Printing Woes

[Dave Throgmartin]

I put in an order to one of the online printing labs while 11x14s were cheap for an upcoming local competition and the images are quite a bit too dark. I don't print terribly often and am not that well versed in printing.

Does what looks good on my monitor for day to day computing not print well? I printed glossy. I'm having trouble figuring out if its the act of printing that makes my images too dark or if I edit them too dark.

Dave

[Kayaker72]

Best thing you can do is calibrate your monitor.

For my eye, your images are fine.

I sent about 10 photos to 4 labs a few years ago. MPIX came out a solid half to full stop darker than the others. Quality was there otherwise.

But I ended up with Adoramapix in that test. Been happy with them since.

[Dave Throgmartin]

Spyder? Or something else?

Dave

[Kayaker72]

Spyder? Or something else?

Dave It depends on how much you want to get into it and how good your monitor is.

I've ended up with the X-Rite i1 Display Pro. I do really like it. I also have the Spyder5Pro. X-rite also has the colormonkey. When I did my winter research project on my monitor I ended up concluding the i1 Display Pro had some extra functionality over the other two, so I ended up picking it up. As I remember, this was a bit more control over the process, ability to assess multiple zones of the monitor (once you get into this, monitor panels are not uniform), and a few other things.

But, really, any of them will check and help you adjust monitor brightness.

Also, as I write this a few things I learned when going through updating my monitor, most monitors out of the box are intentionally "hot." Bright, intense colors, etc. If I recall correctly, they typically come out 180-200 lumens (candela/m2) whereas they'll probably have you calibrate down to ~120 lumens.

Not sure if it will help, but I often create threads as I work through and learn on these little research projects.

https://community.the-digital-picture.com/showthread.php?t=8418

I may have had a different thread on this process too as this one does not include everything I remember going through, but I can't find the other thread.

[Dave Throgmartin]

Thanks, it is a helpful thread.

Dave