dark prints

[ElizK]

Last week I had a number of my daughter's sr pics printed at Walmart (hey, in the past they have done a good job, and the price is good!). Everything was too dark! This after painstakingly doing all the Photoshop adjustments! This is the first time I've sent pictures to be printed from my new computer. What do I need to do to correct the problem - assuming it is me/my monitor?

I resent those same pictures to Adorama.com and they came out very nicely. BUT I did have them do the color correction (hated to do that after how much time I'd spend in Photoshop, but didn't want more too-dark prints!)

I would really appreciate any advice you could offer. thank you!

 

[Steve's Girl]

First, you need to be sure your monitor is calibrated correctly. Second, you need to use a good printer. WalMart and most other one hour type places do not do a very good job with color management. Mpix offers to sell a simple calibration kit for $3 so you can match your monitor to their printers without having to buy expensive software, etc.

 

[wenrob]

If I try to print at home mine come out too dark too. When I send them to Scrapping Simply or Scrapbook Pictures (they do 12x12s the size I scrap in) they come out perfect every time. Like mentioned I'm sure it's color profile thing and I don't think your average, basic printer (like Wal Mart would use) just doesn't know what to do with all that color and saturation. That's my theory anyway, lol.

 

[MICKEY88]

color calibration and exposure are 2 different things, a printer that has been color calibrated can still yield dark prints , the printers average the scene just like your in camera meter does.. so a snow scene will usually be dark unless a human over rides the machine,
mpix printing is done by people...so they make exposure compensations, walmarts printing is done by machine only if uploaded to the website and printed..

I've had the same issue with walmart, the same file when sent to mpix resulted in a perfect picture..

when I worked at Ritz camera we color calibrated our printer every morning before the store opened,but we still had to make exposure adjustments when neccessary, snow scenes, baby on white blanket..etc..