Colour accuracy in prints--digital vs film

[frank_dzambic]

When shooting with a digital camera, I find that the print I make

matches what I see on the monitor almost exactly (99%).

 

Yet, when I used to scan film, I found that the print I made matched

what I saw on the monitor closely (usually), yet often times would be

out by quite a bit, and no amount of tweaking could get the monitor

and the print to match closer.

 

The digital camera and RAW converter are set to Adobe RGB, as was my

film scanner before that. I`m using a calibrated monitor, and the

correct colour management workflow. So I`ve never been able to figure

this one out. Why would a print made from a digital camera match the

monitor so much more closely than a print made from a film scan�

 

Anybody else experience this�

[ilkka_nissila]

Perhaps your eyes are adapting to the monitor image but not to the print in the same way. This could cause you to percieve color errors in the print but not on screen. I am assuming you are talking about slide scans, and not negative scans?

[Ed_Ingold]

An image on a calibrated monitor is, well..., an image, whether from a DSLR or a scanner. If the print doesn't line up well with the monitor, you have an unmarked detour in your CMS work flow.

[ilkka_nissila]

Edward, that is just not true. When you view an image on the screen, or on a projector screen, the eyes adapt to the light in a way which doesn't happen when you view a print in a normal room. So, color errors which are present in the slide, are transferred to the scan, and to the print, although it is difficult to detect them on the monitor.

 

Print film and digital capture don't have these errors in the first place, this is what I believe Frank is seeing. (And I see the same thing).

[frank_dzambic]

I was talking about negative scans (Reala specifically). And I agree that an image on a calibrated monitor is an image, regardless of its source. That`s why I could never figure out why the prints from the digital camera match the monitor so much better than the film scans ever did. Same colour space, same paper profiles, same printer settings....

[erik scanhancer]

The monitor does never show the full gamut of Adobe RGB (Eizo CG220 exepted), so there

may be colors outside your monitor color space. Since most film has a much wider gamut

than Adobe RGB (and thus an even more wide gamut than the monitor) and most single shot

CCD's are more limited it is well possible that this is the cause of what you are experiencing.

Many chipcams don't give you more than the gamut of the sRGB color space, which is about

what your monitor can show you. Placing this limited gamut in Adobe RGB does of course not

expand the gamut. Colors that aren't there will not start to exist by placing the picture in a

wider color space.

[erik scanhancer]

So in case you like the limited gamut of your monitor better than the full range of colors that

film can offer, you could think of converting your images into sRGB or even into the monitor

color space before printing. That way you throw away the colors that don't show on your

monitor but that can be seen in the print.

 

Personally I strongly object aginst this approach, because it will leave you with the popping

simple colors that are so very much connected to "digital". But I know that many people are in

love with this simplification of colors to kindergarten level. Have it your way.

[frank_dzambic]

That`s an interesting answer. I was sort of thinking along those lines myself, that film just had too many colours that were out of gamut for AdobeRGB and my printer to handle. But, then for some reason I`ve been under the impression that a digital camera using the Adobe RGB colour space had a much wider gamut than film (scanned into an Adobe RGB colour space). Maybe I was wrong about that. It would be interesting to see one of those 3d charts comparing the colour range of scanned Reala vs a digital sensor. (I`m not sure if gamut would be the right word there since both would have to be scanned in the same colour space to provide a meaningful comparison).

 

I`ve also wondered if maybe colours from a scan are somehow `muddier`, and colours outputted from a digital camera are somehow `purer`, enabling much closer matching between screen and print, though I`d be hardpressed to explain exactly what I mean by that. I wonder if that`s an awkward way of saying that film is capable of producing more coloursɠ :)

[frank_dzambic]

Come to think of it though, the print should still match the screen as closely with a digital capture as with a film scan. Unless the screen is showing colours that the printer can`t reproduce, or the printer is reproducing colours that the screen can`t show (with regards to film scans). However, I would think that calibrating the monitor, and using paper profiles and a wide colour space would eliminate either of those possibilities which still leaves me wondering why the prints from digital scans are virtually identical to the monitor where film scans are at worst hit and miss.

[steve_dawson1]

Edward is right, surely? As I understand it the problem is that some of your prints exhibit a good color match with your monitor and others don't. The ones that do are from a digital camera, and the ones that don't are from scanned images.

 

If that's right, the problem must lie in one of three areas: (1) There isn't really any difference; it's psychological or you subconsciously make a different judgement of your scanned and your digital images; or (2) by chance your scanned images typically contain predominately different colors than your digital camera pictures - and contain colors which happen have a greater discrepancy between print and monitor; or (3) you are inadvertantly using a different color management regime with digital photos than your scanned photos. Maybe some oddity in your system is causing a different printer driver, or profile, or color space to be selected in some particular circumstances. You say that 'usually' your scanned images have a good match, but 'often times' they don't, so maybe the the scanned/digital thing is a red herring, and actually the problem is that sometimes your system is working differently than others.

 

Good luck with sorting it out. It sounds like the sort of thing that could consume a lot of time. A bit like those funny noises with cars which you can be sure won't happen when the mechanic is there to listen to them.

[steve_dawson1]

Ah! That Erik and Frank stuff which appeared while I was putting up my answer sounds good.

[frank_dzambic]

Well, aside from the `why`which I`m still curious about, has anyone else noticed this themselves That prints made from a digital camera match the monitor much more closely than prints made from a film scanɠ I suppose if I`m the only one, then maybe there`s a problem somewhere in my process, or my eyes. Anyone else

[ilkka_nissila]

How bright is the room where you view your images? Do you use different ambient light when you view the print or the monitor? Is it a CRT or LCD?

[jtk]

While it's necessary to get basic control over the elements of your system, the monitor is the least important. You saw something, made a photograph. If you saw that something in terms of the monitor of your chipcam you were reducing the image to a cartoon. Tto replicate that cartoon you need to damage the performance of your monitor, scanner, and printer. Along the way, many "experts" will advise you to buy extra technology. Hang onto your wallet.

 

The above was answer #1

 

Answer #2:

 

It's easier for an unskilled person to make high contrast cartoon color prints (explains Cibachrome). "Chipcams" are designed to do that (thanks for that new-to-me nomenclature Erik!).

[frank_dzambic]

Ilkka, the editing is done in a darkened room on a calibrated CRT with little or no ambient room light. The prints are viewed under all sorts of lighting conditions from bright direct sunlight, to filtered sunlight (curtains) to halogen lighting to any other conditions you can think of. Regardless, the digital camera shots consistently look more accurate in print when compared to the monitor than the scanned film shots do, whatever the lighting conditions the prints are viewed under.

 

John, I think you misunderstood. I'm not comparing the prints to the small lcd monitor on the back of the camera. I'm referring to the CRT on my desktop.

 

Maybe a more specific example would help. I remember in the past (I've been shooting digitally for a while now) when working with a scanned negative, some prints would exhibit a strong magenta cast that wasn't visible on the monitor, but in the worst cases was overpowering in prints. It was very difficult if not impossible to remove that magenta cast. For example, I could shift the colours towards green in Photoshop to counter the magenta until the image looked sickly onscreen, yet when printing, the magenta cast would still be there, although to a lesser extent after the radical colour correction. Of course making such a radical colour correction to eliminate a magenta cast would also start to affect other colours as well, so it became a compromise.

 

I haven't had that happen yet with a shot from the digital camera. What I see on my CRT from the digital camera is what I see on paper when I print it out. Again, same colour space, same paper profiles, same calibrated monitor, and same printer settings checked.

 

Judging by the lack of people saying they've had a similar experience (more accurate prints from a digital body vs a film scan) I'll guess that it's not all that common, and there was a problem somewhere in my workflow or editing/scanning technique when I was shooting film.

 

Since I'm shooting digitally now, I guess I won't lose too much sleep over it.

[ilkka_nissila]

Frank, it seems to be fairly common that some colors in a negative or in a slide are handled poorly by the scanning/printing process. I have sometimes problems with some colors in the forest, they look really great on E100VS but the scan looks less vivid on screen. The print is a bit better than the scan on the screen but it could be the fact that I'm using an LCD at the moment.

 

Since you use a darkened room, you can expect that your eyes adapt to see the colors of the image when you view it on the monitor, while your eyes adapt to the ambient color temperature when you view a print in a lit room. This is a well known phenomenon, human eye doesn't see absolute color - the brain does automatic white balancing. With the monitor brightly lit as the sole light source your brain adapts to that color world, while viewing a print the environment provides a color reference and you can see the color errors in the system more clearly. Now, digital is more color accurate than film and it may also use a narrower subset of colours which are reproduced with a better match between screen and print. Also, digital cameras do auto white balancing which, if it workse well, it makes the print look the same independent on whether the environment is lit or just the screen.

 

Try changing the ambient light when you view your image on screen. I bet you see the image on screen differently.