tutorials online, Google PHOTOSHOP PRINTING TUTORIAL (add the word Elements if that's the version you're using).

The biggest thing to understand is the monitor and printer are different technologies, and they will never look 100% the same (yes, I know that's a "duh" statement)...but there's a setting within Photoshop where you can emulate the printers colours onscreen, and it may help you get closer...but I can't tell you where it is in Photoshop as I don't use that software; look for it in color management and it should say something like, "Display simulated printer colors" (I turn it on only when editing for printed output, and turn it off for editing for display or projection).

The first thing you have to do is calibrate your monitor. The next step is to ensure ALL your working spaces are using the same profile (my workflow is LR -> CS3 -> Epson printer). If you have a wide gamut monitor (shows more of the colour spectrum), set it to aRGB (adobe), otherwise sRGB (standard - costco, walmart, blacks use it).

You also have to spend the time to set-up your printer. Are you colour managing your images through photoshop/LR or the printer/driver? All these little things make a huge difference. It took me a while to set all this up and it was quite a frustrating journey. Very rewarding when it starts coming together.

What's your monitor and printer? If you're in the west end, I can help you tweak your set-up.

+1 for mike and carlton there is a lot more to printing then monitor / printer calibration.

I don't understand this statement of yours:



You hardly ever want to make something smaller when you print. You have to understand DPI and resizing without lose of resolution.

Try this out to see how bad your monitor really is:

http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/moni ... ration.htm

Actually read the whole site not just the above.

While you are at it you might want to go through these:

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials.htm

and this:

http://www.pixelgenius.com/tips/schewe-sharpening.pdf

and last but not least:

http://ftp2.bmtmicro.com/dlc/Better%20Prints.pdf

Last but not least even the pros will print a portion of the photo on small sized paper to check/proof how it looks before committing to a full print. There are so many factors such as paper type that will affect your print that fixating on monitor calibration is rather myopic.

Not an expert, but I have been reading quite a bit on printing lately. So this is more of a theory...

One potential problem with color vibrancy in a print could be due to high resolution/dpi. The theory is that with high resolution, the droplets are too close and potential ink bloating makes the color look murky, especially with small print sizes.

two things you need to understand in order to control the colour print making process...

google - 'color theory' and 'cymk'

good luck,
Ken

Need some more info on how your printing. Are you printing by yourself, (brand, model, paper)? CS4 when you PP and print?

If your using outside printers its mostly (that I know of) sRGB 8 bit and you have to convert your photos to this colorspace.

I do all my stuff through Blacks. PP with Photoshop

So from the advice you've been given where in your workflow do you think things are going awry?

You shoot RAW? Process your image in what colorspace and what format (PSD, Jpeg, Tiff)? printing your image in what colorspace and what format?

Calibrating monitor definatly is number one .. right now Im only using my mbp so that will have to do .. Once I do that I'm going to do a few printing tests to learn what settings make a photo look better .. ie .. sharpening, levels, boosting colour levels etc.. I appreciate everyones input

I shoot raw convert to jpeg in lightroom, bibble, or nikon viewer or w.e its called. I edit in srgb photoshop.

You should be able to print fine since your in sRGB already. What I don't understand is control "T" to resize your image.

Your image size dictates document size not by opening a blank document to your output dimension. If your downsizing, try duplicating your full res photo it and name it to your planned dimension. Close the full res image and work on your duplicate. Image resize by pixel or document dimension, then print.