Printing Pictures problem

BR
Posted By
ben_ribikev
Jan 22, 2007
Views
320
Replies
2
Status
Closed
I use laptop to print pictures and graphics.
I send my designs to a commercial printing company. Usual case is, is that the pictures turn out too dark or too lite, and sometimes it is due to the fact that the CMYK colors are overaly saturated causing all these colors layer to overprint and make it come out too dark. On my screen I dont see those oversaturated colors, I see a picture that looks good on screen. When Im using flat color somewhere, I have a swatch book that I use to assign number to each color and so the results are always great. But you cant do that with pictures, with pictures you have no idea. I use a color picker and set it to 5 point average to measure color, but it really doesnt tell me much. How can I measure a whole picture and be able to tell if the output looks oversaturated or undersaturated or too lite or too dark? I figured that you cant rely on your monitor for that.

Does anybody have a suggestion for me?
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BL
Bill_Lamp
Jan 23, 2007
Actually you can rely on your monitor. The trick is to calibrate it. As Adobe Gamma wasn’t designed for LCD screens, it simply won’t do the job.

Your going to have to use a hardware/software profiling package. Hopefully you can adjust at least the brightness and contrast of your screen. If you can adjust the red, blue, and green; so much the better.

Another problem is, on the laptop screens I’ve seen, the brightness changes in a major way depending upon the angle you view the screen. You quite likely will have to find a way to have a constant view angle.

When you look into color profile packages, make sure that the package will work with LCD screens. Mine, by ColorVision, has a piece that comes off for LCD screen use and stays on for CRT (tube) screens.

BTW: the FIRST thing the direction sheet, for mine, had was the notice that all other color adjusting software must NOT be running during the calibration process or afterwards as well. That meant removing Adobe Gamma from the start-up process.

If you want to look into this further, Drycreekphoto.com has a review with a link on their home page. Mine isn’t in the best results list, but it was the best I could afford. It has made quite a difference with my older CRT Sony’s accuracy.

Bill, with no connection or financial interest with/in any computer, computer hardware, software company, and/or store that sells the previously mentioned items or the referenced web site or company which owns the site <hopes that is enough honest disclaimer>.
TG
Tom Glowka
Jan 23, 2007
Don’t forget about dot gain at your printer. It can be as much as 20%.

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