Difference in luminosity between prints in stores and monitor

[johnlakkas]

I have being a hobbyist digital photographer for more than 4 years and the last

year I bought a monitor hardware calibrator Pantone Huey. Recently I faced a

challenge to voluntarily make leaflet for a small local non profit ecological

organization. My Sony CRT monitor was profiled (I made the leaflet in raster

format in AdobeRGB color profile in case it matters including ICC profile). The

problem is that when I print photos or leaflets either to photography stores or

to large scale printing shops the colors are pretty the same but luminosity

varies seriously. In detail the images in my screen look much brighter than

printed out. I guess that I should somehow compare printed results with monitor

(maybe adjust contrast/brightness witch are 100%/50% as Huey recommends in order

to see both highlights and shadows) but is there any way to be done in hardware

way (so safer and consistent)? I could do it by eye comparing screen and printed

material but I guess this isn?t a serious approach. Is hardware going to be

expensive? Is it possible to keep cost less than let?s say 500 euros. I saw some

bundles in X-Rite but they are quite out of my reach and I don?t really know if

they work for an outside printing. Of course I cannot change anything on the

store?s printing device (including color profiles), only to print a color

palette for comparison in a photographic store.

 

Thank you very much, I appreciate any answer.

John

[Carl Stone]

Do you have the profile for their printer loaded into photoshop so that you can use it with

your image?

[blumesan]

If the colors are correct you have done a good job. You can never acheive the same luminosity on a print as that seen on a monitor. When and if you switch to a LCD monitor, the difference will be even greater. The luminosity of a print relies on the reflectance of the paper. A monitor has its own light source.

 

Cheers/Mike

[roger_smith4]

Be sure to tell the stores to print with "no corrections" or they will make changes to the file. I'd suggest printing a greyscale stepwedge to a site like winkflash.com where they don't do corrections and adjust your monitor brightness to match it.

[colinsouthern]

The issue is most likely that many "labs" can't handle Adobe RGB. I'd suggest making the final step of your workflow a conversion to sRGB and see how you go from there.

 

Printing a document that's based on a aRGB profile on a sRGB machine will make things look darker.

[johnlakkas]

First of all thank you.

 

Probably I can't have the Photoshop profiles of their printer though I can ask. The monitor of the store where I printed the photos has shown the same luminosity with the print. The guy told me it was pretty dark and changed the RGB levels in Photoshop. Although not every one does that. I always ask them not to change anything and not to apply any 'corrections' because that can ruin the picture and the atmosphere.

 

I really wonder how the graphics-artist/model-maker (leaflet pro designers) calibrate their monitors so they can exactly match the final press print. Especially when they are independent which is usual. I have heard they produce a 'Postscript' file which is the final locked file which is given to the massive printing shop and includes everything like vector/raster graphics and color details.

[johnlakkas]

WRONG POST:

The leaflets where edited in AdobeRGB though the final version was in sRGB profile (forgive me for the mistake, I just looked at it) and they where darker.

Before that the same phenomenon happened with plain picture print in the local photo store with the final being in AdobeRGB where I was suggested to use sRGB, hopefully the job was done with Photoshop converting the profile according to the printer's profile. So I guess if Photoshop is involved initial file's color profile doesn't matters (if of course it is known and/or tagged in the image).

[colinsouthern]

Just to follow up on a couple of profile issues ...

 

(1) You need to make (doubly) sure that you are CONVERTING the aRGB to sRGB and not ASSIGNING sRGB to a aRGB file.

 

(2) sRGB is a device independant profile - so assuming that the "lab" can handle sRGB (and I haven't never come across one that couldn't), then there's little to be gained from using a device dependent profile for whatever equipment that they're using (sans soft proofing).

 

(3) "I really wonder how the graphics-artist/model-maker (leaflet pro designers) calibrate their monitors so they can exactly match the final press print."

 

The theory is that one profiles one's monitor to a known standard (officially D50, but D65 is nicer to work with) - and then one profiles the output device - you end up with 2 devices profiled to respective standards and all is in harmony with the universe - in practice however it's not usually that straight-forward.

 

Next guess as to what your issue is is that you may have your monitor too bright, and the huey isn't compensating for it - assuming that you're using an LCD screen, try turning down the CONTRAST and see if you get any closer.

 

If you haven't already, be sure to pick up a copy of Real World Color Management by Fraser, Murphy, and Bunting (2nd edition).

[johnlakkas]

Well yes the action was conversion not just an assignment of a different profile. I pay attention to these details. I do consider buying a book and fortunately I have found the one you mentioned. I did came quite closer with a pretty dimmed screen around 55% contrast and maybe 60-70% brightness. Though in the day where there is light coming in from the window (not directly on the display) can be hard to see just for every day stuff not photo editing. Indeed I would be really happy if just Contrast/Brightness adjustment could almost match the results, actually it was quite hard to keep both highlights and shadows of the Pantone gray shade shape. Huey can't adjust/handle D50 or D65 or anything like this. That's why this are unknown to me. I guess just this shouldn't make me change my hardware device, should I?

[johnlakkas]

I don't think either Huey Pro can handle D50 or D65.

[johnlakkas]

"Next guess as to what your issue is is that you may have your monitor too bright, and the huey isn't compensating for it - assuming that you're using an LCD screen, try turning down the CONTRAST and see if you get any closer".

 

Huey probably doesn't compensate brightness and/or contrast. I do use a quite old Sony CRT. It should be seven or more years of use.

[johnlakkas]

Actually Huey Pro can handle D50 or D65.