Out Of Gamma - Workaround to print?

[valo_soul]

Many many of my images turn to... well.. absolute crap when proofing them in

CS3 to my lab's printer profile. I don't mean crap when I print them, crap on

the screen as soon as I "view proof colors".

 

For instance a very saturated high key image of some yellow flowers. About 50%

of the image goes gray and flat instead of bright and yellow.

 

I can't seem to find a way to fix this. It also happened in some wedding photos

where the red rose bouquet becomes very FLAT and loses all of it's contrast. It

remains red, but loses all contrast and the shadow areas of these reds BRIGHTEN

significantly.

 

I've tried all rendering intents: perceptual, relative colorimetric, etc and

they all look really bad. This seems to happen mainly in images with relatively

high saturation. Black and white images remain almost identical, it just

brightens the blacks slightly, and I can fix it with levels. The problems seem

to lie within color images, so it must be gamma? How can I bring back my nice

rich color/contrast on the highly saturated and/or high brightness areas of my

images? Are there printers that can print higher gamma than others?

 

*edit* I just tried proofing a very low key, low saturation image and it still

brightened the shadows significantly. It's as if it applies a tone curve which

lifts shadows and darks, but not on every image with lots of shadow: Just the

"color" images. Even if they don't have much color saturation in them. I've

tried levels commands and tone curves after proofing but they just don't bring

the original look back like I can do with the black and white images.

 

So: I'm getting my brightest colors and highlights turning gray and flat looking

in some images, and my blacks and shadows becoming brighter in other images.

 

Is this just a limit to how dark/bright the printer can reproduce colors?

 

I'm lost :(

[ericf1]

There is a great segment in the video tutorial on Luminous Landscape "From Camera to Print" that covers this precise topic. I couldn't begin to do it justice here, but the video is well worth the cost. ($34.95 now)

 

Good luck.

[cfimages]

You could try a Hue/Saturation adjustment, and adjust the hue slightly. Leave the gamma warning on while you do it so you know how much to adjust it. I've found that adjustments so slight that they are barely noticable to my eye are sometimes enough to bring things into gamma.

[ted_marcus1]

First, we're not talking about gamma, but <i>gamut</i> (dammit)!

 

<p>I make my own prints on an Epson 1280 and Heavyweight Matte paper, which renders highly saturated colors satisfactorily enough (if not perfectly). I've recently experimented with downloading profiles from some labs that use conventional photographic paper (with the intent of ordering prints larger than my printer can make). My soft-proofing results are similar to yours, with highly saturated reds and yellows going decidedly dull. So yes, it appears that the Lambda, Chromira, Frontier, and other printers that use RA-4 paper have a significantly narrower gamut than either Adobe RGB or inkjet printers.

 

<p>One thing that just occurred to me is to try a lab's large-format inkjet printer. That might produce better results with saturated colors.

[cfimages]

<i>First, we're not talking about gamma, but gamut (dammit)! </i>

 

<p>D'oh. That's what happens when I post before I've finished the first coffee of the morning.

[valo_soul]

Gamut, Woops! That's what I meant, lol.

 

Thanks

[lad_lueck]

The brightening of shadows is PS trying to emulate the paper's reduced contrast. You can turn off 'paper white' and 'black level'(?) so contrast stays high.

 

You don't mention which printer you are emulating... If it can't handle saturated colors well, then the warning should be close to correct. I think you need to identify your printer ICC/ICM profile to PS.

 

I find PS is very close perception-wise with my Epson R1800 (which I profiled with my own spectrophotometer). You might want to get a third-party profile for your printer...