more calibration questions again! I know but how do I get good prints?

[nossie]

Many of you have crossed this hurtle so I really hope you can help me out. I splurged on a DELL 30" monitor. First thing I noticed about it was the saturation, everything on this screen is lush. Very nice to look at but unfortunately not realistic when photo editing. So I try to rely on the histogram and readings from the levels. Today I brought this photo out to two local services to test print them. One place has huge fuji digital printer and the other has an instant photo Kodak machine. The kodak was better but still I scored only poor results.

This file is trying to show you on the top/left what I was looking at and the bottom/right what was printed. Of course this will vary on your monitor but at least you'll see the variation.

The clouds are on the brink of being blown out and on the kodak they did get blown out slightly and also the colours lost a lot of their saturation. So if I'm so close to maxing out the levels then where do I go from here?
Is there a knack to it? Do I just keep trying hit and miss? Is there a gizmo that makes it all perfect? Take a reading from the photo and a reading from the monitor and twiddle the knob and your done?

 

[Alpha]

There is a single magical solution, provided your monitor is profiled. Find a pro-lab, and ask them for a copy of their printer profile. Adjust your photos using that.

 

[Alpha]

And the Kodak is most likely a dye-sub, which would explain why it sucks.

 

[Garbz]

Welcome to photo editing on an LCD :er: The same thing happens when I look at a photo on dad's LCD. I had a very low key image posted on the internet a while back and when I opened it on the computer upstairs the gamma curve made it bright and over saturated enough that you could see horrid compression artefacts. The print was dark like it appeared on my screen.

 

[JIP]

There is a single magical solution, provided your monitor is profiled. Find a pro-lab, and ask them for a copy of their printer profile. Adjust your photos using that.

Or a good online lab like....

http://www.mpix.com/

 

[nossie]

There is a single magical solution, provided your monitor is profiled. Find a pro-lab, and ask them for a copy of their printer profile. Adjust your photos using that.

I'll try this first and I'll get a monitor calibration tool too. They have a huge €100k+ machine so I'd expect they have some profiles to go with it. It's a question now if the staff will have the slightest idea of what I'm asking for. At the very least they can give me the machine infos and then perhaps fuji can give me a profile directly.

Another curve in the road.