Photo printing question

273K

Whenever I have digital photo's printed, usually by online services like Photobox etc., or on the machines in supermarkets, they usually come out looking a bit underexposed compared to the image on screen. I don't print often and it's not a big deal to live with it, or I'll increase the brightness to compensate and reprint. But I've consistently noticed a difference between how they appear on screen and the print. Is there some way to make sure what you see is what you get?
I want to print out a photo which is (deliberately) fairly dark, and looks just how I want it on my screen, but I don't want it coming out even darker, or adjusting and it ending up too bright. I want a fairly large print to frame, so taking multiple tries at this will end up being costly. I realise this is mainly to do with the screen it's viewed on but is there some way to get round this?

snerkler

TBH it's a nightmare getting prints to match what you see on screen, and I'm not convinced you will ever get it to completely match. To get the closest you possibly can is to get a full gamut screen that is properly calibrated, set up a print proof with the profile for the paper you plan on printing on and make the necessary adjustments.

A very common mistake is to have your screen set too bright, the 'correct' luminance for a screen is often much dimmer than you think it should be. Assuming you have the luminance set correctly then the exposure of the print should be pretty close to what you're seeing on screen. However, even then you might have to tweak it a bit, this is why when you print direct from Lightroom etc there is an option in the print menu to fine tune print brightness, see image below. I'm glad that you asked this question as I've just noticed that all of my paper profiles have gone AWOL and I'm just left with the option for colour to be matched by printer, I need to figure out where all my profiles have gone

                                                                       

AMc

The problem is your images on screen are created by a very bright light, the images on paper by reflecting ambient light back at you - matching the two is always going to be a compromise.

If your images from places like Photobox and supermarkets are consistently too dark then it's a strong indicator that your screen brightness is too high.  Photobox used to send a calibration print with 6x4s that you could use to manually fiddle with your monitor to match but I never had much luck.  The human eye is fabulous at adjusting for light intensity and colour balance so judging by eye is never going to be very accurate.  Then the ambient light changes and it all looks different.

You can get hardware devices like Colormunki etc. that will correctly calibrate the colour and brightness of the screen within the limits of the hardware, but even then getting the workflow balanced all the way to a 3rd party printer is a struggle and you'll end up with a lot of trial and error.  I've never gone in for that as I don't home print at all.

My best suggestion would be to find a local printer who will let you sit down with them and tune the image to suit their printer profiles, perhaps doing a couple of tests.  
I have had decent results from Snappy Snaps, I'd be wary of places like Boots and Tesco where you can end up with a shop assistant running the machines not a trained printer.  That's not an insult to those places, their machines are great but when I recently got some prints from Tesco online with local collection it was clear they just pop out of the printer - because they'd run out of paper and my shots weren't ready

I'm sure online would be cheaper if you got what you wanted first time, but as you said trial and error will be slow and probably expensive.

snerkler

I meant to mention this when I was talking about screen luminance, as you say ones a backlit source the other isn't

273K

Thanks for the replies. My screen is usually set to low brightness as I find it more comfortable to my eyes, and I've got into the habit of pushing the brightness up if I know I'm going to print.

I don't really have the time or inclination to start trying to calibrate my screen for the tiny amount I print, sounds like a bit of a rabbit hole. The idea of having some kind of reference image to calibrate my screen to one particular printer is interesting though, kind of like a test strip from the old darkroom days! I'll probably send a few versions of the same image, hopefully one will turn out ok and take the loss on the others.

shotokan101

One of the key issues for print matching is that scren dispksys are backlit RGB but commercial printers use predominantly CMYK

How to get consistent colour from screen to print - Features - Digital Arts

wongataa

Well stop upping the brightness if you are going to print and see what happens.  To roughly set the appropriate screen brightness you need to adjust the brightness of the screen so an image on screen appears to be about the same brightness as a print of the same image in the usual lighting conditions that you view your prints.

273K

Thanks yeh, in thhe first sentence I was referring to the screen brightness, in the second sentence I meant the brightness of the image to print, not the screen, sorry for the confusion.

I've sent a few versions of the same image to print and I'll try to use them as a guide to setting up the screen.

shotokan101

Some printing services will provide you with a printer profile for their print process that you can use to help preview the colour balance etc on screen.....

=adrian=

One thing you could do (and should if you are into photography) is calibrate your screen. I know you say you like your screen dim, but you still might be surprised as to how dim it should be. My screen is set to 14 out of 100 for brightness (leave contrast at default).