Calibration Question

[Shutterbug365]

Hi

New member here looking so thoughts and advice.

Recently sent some images off to be printed for one of our local camera club competitions and they came back considerably darker than how they look on screen (Laptop, Tablet, Phone etc) so kind of obvious that I have problems to resolve.

Currently I have never calibrated my screen so am thinking that is the next step but will that resolve the monitor brightness or is there something else that I need to do. I don't have my brightness high anyway, probably about 40%.

Any thoughts on which to get (we have a couple of laptops in the house that could do with being done), have been reading about the Spyder and it seems reasonable.

Any thoughts and advice would be gratefully received.

Thanks

Paul

[DanK]

Yes, it is always worth calibrating your monitor. I have used xRite products with good results, but I think there are people here who use Spyder gear.

A few other thoughts:

All of your screens are emissive, while prints are reflective. That will make them look different, even if the brightness is well controlled.

Second, the fact that your prints are considerably darker than how they look on all of your devices--even though you have turned the brightness down quite far on your monitor--makes me wonder whether there is some other problem--either a problem in how the file is prepared for the printer or a problem with the printer. It might be worth sending one of the prints to a second lab to see if the results are similar.

[pschlute]

Hi

New member here looking so thoughts and advice.

Recently sent some images off to be printed for one of our local camera club competitions and they came back considerably darker than how they look on screen (Laptop, Tablet, Phone etc) so kind of obvious that I have problems to resolve.

Currently I have never calibrated my screen so am thinking that is the next step but will that resolve the monitor brightness or is there something else that I need to do. I don't have my brightness high anyway, probably about 40%.

Any thoughts on which to get (we have a couple of laptops in the house that could do with being done), have been reading about the Spyder and it seems reasonable.

Any thoughts and advice would be gratefully received.

Thanks

Paul

Hi Paul

There are many on here that can give you much more detailed advice than I but......

A quick google will show this to be a common complaint and the result of usually having your screen too bright. A proper calibration will help not only for colour match but for brightness too.

Soft proofing can assist as it tries to demonstrate how the print will appear. It requires a calibrated screen and a icc profile for the paper being used.

i do profile my screen regularly. I do not print myself. What I do is to get smaller versions of my image printed at +0.5/+1.0/+1.5 brightness before ordering a full size one.

[Manfred M]

Welcome to CiC Paul.

The question you are asking is one of the most challenging ones to answer that I know when it comes to reproducing photographs. I am a printer and enter my prints in club-based competitions, so I do understand where you are coming from. The one advantage that I do have is that I print my own on a photo quality inkjet printer., rather than using a third party commercial printer.

There are three main components in trying to answer your question:

1. The photo editing workstation and work space;

2. The print paper and printing process; and

3. The place the print will be displayed.

What ties these together is something we referred to as a colour managed workflow, and that is what a calibration / profiling tool from xRite (ColorMunki or i1) or DataColor (Spyder) are part of. This extends to having an icc printer / paper profile at the print stage (any competent printing company will have that and will be happy to provide that information to their clientele).

I'm also going to assume that you have normal colour vision as if you don't none of the following are going to be much help.


1. Editing tools and workspace - I am going to assume that you are using editing tools that recognize colour management. Photoshop, Lightroom, etc are all compliant. You should also be using a computer screen that is at least sRGB compliant (hint if the printer documentation doesn't say it is, you can probably assume it is not.

Your computer screen should be set to a brightness level of between 80 -120 candela / square metre. If you want your prints to be close to what you see on screen, you will likely need to be at the lower end of these values. In my experience this means 30% brightness and lower in your settings, if you have not calibrated and profiled. You should also be working in a fairly dark room (maximum light levels at your workstation should not exceed 70 lux). In practice, this means a fairly dimly lit room with enough light to see your keyboard, mouse and be able to walk around without being in danger of bumping into something or tripping over something. The light level should be consistent. If possible, the walls should be neutral colours.

If you calibrate and profile your screen, you should be fine for this step. You will be able to discern the colours accurately and you will have a decent contrast ratio (1000:1) if you own a decent computer screen. This works out to about 10 stops of dynamic range.


2. Printing - the paper you use will determine the brightness and whiteness of the print. Some papers have a distinct gray colour to them and they will be a bit dark. The paper base is what produces the whites in your print; if you look at blank photographic paper beside your computer screen, you will notice it is probably a bit darker than your screen. This is as bright as your print can get.

Any decent commercial printer will be able to supply you with the icc profile for the printers and papers they have. You should get these and install them on your computer. If your software has a softproof mode, it will do a screen emulation to give you an idea of what your print will come out looking like. You can use soft proof mode to tweak your post-processing work.

Also note, most commercial printers will want sRGB files at 8-bits (generally in JPEG format). Make sure you convert your image to this before sending them to the printer.

When I print, I run test prints to get my images right. When you use a commercial printer, you should do the same thing before ordering larger format prints.


3. Check out the lighting at your camera club - if you own an incident light meter, it's easy to do. Record the readings an try to evaluate your test prints at those light levels. Some of the best printers that I know have adjustable lights above their printer and will set them so that they match the light level where they are planning to show / exhibit their prints.

An area with low light levels will make your prints look too dark, so you need to compensate in the printing process. That's why we do test prints.


I hope this helps.

[Shutterbug365]

Thanks for the responses, I think my first job is to get a calibration tool and get the screens calibrated.

I have been mulling over also getting a printer as that would also help resolve the issue as I can see myself if the prints are too dark without waiting for a lab to send them through and add in more adjustments. Just deciding whether to get something basic like the Canon PIXMA iX6850 to do test prints and then potentially send away to a lab to get better results or go for it and get the Canon PIXMA Pro 100S and just do everything myself.

We only have 3/4 print competitions a year so its not going to get the most use in the world but probably in total about 20/25 images a year.

[Manfred M]

I have been mulling over also getting a printer as that would also help resolve the issue as I can see myself if the prints are too dark without waiting for a lab to send them through and add in more adjustments. Just deciding whether to get something basic like the Canon PIXMA iX6850 to do test prints and then potentially send away to a lab to get better results or go for it and get the Canon PIXMA Pro 100S and just do everything myself.

Your "hybrid" solution is unlikely to work because most labs use a chromogenic print process (a digital version of the old fashioned silver halide colour print) not an ink jet print process, so the two processes are not at all similar and the test prints you do at home on an ink jet printer will not be a good proxy for a lab print. Some smaller custom labs do use photo quality ink jet printers, but their services are quite expensive.

While Canon calls the Canon PIXMA iX6850 an photo printer, most photographers would have a hard time with Canon's view. Generally photo printers have at least 8 or 9 ink cartridges and use pigment based inks, rather than dye based ones. The Canon PIXMA Pro 100S could be considered an entry level photo printer, even though it uses dye based inks. Epson also makes an excellent, highly regarded line of photo printers. No other printer company makes small photo printers.

[DanK]

I'll give you my two cents about this:

Learning to print takes some time, and people often find it initially frustrating, but once I learned to do it, I found it both enjoyable and far better than sending to a lab in terms of control. I also find it very gratifying to see the process through from beginning to end. The only time I now send something to a lab is if I want something I can't print myself, for example, a metal print. Once you are proficient with printing, you can get better results printing yourself than sending to a lab.

In fact, my wife and I just decided against getting a large metal print from an excellent lab that has produced a few gorgeous metal prints for me in the past. it's a difficult image, a macro shot of a flower with very intense colors, some of which go out of gamut. I ordered two samples, and they were both very disappointing. After some back and forth with a very helpful tech at the lab, I decided to try printing it myself instead on a baryta paper. The results were excellent, and we framed that and gave up on the metal print.

The numbers assigned to Canon printers vary from one place to another. I believe the Pixma Pro 100S, which was a minor upgrade to the original, is still called the Pixma Pro 100 (no S) here in the US. I used one of those printers for several years and am a big fan. If you watch for specials, you can get it very cheaply. (Right now, B&H has it for $149 after a rebate.) Also, Canon often bundles them free with cameras, so people who get them that way often sell them used, still in a sealed box. You just have to wait for these deals.

My advice, which some here won't share, is that if you don't need archival prints and intend to print infrequently, the Pro 100 is very close to the ideal printer. It produces stunning prints. It uses dye-based inks, which fade more quickly than pigment inks, but I have yet to have to replace a single print because of fading. Another advantage of dye-based Canon printers is that it is virtually impossible to get them to clog seriously, even if you leave them sitting unused for months at a time. I have owned a total of 5 of their dye-based printers, and none ever developed a serious clog. If you leave one sitting unused for a long time, it will go through a self-cleaning cycle, but those don't seem to use much ink in the case of dye inks, and I have never had a single instance in which I have had to do more than let it chug away for a few minutes.

To put the fading into perspective: fading depends on the type and intensity of light and the way the print is displayed. Moreover, some colors fade faster than others. However, my interpretation of tests by Aardenburg Imaging is that unless the print is displayed under direct sunlight, most people printing for their own use can forget about fading of the Pro-100 inks. Ardenburg gives them a conservation display rating (CDR) ranging from 8.2 to 17 megalux hours, depending on the color. If prints are displayed at 120 lux for 12 hours a day, a CDR of 10 translates to a longevity of 19 years. They assert that the average home display is only 60 lux and that 90% of home displays are less than 120. So your mileage will vary, but if you don't display in direct sunlight, the prints should last a long time. And you can make them last considerably longer if you splurge a but when you frame them and use UV-protective glass rather than plain glass.

After using a pro-100 for perhaps 3 years, I replaced it with a Prograf 1000, which is a far more expensive printer that uses pigment inks. I bought this for two reasons: it will produce somewhat larger prints, and I wanted archival inks because I will be putting some prints up for sale. However, I don't believe anyone would be able to tell you which of the prints hanging on my walls or in my portfolio were printed with which printer.

[Manfred M]

Dan - a more or less agree with what you have written but would also suggest that both Aardenburg and Wilhelm Imaging Research have left a significant hole in their testing methodologies From a pure technical standpoint, I feel that Aardenburg's methodology is stronger than Wilhelm's. Both companies concentrate on ink degradation due to exposure to light and do not address the equally significant, but harder to test environmental factors (airborne contaminants and humidity).

Put the image in a relatively well sealed frame with a UV protective glass and the contaminant issue can be mitigated to some extent. Hang the painting in an environment where there are a lot of contaminants, for instance a house that has people that smoke regularly, all bets are off, especially if the image is in a fairly high humidity environment.

When it comes to ink sets, dye based inks tend to have greater colour saturation, so ink-based prints can look better than pigment based ones, although to be quite frank, the difference is not that noticeable unless you are looking at the prints side by side in good light.

Chromogenic print life is quite short when compared to ink jet prints on archival papers (i.e. acid and lignin free). My understanding is that FujiFilm Crystal Archive paper, which is the "gold standard" for that paper type tend to last for 20 - 40 years in an average home environment. That's not even close to what dye-based ink jet prints on moderately priced papers can do. Switch in pigment based ink and we are looking at an order of magnitude better permanence.

Put your print behind glass or finish it with an anti-UV finish and that more or less doubles the life of the print as the ink and paper are protected from both UV and atmospheric contaminants. Put the print behind glass and one cannot easily tell either the print or paper quality. Those comparisons have to be made with the prints sitting side by side in a decently lit viewing area.

My final thought is around print sales and the perceived value of permanence. If you are selling your prints at a craft fare no one will ask about ink set or paper. If you are selling to a reputable gallery, they will want to know what ink set and paper you have used in your print. If the print is not on archival paper and you are not using an OEM ink set, they will not accept your prints.

[DanK]

Manfred,

Apart from larger maximum print size, it was your last point that led me to replace my Pro-100. I did my first (tiny) exhibit in a reputable photo venue, and I was able to list the images as being printed with archival inks on museum-grade media. Neither of those statements would have been true of my modal print beforehand, which were dye inks on luster papers.

I frame everything using acid free backing board and mat board and archival linen tape. When I am not trying to save money, I use UV-filtering glass. With that treatment, prints from the Pro-100 are likely to last as long as I do, and perhaps longer.

Re how noticeable the difference is: after I set up my prograf 1000, I reprinted this image on the same Red River Canvas that I had used with the Pro-100:



it's not a good choice for that image, and it isn't a good choice for a comparison, but the two looked extremely similar. It's my only clean comparison. I have reprinted some additional photos, but they were mostly printed on a luster paper with the Pro 100 and on Canson baryta with the Prograf.

As it happens, I recently gave a two-hour tutoring session on printing, using my Prograf, but I recommended to the person I was teaching that he buy the Pro-100 and explained why. He just wrote to say that he had.

BTW, if what Canon asserts about the the "Chroma optimizer" it layers on top of the pigment inks in the Grograf, it should further reduce the difference. The maintain that by covering the irregularities across pigment droplets, it increases gamut width and the density of blacks. See this: https://media.canon-asia.com/v3.5med...guide/p03.html.

[rpcrowe]

Manfred's comments #2 and #3 in his first post of this string is something that many photographers do not consider...

I had this image (which I rendered as an oil painting) of the Grand Canal of Venice in the late afternoon printed on canvas...



Since canvas doesn't seem to reflect the light as brilliantly as, say a glossy paper, the canvas print looked too dark (comment #2).

However, when I brought the canvas print to my photo club and displayed it on a wall under a light (comment #3) the image looks great. In fact, the light over the darker canvas print seems to open the shadows and really makes the buildings lit by the afternoon sun sparkle. And, the scene reminds me of how it looked when I shot the image...

[Manfred M]

Manfred,

Apart from larger maximum print size, it was your last point that led me to replace my Pro-100. I did my first (tiny) exhibit in a reputable photo venue, and I was able to list the images as being printed with archival inks on museum-grade media. Neither of those statements would have been true of my modal print beforehand, which were dye inks on luster papers.

I frame everything using acid free backing board and mat board and archival linen tape. When I am not trying to save money, I use UV-filtering glass. With that treatment, prints from the Pro-100 are likely to last as long as I do, and perhaps longer.

Re how noticeable the difference is: after I set up my prograf 1000, I reprinted this image on the same Red River Canvas that I had used with the Pro-100:

it's not a good choice for that image, and it isn't a good choice for a comparison, but the two looked extremely similar. It's my only clean comparison. I have reprinted some additional photos, but they were mostly printed on a luster paper with the Pro 100 and on Canson baryta with the Prograf.

As it happens, I recently gave a two-hour tutoring session on printing, using my Prograf, but I recommended to the person I was teaching that he buy the Pro-100 and explained why. He just wrote to say that he had.

BTW, if what Canon asserts about the the "Chroma optimizer" it layers on top of the pigment inks in the Grograf, it should further reduce the difference. The maintain that by covering the irregularities across pigment droplets, it increases gamut width and the density of blacks. .

Dan - I find unless you do a side-by-side comparison of two different prints and under the same lighting conditions, it's hard to draw conclusions.

The main difference I have seen with the different papers is in the shadow detail and to a lesser extent in the highlights. When I replaced my 3880 with the P800, the new, updated ink set showed a noticeable improvement in the blacks (they were blacker), but that is about the limit of testing I was able to do. Unfortunately, all the people that I know that print seem to be using the same Epson printers that I use.

All images can look good in isolation. I did some "large" (A2 / 17" x 22") prints from my mFT (2x crop factor) camera with amateur lenses and did an almost identical shot a year later with my full frame camera with "pro" lenses. The mFT looks great by itself, but when I put the FF image beside it, it looks a lot stronger with better detail and micro-contrast. I suspect you will find very much the same effect with a low end photo printer with its four or five cartridge ink set versus what a high end pro printer outputs with its 12 cartridge ink set. The differences will be there, but they will be subtle.

Would you mind reposting the link the the Canon website? The link you posted does not work and I get some strange error message.

[Manfred M]

Manfred's comments #2 and #3 in his first post of this string is something that many photographers do not consider...

I had this image (which I rendered as an oil painting) of the Grand Canal of Venice in the late afternoon printed on canvas...


Since canvas doesn't seem to reflect the light as brilliantly as, say a glossy paper, the canvas print looked too dark (comment #2).

However, when I brought the canvas print to my photo club and displayed it on a wall under a light (comment #3) the image looks great. In fact, the light over the darker canvas print seems to open the shadows and really makes the buildings lit by the afternoon sun sparkle. And, the scene reminds me of how it looked when I shot the image...

Richard - Canvas prints are low resolution. I'm told that print shops that turn out canvas prints do so on 150 ppi printers because that is all that is required.

The problem with any print is that the lighting at a display location is what drives the final appearance. Galleries and photo club competition lighting tends to be super bright (i.e. overlit) so we have to compensate for this by printing darker.

As I am moving to more and more print competitions, I am planning to take my incident light meter to the next club judging session to measure the light that they put on the competition images during the judging so that I can print to that light level.

One custom printer I know has variable output lights right above his printer so that he can judge the print brightness as the image comes off his printer.

[DanK]

One custom printer I know has variable output lights right above his printer so that he can judge the print brightness as the image comes off his printer.

I haven't gone that far, but I have 6 high-accuracy BR30 LED bulbs (Soraa) in the ceiling of my editing room, all on one dimmer. I dim them to about 30% for editing and turn them up to examine test prints. I don't yet to anything different for different display venues, but virtually anyplace I will show a print is brighter than the light level at which I edit.