help printing photos

[nee]

The photo is a bluebell wood where I added some red in photoshop, as the blue looked a bit pale.
It looks perfect on my laptop which is a one year old sony.
The printer is new and a good inkjet model, but the photo has come out with dark pink bluebells.
Any advice would be great.

 

[racreel]

The first thing you need to do is make sure your monitor is properly calibrated. If it is not, the colors you're adjusting won't come out the same when you print. Try viewing the image on another computer and see how it compares to your laptop and the printout.

 

[VVFF]

First thing first, from experience I wouldn't trust color on any laptop screen...even one that has been calibrated. They simply have too narrow a viewing angle to trust their colors.

Second, you have to learn about color management if you are going to get your prints to look like what they do on screen. Even then, realize that colors generated by light and those generated by ink will never perfectly mirror eachother.

 

[nee]

Thanks, I am just going through the calibration now.
But what do professional photographers do when they take landscape pictures and then have to print them out. ?

 

[boBQuincy]

First, as someone mentioned, the colorspace for printers and monitors is different. Monitors can display some colors a printer can't print, and vice versa. Soft proofing can show the colors that don't match if the paper/printer profile is good. Next, we can decide how we wish to print the out of gamut colors; perceptual, etc.

There is also a big difference in maximum density range between monitors and prints, most good papers have a dMax of not much more than 2.0! So we have to make an image with a dMax of maybe 3.5 or more fit into a much smaller range while still preserving the look of the image.

Another big point is the lighting by which we view the print. The Photo Society of America has a standard viewing box design, last I checked it uses a mix of CRI 92+ fluorescent bulbs and incandescent bulbs to achieve a known lighting color balance and intensity. Any other lighting will change the perceived color balance of the print.

 

[tiggr33]

Too funny Bob. Sorry mini hijack, I have the PSA standard open and was reviewing it right before reading the boards. I needed to reference the light box standards for something I am writing for the New Jersey Federation of Camera Clubs (NJFCC) as I am the print competition chair for them. In case anyone is interested, here is the link
https://www.psa-photo.org/division_files/Stereo/pdf/judgingpractices.pdf

 

[MarkBarbieri]

As Bob alluded, it is difficult to get your prints to appear the way that they do on the screen. The only way to get really close is to calibrate both your monitor and your printer (with an ink and paper specific profile) and to soft proof the image on your monitor. Soft proofing adjusts the appearance of the image on your monitor to make it look more like it will look when printed.

For a relatively good tutorial on the overall subject of printing, you might want to buy this video. The subject is surprisingly complicated.

 

[boBQuincy]

And while we are somewhat on the subject (mini-hijack) I only buy fluorescent bulbs that have at least a 90 CRI. We never know where we might hang a print and it is worthwhile to have it look its best!
Except in the garage, where I still use 90 CRI because it helps me see better.

As Mark mentioned, printing and color matching is very complicated. Hopefully it won't be that way forever but it seems little progress has been made so far. One of the best books on the subject is Harald Johnson's "Mastering Digital Printing". Another is Ansel Adams "The Print".

 

[GrillMouster]

As others have stated, monitor calibration is vital, but only part of the story. Printer calibration is just as important, and until recently printer calibration hardware kits were very expensive. While I haven't tried it myself, I've heard good things about the ColorMuki. This device can profile your monitor, printer, and projector. You can also use it to profile multiple output devices. It's from X-Rite, the maker of my defacto calibration device, the Eye One Display 2. I can't really say the ColorMunki is cheap, but when compared to other printer calibration devices, it's a bargain. It's still priced well above what most family snapshooters would be willing to pay just to make a few prints at home. You might be better off just making sure your monitor is profiled and send your image files to a good lab, like Mpix, who calibrates their printers. An affordable monitor calibration device is the Huey Pro, also from X-Rite

 

[nee]

Thankyou for the advice.

Seems that to get a good print I will have to send them off.

One thing though, The photo looks good on other computers, but when I have tried printing it out on three different printers, the blue is coming out as dark pink. Could this be a problem with editing on photoshop 7, even something to do with merging layers ?

 

[MarkBarbieri]

Not sure how you'd get from blue to pink. One possibility for funky colors is that you could have a colorspace assigned to the file that your printing or viewing software doesn't understand. It is not uncommon for people to do their editing in Adobe RGB or Pro Photo RGB and then save a jpg in that colorspace. Many browsers are not colorspace aware, so they display the picture with very muted colors.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

If it was one printer, I'd blame your ink. Ink goes funky after a while. I struggled with purple looking blacks until I finally changed my blank ink cartridge.

 

[nee]

I think you may be right there Mark.
My photos, when first downloaded, do look as though they need the contrast boosting. So that is what I am doing.
Could you go into more detail do you think on "colorspace" and RGB and is there anything I can do to check this ?

 

[MarkBarbieri]

I took a shot at it here.

 

[Shutterbug]

My problem with printing photos was they were coming out way darker than on my Imac. I went and purchased a Spyder 3 pro calibrator and tried the coloreyes software I was able to bring down my Imac screen brightness down to 100cd/m2 which helped alot in processing.