A question but best introduce myself first

[Plado]

Pardon me for coming in with a question right after registering but I will just say Hi from SW England I've just joined and so far the topic categories on this site look to be very comprehensive - just about everything you could ever need about Photography pro or amateur.

I'm putting a question about a peculiar problem a friend of mine has in New Zealand with a Canon Camera output, printing to a Canon Printer. Photos from his Canon appear perfect on screen but when he comes to print a picture on his Canon Printer the results are strongly too red. A pink tinge all over the photo. The strange thing is - no other pictures do this, from any of his other cameras or from files (jpgs) he's obtained from other sources than cameras. His Ink is the proper Canon stuff and we have established it's not the Printer.

I got him to send me a copy of one typical over-pink picture and I'll see if the same thing happens on my Canon MP270 which is very similar to his. The picture looks fine on screen though is very slightly pink. I printed it to my Canon Printer and it is exaggeratedly pink all over. I tried to see if alternative software such as Canon Easy Photo Print would make a different result from what prints out of Paintshop Pro. Still no difference, and if anything the Easy Photo Print was more pink than the PSP version.

There is no setting that allows reduction of the RED control in his camera but there is overall saturation settings on manual options but not on Auto Settings.

Does anyone know what the source of this red emphasis could be caused by. It has totally stumped me. Could it be the lens of the Canon is adding a red bias?
Is it something to do with gamma settings? I wonder if anyone here could shed some light on it for me.

I'll willingly use up ink trying various tests and options if it can get at the root of the problem.

Thanks in anticipation.
--
Plado

 

[The_Traveler]

post a picture that he took that prints poorly and one that he can print well

also post camera model and as much as you can find out of the setting on his camera - or better yet, get him to post all this.

 

[Plado]

Thanks for that - I will flash off an email to him now and get a sample of a good photo plus the camera make in both instances.
It's the middle of the night in NZ just now so I'll be a few hours getting back to you but thanks for the response. I'll do my best.
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Plado

 

[Plado]

OK got the info now that you need
3 pics explained below (first one is from the offending camera)

(birdPrintTest.jpg)
First photo

2nd photo

3rd photo www.priorfamily.co.uk/quakeFujicam.jpg

The camera is a Canon PowerShot SX10IS, about 19 months old currently on image no 3432.
The problem of the over pink printing has only happened in the last 6 months.
Apparently it is most apparent when using shots of predominantly grey scenes where there's not a lot of colour such as the first picture of the seabird on the beach, almost looks like its a greyscale image.

The second photo by comparison is from a Fuji Finepix camera F3500 (3 People in a house) and example of a photo that prints perfectly

The third photo is from an old Canon MP610 (a photo of earthquake damage indoors) also prints and views perfectly normally.


The photos that get pinked when printing appear perfectly in color balance when viewed on the camera's own screen or the PC Monitor.
I'm wondering if this may be something to do with the Default Colour-space settings sRGB or Adobe RGB but I haven't a clue where settings for such things might be.
It's over to you. And thanks for helping with this. Thanks

 

[The_Traveler]

Plado,

Since I am coming from a place of real ignorance, it is easy to have an opinion.
I looked at all 3 pictures in PS and the color balance appears normal.

If however I enlarge the picture, there seems to be a real pinkish color noise, see below, that certainly wouldn't be visible on a camera screen - and maybe not on uncalibrated monitors at normal resolution.
Perhaps there is some compounding effect caused by the interaction of this color 'noise' with the printer.
Perhaps the camera is set to over-enhance colors and the enhancement is most effective on red, putting it in where it isn't really.
I do think this problem starts with color noise of some sort in the image.

Hope this is of some interest.


Edit: after thinking about this I wonder if this was shot at the very long extension of the zoom, (perhaps likely considering the subject) where hyper zoom lenses don't function spectacularly and chromatic aberration is a problem.

Lew

 

[Plado]

Plado,

Since I am coming from a place of real ignorance, it is easy to have an opinion.

That's very humble of you to say so.

It's very interesting that you've picked up a fairly obvious colour-noise.
The bird photo I'm not sure if it was zoomed or not, as it was obviously snapped outside in the open.
However, the one I'll attach at the end of this message is more typical of the type that prints pinky red, and it's a fairly close shot of ants invading a cupboard
shelf in the guy's garage. The vases and shelf haven't got a lot of colour available but I have printed this photo out on my Canon MP270 and it comes out
certainly pinkish. His Printer is a Canon MP610 and I've just noticed he said it's running with non-Canon inks. I do know that he has the same fault when printing using Canon Inks and of course mine does the pinking error and my inks are proper Canon Cartridges PIXMA 511 and 510.

I can only send him a quote from what you say and see what he makes of that.
He assured me that his Canon camera isn't set to over boost or saturate the colors.

Meanwhile I'll have to read up what I can on transmission of unwanted "noise" from file to printer and see if he can look a bit more deeply
into the camera settings. Strange that it only started doing it in the last 6 months and he's had the camera about 2+ years.
Here below my text is the ants picture to give you one more example of the low-colour image that prints pinked.
Thanks again and apologise if this image makes you itch !!
--
Plado

 

[The_Traveler]

Plado,

IMO, there is something going on in the camera.
I see a pinkish blush in the neck of the pottery urn. (as does my wife, unprompted as to color)
Since we are seeing here a much smaller version of what is printing, my guess is that there is some sort of pink that is somehow contaminating the larger image and is also somehow being magnified in the final print.

(this is all a silly wild ass supposition, of course) see the 300% image of the jar of the pottery urn.

 

[Plado]

(this is all a silly wild ass supposition, of course) see the 300% image of the jar of the pottery urn.
Not so silly really because I just found a review of said camera which says this.

Saturation. The Canon PowerShot SX10 IS over-saturates strong reds, but this is fairly common among consumer digital cameras. Saturation throughout the rest of the spectrum looks about right, with only a slight push in the blues. Most consumer digital cameras produce color that's more highly saturated (more intense) than found in the original subjects. This is simply because most people like their color a bit brighter than life.
AND then later talking about Skin Tones it says...
Where over-saturation is most problematic is on Caucasian skin tones, as it's very easy for these "memory colors" to be seen as too bright, too pink, too yellow, etc. UNQUOTE

So it would seem the camera is already over punching the red by design.
I like Canon cameras up to a point, I have an A1100 IS which does a pretty good job for a compact cam. I prefer the shots from my older Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ 18 but it's a chunky great thing and rather over saturates the green. You can't win!
So far the most impressive color seems to come from Nikons and Digis with Zeiss lenses like Sony.

Anyhow if it is a camera thing going on here with this problem I'm not sure how I can advise the fellow to investigate that. It doesn't have many adjustments beyond the usual gimmick ones.
Thanks for your help.
much appreciated.
--
Plado

 

[Plado]

Just a post-script to this. A friend of mine has advised that the owner of the Canon PowerShot SX10 IS should go to the unofficial website to upgrade the Firmware on his camera as there is a Firmware that adds the facility for RAW setting of the camera's output. RAW he told me over-rides the camera's colour preferences and sets it to optimum kind of factory set colour default which is often much better than the rather over-blown colour from sRGB with jpgs output. The firmware is called chdk and comes from a site called wikia.com I don't know if this is good advice but I passed it on anyway to the guy in question.

I also advised him to check that his printing paper isn't one of those glossy white papers that have a pink tint to them. I compared 6 types of Paper I have here at home, and they all have different shades of bright white. Jessops was the pinkest and HP paper was the whitest. I also had Verbatim which was only very slightly pink, and PunchLine and Paper Select and Kodak. The Kodak is very white. The HP is very thin paper and takes ages to dry the ink. So the guy in NZ who gets too much red on his prints could probably tweak the colour at the printing stage and use a bright white paper and he might be in with a chance of a decent print.

Another thing I suggested he try was to take the SD card with one offending print on it, to his local Photo Processing service and get them to print out the same photo on a professional laser or other modern process printer system, and see if the pink is reduced in the final result. It only costs very little to have a print done and it would settle the argument as to whether the camera is no good or whether it's just a matter of post-production fiddling to get success.
Thanks again
Plado