My images seem to deteriorate

[alfred_schleunes]

Remember, I'm a total newbie when it comes to digital so please

forgive the question.

When I plug in the camera to the computer and look at the pictures,

many of them are great. By the time I get them into photoshop and

print them on my Epson Stylus Photo, they seem to have become fuzzy

and soft.

What say you?

[frank_skomial]

Your images did not deterorate. Printing proces you apply is just not up to your standard.

Try to print directly from Windows Explorer and compare, as perhaps the printer driver will not alter pictures too much.

 

Then you need to learn more about Photoshow and find the best calibration, settings, etc.

[sean_mclennan]

you my friend need Color Management! This is a complex and sometimes difficult thing to get setup up right. Do a good search for color management software/hardware and check out your options. You can pay between $299 for a low end do it yourself system, to more than $1000 for a very complete and professional system.

 

Getting color mangement done right on your computer ensures that what you see on screen is what you'll see when printed out. It coordinates the output capabilities of your printer with your monitor and the color space/profile of your capture device. (digital camera or scanner) This ensures that you get an accurate representation on your monitor of what the image will look like when outputted. If you are serious about your photography, you really need to take the time to get your setup calibrated.

 

sean

[brad_w]

contrary to what was said above, color management need not be an expensive all-

consuming endeavor. make sure your are using epson inks and epson papers and be sure

that you are telling the printer driver the correct type of paper your are using. Epson's

profiles are pretty good. If you're mac-based, the color sync utility does a reasonable job

of calibrating your display - not perfect, but reasonable.

 

Check out Tom Ang's books on digital photography - he's got 2, a big one and a little one.

The little one has a step-by-step outline of how to corrrectly set-up color management.

luminous landscape also has some basic how-to info: luminous-landscape.com

-brad

[lotsawa]

1. Do you shoot RAW? If not, which parameters have you set in your camera? Did you apply any sharpening?

 

I would recommend you shoot some pics with the green square mode. Though not the best option in all situations, is should produce a good standard to check further. Shoot those pics in 'normal' bright (day)light, so you can be quite sure no other factors for image deterioration are involved.

 

2. Send some good pictures to a printing lab and also print them with your own printer and compare the results.

 

3. Softness/Sharpness has nothing to do with color management. You don't need a sophisticated color management solution to start with. Adobe gamma that comes with the Photoshop package is fairly good, so try to use that carefully to calibrate your monitor.

 

4. When you print from within Photoshop, use the 'Print with Preview' command, check 'Show more Options' and be sure 'Print Space' 'Profile' is set to 'Printer Color Management'. Set the appropriate parameters in your printer's printer driver (paper type, resolution, ...). Get a decent photo paper (glossy if possible) for your printer.

 

Printing your pics yourself is usually more difficult and also more expensive than having them printed at a lab.

 

Just some thoughts that come to my mind. There are many factors involved.

[shambrick007]

resize to 300 dpi w/out resampling, then print

[sean_mclennan]

I'm sorry to interject again...but Color management *is* required to properly setup your system. As I said, it can be fairly cheap or expensive depending on the level of precision you require. There isn't a professional print house out there that isn't color managed and they usually invest far more money into their process than the options I presented.

 

90% of people do not understand color management, nor how to properly acheive it. If you are happy with your stock/canned profiles than that's great for you, but don't make the statement that proper color management isn't needed, as that is entirely dependant on the users expectations/needs for output.

 

sean

[bob_bell]

Alfred,

 

Before you run out and buy a calibration tool, what format are you shooting in and what format are you editing in? Editing JPG's will cause you to lose some color information each time and can introduce "junk" into your photo when it is compressed.

[anthony_m1]

The answer could be anything. How about a better description than fuzzy and soft? Your definition of fuzzy and soft could be different than someone else's. You see you have recieved anything from sharpening hints to color management tools. Could be anything. The more detailed the info the better the help will be.

[lotsawa]

Sean, did anyone say that color management is not needed? What was said is that a basic decent profiling (calibrating) of your monitor can be done using a software solution like Adobe Gamme or Mac's Color Sync utility (and your eyes) for a good start. Of course, a hardware tool can be much more precise. But I believe to tackle Alfred's problem of 'soft' images by getting a 299$ color management solution to begin with is probably the wrong approach.

 

Again, I don't think 'fuzziness' or 'softness' (as the counterpart of 'sharpness') is related to *color* management. Maybe I don't understand what is meant by those terms, though ...

 

As said, we don't know what the setup of the questioner is, there are too many factors involved, so our answers can only be a vague guess. Some ideas what could be the problem have been given here, so it could be a good idea for Alfred to check some basic points that have been made.

[frank_dzambic]

You don't say what camera, or more importantly, what the pixel dimensions are of the file you're printing, and what size you are printing at.

 

If you're viewing an 800x600 photo, it'll look great onscreen. But if you try to print that same 800x600 photo at 8.5"x11" it'll look soft and fuzzy. You'd probably even get a soft and fuzzy 4"x6" at that size.

 

And that doesn't even begin to take into account what type of paper you're using.

[damian_tinsley]

This might sound like a simple and inexpert answer - (both are true). I found that the colour rendition on my epson stylus photo 890 were hugely improved by making sure the printer settings were set to sRGB rather than CMYK in the printer setup - you will find these in the 'main menu' under 'custom settings' when you go to printer preferences or print setup. I don't pretend to understand colour space, but this made the difference between my prints looking like the ones I had seen on the screen and looking somewhat different.

 

Other than that, I have found that a shot when printed of the screen was a little darkened, which isn't surprising since the screen has it's own light source, whereas your print relies completely on reflected light. So I would tend to set a shot to being a (little, say 1/3 of a stop) overexposed prior to printing, but choose your own values - you could get the same effect by turning down the screen brightness of course and not touching the photo!

 

As for 'fuzzy and soft' - please forgive the possibility of insulting your intelligence here - you are using good quality photo paper (glossy gives best resolution IMO, pearl the best overall effect) and setting the printer paper settings to 'photo glossy paper' or the similar? also, you will need to manually tell the printer to print out at 600dpi or 1200dpi or 2400dpi (or whatever is it's best resolution). Please ignore anyone that says you cannot tell the difference from 300dpi upwards - I can tell the difference between 1200 and 2400 by eye alone. Although I grant you it's close, and I can only tell by direct comparison rather than from any specific print. You also need to be aware that dpi (dots per inch) is VERY different from ppi (pixels per inch) but unless you don't already know this, I won't go into it here - there is a lot of other information on this site on the difference.

 

All the best Alfred. If none of this helps, I will place a thread setting out my personal 'path' to print 'perfection' using epson stylus photo 890 all the way from 20D to print on best quality photo paper. Let us know if you get this solved.

 

All the best

and happy holidays

 

Damian