Inkjet printing is not worth the trouble!

[james_castagno]

When you guys/gals talk about getting great 8X10, 11x14 and 16x20's

from the 10D and 1D are you printing them at home or at a lab? I much

prefer to use a lab than invest in a good printer and then have to

keep up with paper and ink replacement, I am a serious hobbyist at the

moment but I do get some freelance work. It is taking to much of my

time and patience to get the results that I am happy with from my lab

as I am very picky about color balance and it is driving me crazy. To

be honest these complications as well as all the post shoot Photoshop

work might be enough to drive me away from digital for now, I am a

photographer, not a lab technician. If I shoot film I know I will get

great color/contrast and have no worries/work after I press the

shutter button plus I can get high quality digital cd's at time of

development for cheap money. Is all this digital stuff worth the extra

work and aggrevation? Sorry about the wasted bandwith, I started with

a legitimate question and lost my mind.

[chip]

Hi James,

 

I use both an outside lab and print in the office on Epson 1280 and 2200 printers. The reason is that for small prints in volume the local pro lab (they have a Noritsu 3100), is faster, cheaper, very good quality and doesn't tie up my own printers which I use for prints up to 13"x19". I also use the Noritsu machine for output up to 8"x12" if I need prints that I need a lot of quickly or that are not critical but with very good print quality. For work I really want to represent as my best I output on my own printers or get LightJet prints if going larger than 13"x19".

 

Print film is much worse than using a digital SLR if you want control of the final output unless you are printing them yourself or get custom hand prints. At least with trannys your printer has an original image to base color corrections on, with negs it's a crap shoot.

 

Digital output that you have photoedited yourself can easily beat the pants off most any hand print even if you are paying a TON of money for them. Also, once you have a good image file finished it can be output exactly the same over and over exactly the same vs. the variability of even expensive, excellent pro lab hand printing. The cost differences are nil if you count your time but you will have produced an image file that can be used over and over and will look better than a custom hand print.

 

The fact is that if you are getting PhotoCD's at the time of processing your film you are getting at best moderate quality scans not even as good as you can get with a $500 scanner. Look up Kodak's Photo CD specs on their web site, you'll be surprised to learn how low res. even Pro PhotoCD scans are. The other problem with PhotoCD is that scan quality is highly dependant on the machine operator. Some operators are better than others and even the best have bad days and time pressure.

 

If you are a serious photographer you know that many of the greatest photographers were established with great prints and then were made popular by being published by the great magazines of their time. Those great prints were not produced by simply pressing the shutter and handing the film over to some lab to process and print. They were processed carefully and printed with equal care usually by the photographer or his assistant. Learn and practice the complete process including printmaking, without it you are taking snapshots and will remain an incomplete photographer.

 

HTH

[james_castagno]

Hey Chip thanks for your quick response, many words of wisdom. The color problem is driving me crazy, skin tones are not good as they look very waxy, if that makes sense. I do not know what camera you shoot but should I have to do a lot of work to every image? Exposures are good but brightness and contrast are always in the basement, I cannot imagine anyone getting a good print straight out of the camera. I think I am just dis-allusioned as to the capabilities of the media, I expected to have to do color correction but I thought everything else would be at least close enough that changes would be fine tuning not major alterations.

[stefan1]

It would be interesting to see an image of what you think is the problem.

[james_castagno]

Hey Stefan. I think if I could get a profile from my labs machine (Fuji) It would move me in the right direction. Although I have seen some pro stuff my lab has printed and it does not look much better than mine, it is usually a little flat looking with skin tone that could be called "good" at best. It seems like the contrast straight from the camera is very flat and when you dial in contrast in PS and you get what you need the highs are junk. I am no amateur and I have been shooting slides for years and have never seen a no win situation like I am encoutering trying to get good looking prints. I have a test shoot being printed today so I am interested in seeing the prints later. Did you have any of these problems when you started shooting digital Stefan? When you process your work in PS are the small adjustments or large adjustments/changes? It seems like everyone else has had an easier time than I am having.

[stefan1]

I don't think I have the experience or eye for detail that you probably do, but for some reason it seems to me that this is a transition problem and not something inherent in shooting digital vs. slide.

 

If you want exact color you do need a calibrated workflow using profiles for your monitor and the printer you are using (whether it be your own or a pro shop). The local pro shops here will give you their color profiles and expect you to adapt to it - not very consumer-centric, but supposedly it works.

 

If you are happy with what you see on your monitor, then you should be halfway there if you have a color-calibrated system...

 

Straight contrast adjustment in PS is not what I use to fix contrast if I need to - histogram or curves adjustments gives more flexibility.

 

Could you show a photo (from digital) that has the contrast problem you are talking about?

[james_castagno]

Hi Stefan. Part of my problem may be that I am not as proficient in PS as I need to be, all I really used PS for was retouching not serious color management. I have tried using the curves adjustments but it always gets away from me. I have been trying to find good documentation on PS as the manual that comes with it is useless when it comes to actual application. I will try to post something here or if you want I could email you something if you send me your address at jimgrafix@aol.com, it might help to have someone else look and see if there is an actual problem or if I am the problem.

[eric_chiu2]

hi james, I totally understand your frustration. I shoot with my lovely EOS 1V for

couple years and love the result. Change to 1D last year because of the flexabilty

when shooting wedding. Honestly i could tell you that i almost dumb the dam $3000

camera into trash. All my image come out from the camera looks so flat. skin tone

was off.

 

I used almost 3 month to test out different local and online labs. Finally, i found

some that can fit my budget and quality. than i spend another 2 months for a good

printer. For color balance, you really have to spend time to calibrate your

equipments. test and test to see what is the best result between what you see from

the monitor and the prints. Save a profile that works the best and you could start to

breath again.

 

One thing really help me a lot is Photoshop CS. After i have CS, I start shooting only

in RAW and it save me lots of time to make a picture looks rignt. I just finish a

assigment of a wedding and i shoot over 600 pictures. I choosed 300+ of them and

spend about only 30 seconds one each of them. They looks and prints even better

than the picture i took from my 1V before.

 

now, i prints all my 4x6 at local or online labs. i do all my 8x10 or larger prints from

my Canon S9000. nobody could tell they are from printer.

[stephen_persky]

I unloaded all my digital equipment recently. I am still thinking about scanning negatives to learn digital printing. I can no longer do without the consistent color balance I have come to love with 35mm film (both slide and print film). At least for the forseeable future, I will be back in film.

 

I am tired of pink lips, pasty skin, purple snow, etc. etc.

 

I know I need to learn color balance and get everything calibrated. Just cant keep ruining my pictures while I work this digital stuff out.

 

good luck

[david_dahlstrom]

It all depends on whether you consider photography to be about taking the picture, making the print, or both. For me, I reached a point in my photography where I was no longer satisfied with lab prints. Some were good, but too often I knew that they were not the best they could be. Let's face it, unless you pay for expensive custom work, who is going to burn/dodge, color correct, and retouch your final prints on the fly to your exact specifications.

 

Now I still send bulk snapshots to be printed by a lab, but for all my important work, I do it at home. Getting good results, however, was not automatic. If you are going to set up a digital darkroom and do it right, you need to approach it with the same seriousness that you would give to creating a traditional darkroom. Every serious digital darkroom needs (1) calibration, (2) an understanding of the idiosyncrasies of your equipment, (3) lots of experimentation, (4) education. If you are not willing to do these things, or if you just don't have the time, you may still get decent results, but these results will probably be inconsistent, not much better (or potentially worse) than a lab, and quite a frustration.

 

Printing at home is *not* cheaper, nor is it necessarily easier than a lab. That is something you need to know. But it does give you a control that you just can't get otherwise. Just a few days ago, I printed a 4x6 "proof" of a jellyfish that I photographed in a tank at a local aquarium. The small photo looked great, so I printed an 8x10--only to find that fingerprint smudges on the tank had now become visible! No problem. I just pulled up Photoshop, removed the smudges, and reprinted. This kind of thing would have been much more tough to deal with at a lab.

 

In some ways, I might have an advantage in that I'm a software guy in my "real life". So, in some ways, I actually enjoy the post processing/printing more than actually taking the picture. For me, taking the picture is "work" and processing is "fun". For you it sounds like taking the picture is "fun" and processing is "work". But either way, if you're going to get the best out of photography, you've got to do work somewhere along the way.

[stephen_persky]

David,

 

Well said, thanks for your input.

[chip]

Hi James,

 

I shoot with an EOS 1D, D60 and 10D but the camera I use for about 90% of my work is the 1D. I shoot and save only in RAW format and use C1 Pro DSLR for RAW conversions along with PS-CS for editing duties. Digital works great if you take the time to learn the camera's traits, study the processing programs and tools and develop the workflows you need to get to where you need to go in terms of output.

 

What DSLR camera are you using and what are you using for RAW conversion? You are shooting RAW no? If not this is a large part of the problem if you are using in camera automatic white balancing and saving to JPEGs. If you are using a Canon body and saving as JPEG files you can shoot a white card and use it as your custom WB but this can be a pain if shooting under different lighting or lighting that is changing or where you are changing your relationship with light and subject. Just shoot and save in RAW format, it does not have this problem though you will need to convert the files to use them in PS. Unless of course you have PS-CS and a camera that is supported by the latest ACR v2.1. Then just use ACR for conversion, The new updated ACR v2.1 is pretty good if slower and weak in volume onversion capability.

 

A sample of the problem image would be a help as others have mentioned.

 

David said it very well and I agree with what his post said and I actually do something similar in that I send out any high volume prints I need. Usually smaller high volume prints to 5x7 I just run through C1 to convert and in the process of corrections I add some minor sharpening to the output files for proofs or small prints. then I burn a CD-R and off to the Noritzu 3100 they go!

 

I have been shooting film for over 35 years and had a B&W darkroom from about 8th grade on. I loved processing film and printing my B&W images but color got in the way. With digital I have regained complete control of the process of creating images and printing what I envisioned. I still enjoy the shooting a little bit more than the editing and printing even though like David I'm a computer geek (I do UNIX/WinDoze/networking consulting), but nothing feels like seeing a gorgous print coming out of one of my printers or the look on a friend's face as they see an image I've printed for them the first time!

 

HTH

[radellaf]

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764536958/radellaf

-20">Professional Photoshop</a> by Dan Margulis is IMHO the definitive guide to

Photoshop color correction. Unlike most other books it addresses, but does not pay

excessive homage to, ICC color management. Also, it's fun to read, which is hard for such

a dry topic.<p>Once you get good results on the screen, if the printer is still "off" and you

can tweak it closer but can't quite get it "there", <a href="http://

www.cathysprofiles.com">Cathy's Profiles</a> or <a href="http://

www.drycreekphoto.com/">Dry Creek</a> are some good options for custom profiles.