I've been trying to find information on different printing technicques all day. Ive found stubs here and there, but I'm still coming short.

My goal is to get a bunch of my photos printed on A1 canvas. My camera is only 10.1 mp, so I started out with some upressing in increments of 10% and bicubic smoother. As far as I can see, it looks alright, but is there a better way to do it?
I then went to a place downtown where they do canvas printing on a HP DESIGNJET 9000s, as far as I could understand, they dont know alot about color profiles or anything of the sort, but neither do I - any pointers here?
I cropped out A7 pieces of the images, and had them printed as a test, but they all turned out very dark. I then went back and added a brightness/contrast layer and added +30 brightness and did the print again. There was a small improvement, but is this the best way to it?
What are some factors I should look for when I print? Can I go by the histogram? Could it be that the printer prints it out darker than I intended? All of the shoots look alright on all of the screens I've seen them on. If you have any other great pointers, please let me know.

Cheers.

Hit enter to fast, rest of thread will follow. Sorry about that.

Well, this turned out as a mess...
Just wanted to add that my main concern about this issue is the brightness.
Wasn't intending on spamming my own thread.

David, the first thing to do is to have a calibrated screen. If you don't... well, I've heard of some who tweaked their screen until it matched the printed results, and then reworked the images. If you intend to work with that lab only, it might be a solution. But perhaps you can afford a monitor calibrator? We tend to invest a lot on our cameras and very little on our screens...

David, it can be done so don't give up. I don't know if you are aware of the whole colour management and profiling setup but I'll briefly explain.

I use a D300, a Dell PC running XP, process in Capture NX2/Elements 5 and print out on a HP9180 A3+ printer. The brightness, colours and contrast I see on my finished master TIFFs print out exactly like I view then on my monitor. When I send a file to a magazine or had a few published in books they also look exactly like I see on my monitor, well better really but you know what I mean.

What I do is:
Shoot in sRGB.
All my programs are selected for the profile to be sRGB.
I regularly calibrate my monitor with a Spyder2 and use the profile on my monitor it produces.
My HP printer has a plug-in that loads into CS2 and I use this to print out on.
I use HP paper which also has the correct profiles in the above mentioned plug-in.

What I noticed is that if you use paper without a profile it can have weird effects.

The monitor calibrated profile is very important as well as this in theory should set your monitor to view images that other people see on their calibrated monitors - like a standard really.

Have a look at the link i attached, it explains a lot.

http://northscape.photium.com/page1314.html

JP

I would not use them if they did not know about color profiles.

I have a similar workflow to John's, except that I use one adjustment layer before I print. To open up the gamma bit I apply a Levels adjustment with 1.2 entered in the midtone/gamma box. For me and my printer/paper combo's seems to give best results.

ONE MAJOR POINT: Do not try to look at your prints in the dim light that you look at your monitor in. I have a dining room table that serves as my drying station for my inkjet prints. It gets very nice diffused sunlight in the mornings. I only evaluate my prints there and only the next morning. I almost always print in the evenings after work and never evaluate my prints by tungsten light.

The idea that you can get what you see on your monitor exactly on your prints is really a myth. That is physically impossible to achieve. The monitor is projecting light and the print is reflecting light. What you can hope to accomplish is to get the same sense of tone, value and/or color that you had on the monitor.

You can NEVER evaluate them side by side. If you have the right kind and amount of light in a room to look at your prints, then the computer monitor will look wrong to your eye. And just the opposite, if you have the room properly lit for working on a computer monitor, the light is not even close to being right to evaluate a print. So don't even try, not even by switching on extra light to look at the print and then switching it off to look at the monitor. Your eye does not adjust that quickly to changes in light levels.

You are correct Clyde, I phrased my reply a bit weird but what I was trying to say was that my prints are exactly as my expectations of them should be, so I'm completely content with them in relation to what I view on my monitor.

:)

JP

Hi David. If you are going to invest in A1 prints and want to be able to predict/control the output, you need to get into this area of color profiles, soft proofing, calibration of monitor, etc. Yes, some find this boring etc, but it really is necessary. As soon as you want to display your images on a media other than your own screen, this is necessary.

Clyde has already given some great information in the area. Want to point out again the fact that printed media is something very different than the screen when it comes to how we perceive brightness. The screen is as Clyde says back lit, giving a very different look when it comes to contrast and brightness compared to prints, reflecting the ambient light. Many work with screens that are set on top brightness. It makes everything look sharp, contrasty and nice on the screen. Pleasant for the eyes... A calibration tool can help set the brightness level to a more appropriate level with regards to looking at images.

There are different techniques to adjust the difference in brightness between screen and printed medium. Clyde mentions using levels. I picked up a technique from Matt Kloskowski. He suggested, as a last step to merge all layers into a new additional layer in PS, set the blend mode to "Screen" and then adjust the opacity level. Usually an opacity level of 20-40% works on most images. I have used this technique with good results. Waiting myself for some large canvases from the print house at the moment...

But my main point here is to get a grip on the subject of color profiles, color spaces, calibration, etc. It really is necessary to understand this if you want to have control when displaying images on different mediums.

Some excellent information in this thread so far.

Thomas, thank you for the tip you picked up from Matt Kloskowski, I find that method to be the least cumbersome and easiest to correct brightness differences.

You've got some useful info already here.
I've given up to have others print for me. After finding out that professional photographers don't know much about profiles.. The one I've been using get his own stuff right, but you never know what is printed for others. I used to go there and check myself before printing.

Make sure you know what setting are set on the printer and program used for the print. Set up the same on your system for the prints you are planning. Calibrating your screen is absolutely neccessary, and calibrators don't cost much now. The Spyder Pro seems to be a good choice now.

I've set up with a Epson SP7900 at home now. Works excellent but costs a bit!
I've runned a few tests (and some mistakes) at printing with wrong profile set, and got some funny results. The most used profiles are SRGB and Adobe RGB on computers, (then CMYK transfered to printer). If you run Adobe RGB on your computer and print on SRGB set system you will get very flat contrast.
Most programs and printers (even my Epson) are set to SRGB as default, so if they don't know much there is a good chance it still have those settings. And businesses that regularly print for amateurs will probably have their systems set for SRGB.
Personally I'm running Adobe RGB on everything from RAW processing to print.

Sorry, forgot, here's a lot of good info http://luminous-landscape.com/

It is possible to directly compare prints and monitor displayed images, using a lightbox for the prints in which reflected light is controlled for luminance and temperature to be the same as the emitted light from the monitor, side-by-side with the monitor in a neutral ambiance.

brose

http://www.brosepix.com

I had a look. Why don't you have anything published here? It can't have been rejected..?

Some tips:
?Calibrate you monitor. (Spyder, Eyeone)
?Work in adobe RGB 16 bit
?Blow-up your 10 MB pictures to an A1 with Genuine Fractal Print Pro from onOne.
?If you print on photo-paper, load down the ICC profile from the paper and choice it in the printer menu.

Last year, I had 20 pictures printed on big canvas 60 x90 cm, by a man who printed in adobe RGB, the result was excellent.
If you order via websites, I think, you should choice sRGB... maybe the colors could be different.

I hope, I have been of any help.

Can do that printing for you guys! But don't know shipping cost to Australia etc...
Epson 9900 in house now. Fantastic results!

Thanks for the encouragement, Lars :) I am just over 2yr old in photography, so I have a long way to go yet (I hope)!

Nice idea of yours to offer printing services. It would indeed be very nice to be dealing with another photographer for prints!

brose

http://www.brosepix.com