Having trouble with a simple adjustment (photoshop)

[slm]

Hi All

I have quite a challange with a trivial adjust problem.

Background
I've started printing on canvas. Producing pictures for exhibition purposes.
I know that diffent medias have different abilities to reproduce colors and tones.
Glossy paper shows color and tones nicely. Matte paper have almost the same capability. Canvas falls somewhat short but can still give decent prints. With the canvas the more "glossy" type reproduce better than the matte ones.
Further down the steps comes eg newspaper prints.

Previously I have send a lot of pictures to print on different types of canvas. Always got good results back. Now I started to do this my self. It's here my routine isn't sufficient.

My strategy
My strategy is to adjust the picture in order to get it up to a sufficient level as for color and contrast.

My apparoach is to use softproof as an instrument for finding the approx right adjustment for the pictures that I'm printing. I choose the printing profile and softproof (ctrl-y). This gives me a view that is very close the a print attempt.

So with this view i start adjusting. This job is "only" pushing a dull/matte picture closer to a nice reproduction. I'm pretty sure the there's a way to adjust these pictures. The illustration show (on left) my goal and (on right) my starting point.



So my real question is how do I adjust this pictures?

I have tried the following
Approach A
Curve tool, can't really achieve the right black, white or midtones. The contrast seems dull.

Approach B
ve tool in blend mode luminisity + Hue/Saturation in blendmode color ... with almost as poor result.

Approach C
Exposure, pull down offset a bit. A tiny bit better than approach A and B - but not even close to a useable result

Approach D
Levels, pull down the highlight a bit, darken midtones a bit - much the same result as apparoach C - and far from the solution.

I'm pretty convinced that it my lack of experience with these adjustment tools and the understanding/analysis of the adjustment challange. Perhaps even one of my four apparoaches is OK but I'm not applying it right?

Can some of you help me getting this adjustment challenge nailed?



-- Søren

[pnodrog]

Once you have set the black and white extents and set a suitable midtone with levels you should be able to use a S shaped curve adjustment layer to get close to what you want.
Could you show us what curve shape you are using?

You may end up needing to tweak colour and saturation but but first you need to get the overall tonal range looking better.

P.S. I am assuming your printer calibration/profile and preview are all set reasonably correctly. Have you set the printer or photoshop to do the print management?