Do you edit for on-screen view or printing or both?

[OctMtnWoods]

I'm not a serious photographer like many here, but I thought this might be a good place to ask since this forum doesn't intimidate me as much as others do.

I recently joined smugmug for the purpose of sharing photos online. Last night, I was looking at their help section and stumbled across a section called "Getting Great Prints". http://www.smugmug.com/help/print-problems

I'll be honest. I have several photo editing software packages, but never really use them. At the most, half the time I'll tell it to auto-adjust, and half the time I don't do anything to the picture. I recently upgraded Picasa to version 3 and have been quite pleased with its "I'm Feeling Lucky" auto editing. So I think I'll be at least editing more photos that way.

Now, back to that smugmug "Great Prints" link. I read the entire section. Nice & easy to read compared to some places. I learned that you should edit photos to certain levels if printing, not necessarily how it looks on the screen. I have Photoshop Elements 6, but haven't tried smugmugs directions yet.

That got me thinking. If I'm posting my photos online to share, do I edit one way for online sharing, and then have to edit them again to get the best prints since how it looks on monitor isn't always how it prints out?

What do you do? Keep your answers simple please. Its been a very long time since I've had prints done. I would hope the companies have come a long way in digital printing compared to when it first made the scene.

This year I was hoping to get my photos organized (stop laughing), uploaded online, and some printed out for albums or maybe photobooks. I'm not sure if smugmug will be the printer yet. I hadn't really thought that far yet.

Tips greatly appreciated.

 

[jann1033]

i edit for how i want it to look printed, which really means i edit them to how they look best to me. editing for viewing on the web is kind of secondary imo since it depends on how someones monitor presents them etc as to how they look on someone 's computer so they might look good on yours but the color be dog ugly on other's monitors. if i was just emailing a photo to someone i'd still do the same as i do for print cause i'm neurotic. some companies like mpix allow you to tell them not to change anything so what you edit is what they print. you can allow them to correct things if you want which if it isn't a special artistic type coloration sometimes i let them do since my monitor isn't calibrated the way i want it so not sure how true the color is( although the prints i get back are pretty close to my monitor, it's just my monitor has some presets for certain things and i can't figure out which is better for printing...need to get calibration software)

i just reread your question after reading wenrob's comment...find out what color profile the place you use to print uses ie srgb, rgb... and then make sure you edit for that profile...otherwise, using mpix as an eg, if you edit in rgb, they print in srgb and the colors will end up less saturated...but if you edit for the right profile it should be close unless your monitor is way off( if you dont have calibration software, you can get one printed out and see how it compares to get a rough estimate..

if you have photoshop elements, you change the color profile in "image">color profile, not sure about any other program

 

[wenrob]

This my friend, is the million dollar question. For whatever reason it seems to be one that doesn't get much of a response on any board I've posted it on.

What I know from my experience is that color space will make you insane!

Sorry, I couldn't help. I hope someone else can.

 

[jann1033]

This my friend, is the million dollar question. For whatever reason it seems to be one that doesn't get much of a response on any board I've posted it on.

What I know from my experience is that color space will make you insane!

Sorry, I couldn't help. I hope someone else can.

color space is a plan concocted by aliens to turn human brains to mush so they can more easily take over the earth imo who else can figure out those wavy weird pointy colored grids...except maybe mark ( but shh he told me he is an alien so watch your back)

 

[boBQuincy]

The short answer is "yes", you prepare an image differently for monitor display and paper printing. It has to do with the color space but also with the dynamic range, black point, light source, etc. Photoshop even has an option to convert to sRGB in the "save for web" menu to handle things like this.

One of the good books on printing (like those by Harald Johnson and Ansel Adams) will go into it as deeply as we ever wished!

 

[wenrob]

One of the good books on printing (like those by Harald Johnson and Ansel Adams) will go into it as deeply as we ever wished!

Will they un-mush our brains and save us from those aliens Jann was talking about? Or will they mush them more and hand us over?

 

[boBQuincy]

Will they un-mush our brains and save us from those aliens Jann was talking about? Or will they mush them more and hand us over?

If we throw around terms like Dmax, sRGB, gamma, dpi, picoliter, and degrees kelvin as casually as some folks talk of WDW, we should be safe from the aliens. If not, they will bamboozle our brains into terminal mush and we will look forward to being turned over just to escape the mess that is digital printing!

The "good part" is every time Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, HP, Kodak et al come up with the next thing they claim that printing has finally been made easy. Hah!!!

 

[°O°Joe]

I have an HP Photosmart B8550 at home that prints up to 13" x 19". What I've done, which seems to work pretty good to me, is print a picture and then adjust the monitor to look pretty darn close to the print as far as colors and tones go. My prints look pretty much like they do on my monitor. It's not perfect but it's close enough for these eyes!