Soft Proofing and Color Shift

[Scotty512]

Lagarto,

In AP at the export stage there is a place to select an ICC profile. Is this the same as "Device to Simulate" in Photoshop? Mine was set to sRGB61966-2.1, but the print shop ICC profile is also available there. Should I have changed that prior exporting it to them? Their instructions were to not embed their profile in the image, only to use it for viewing. I don't know if I changed this setting at export wether that would be the same as embedding it into the image.

BTW, are all the members here limited to 10 posts per day? I was unable to find that by searching.

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[Scotty512]

6 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

Can you post it, it might be media profile to preview the effect of paper (for soft proofing).

 

BayViewing_1E103108.icc

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[Scotty512]

It was the image that I sent to the print shop, not a screen shot. I simply drug it out of a folder onto the forum window, and that's the same way I loaded it onto their online order page.

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[Scotty512]

51 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

Ok. I am not sure what happens to images posted to the forum, whether embedded color profiles are stripped or not but that image did not have a color profile embedded. If you developed the photo with Affinity Photo, you would get it converted to sRGB color profile and as default, when exporting to final JPG, that profile would be embedded (even if not necessarily shown selected in the list, since the color mode might have been e.g. RGB/16 but would get converted to 8-bit at conversion time). As said, this should not be a problem.

A long thread, but sadly I could not give a good explanation why the tones got darker. It does not seem that there was anything wrong with your workflow. Have you tried recalibrating your display (and set the brightness correctly)?

Just recalibrated it again yesterday, and reduced the brightness a bit. Of course I don't yet have anything to compare with.

Another quick quaestion for you. When you order a print do you indicate they do any color correction, or leave it alone?

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[Scotty512]

I wasn't aware that you were affiliated with a commercial printer until now.

Let me further explain my question. When I sent the image to the print shop I had the option of having them do color correction at their discretion, or leave the file untouched. Figuring that they knew more about it than I did I chose the former. Should I have stayed with the unchanged file?

I'm thinking of calling their customer support or emailing them today. Not to place any blame, but just to iron out some solution that might insure I cant get consistently good results.

Thanks again.

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[Scotty512]

I had made all my adjustments and the screenshot you just posted appears pretty darn close. The only reason I chose color correction was that I thought they were the pros that could evaluate it right after printing. This was my lack of experience showing I think.

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[Scotty512]

9 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

Ok, then you had obviously made just small adjustments because the screenshot represents completely unadjusted image (I did not make any changes before developing it). But the image in your initial post has considerably different tones, it seems as if it had at least color balance and/or HSL and/or selective color adjustment applied to it. What is the source of that image? 

That's a mistake on my part. The original posted image was the correct one, and yes it did have some color balance and HSL adjustments.

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[wonderings]

Is this an online print shop you are dealing with? Do you know what they are printer they are using to print your images? If this is indeed an online only print shop I would firstly suggest contacting a local print shop where you can deal with someone in person, show them your concerns and let their expertise guide you. All wide format printers should print RGB no problem, I think most if not all of the modern wide format printers are using at least 8 colours, I know my Epson 9900 has 13 colours which gives it exceptional range that could never be met by a printer printing in CMYK. You can calibrate your screen as much as you want and adjust your pictures based on that but if the printers that are being used cannot handle the colour range it will not make a difference. 

[Scotty512]

3 minutes ago, wonderings said:

Is this an online print shop you are dealing with? Do you know what they are printer they are using to print your images? If this is indeed an online only print shop I would firstly suggest contacting a local print shop where you can deal with someone in person, show them your concerns and let their expertise guide you. All wide format printers should print RGB no problem, I think most if not all of the modern wide format printers are using at least 8 colours, I know my Epson 9900 has 13 colours which gives it exceptional range that could never be met by a printer printing in CMYK. You can calibrate your screen as much as you want and adjust your pictures based on that but if the printers that are being used cannot handle the colour range it will not make a difference. 

It's a very large well known print shop that gets very good reviews. I don't know what kind of equipment they have.

[wonderings]

1 minute ago, Scotty512 said:

It's a very large well known print shop that gets very good reviews. I don't know what kind of equipment they have.

Personally being in the print industry I would say your first step should be talking to your print shop. Let them know your issues and concerns and work with them on what you can do to provide them the files they need to achieve it or what they can do on their end. I find it more frustrating when people try and adjust like crazy without talking to me and then expect what they see on their monitors (calibrated or not) to be the way it comes out in print. 

[Scotty512]

1 minute ago, wonderings said:

Personally being in the print industry I would say your first step should be talking to your print shop. Let them know your issues and concerns and work with them on what you can do to provide them the files they need to achieve it or what they can do on their end. I find it more frustrating when people try and adjust like crazy without talking to me and then expect what they see on their monitors (calibrated or not) to be the way it comes out in print. 

Your reading my mind. I'm in the midst of typing an email to them right now.

Thanks.