Color management when saving photos to discs for clients

[BeckyK]

I'm fairly new to processing photos for print and am having troubles with color management. I don't have my own photo printer (yet!), so I use a lab and have the ICC profiles for this lab. I have mostly figured it out for what to do when I am printing the images myself (they still turn out more red, but I don't have a monitor calibrator yet, so I blame that). What I am wondering about right now is burning photos to CD for clients for them to print- I obviously can't embed the color profile for the printer they will use, since I have no idea where they will print, and they may print at different locations, so what do I do so that the photos I save to disc will print properly at any kiosk? ANY suggestions on this and color management in general would be really appreciated!

 

[Garbz]

Ok two golden rules for colourmanagement:

1. Whenever giving photos to some other than a print lab with trained staff who know what they are doing, convert to sRGB. No iffs or buts. The benefit your photos get when using a wider colour space (if any) will be horrendously outweighed by negative publicity of an unhappy customer. Never ever give the customer yet another way to possibly screw something up because even if you fix it you won't get their recommendation or repeat business. Also never assume a kiosk or any lab will be able to handle any colour space other than sRGB. ALWAYS ASK FIRST.

2. NEVER embed a printer profile. That's not what they are there for. Your photos should never have anything other than the working profile applied to them. It is up to the printing company / print driver / print spooler to manage colour changes. If you must take over colour management yourself then you do so only using the print dialogue from your program (i.e. tick photoshop manages colour). Don't attempt dodgy workarounds by changing the working profile to the printer profile. That's asking for trouble and can only be described as colour mismanagement . Colour management exists to do this for you.

 

[KmH]

Moved from the Beyond the Basics forum

Tutorials on Color Management & Printing

Needless to say, giving clients photos on a disc is risky in that they usually know little about how to go about having quality prints made from the files on the disc. You put your reputation as a photographer into their uninformed hands by allowing them to produce prints of your work.

What if they want a 5:4 or 7:5 aspect ratio print from a DSLR native 3:2 aspect ratio image you provided on the disc. Cropping the 3:2 aspect ratio image is required to get to any other aspect ratio.

Since you don't use a calibrated computer display you have no way to ensure the gamma (brightness) or colors in the images you put on the disc are accurate.
If you are using a Twisted Nematic (TN) type display accurate image editing is almost impossible. Parallel Vertical alignment (PVA), or better still In-Plane Switching (IPS) type computer displays are preferred.

Note in the above tutorials the part that covers 'soft-proofing' in your image editing software application using the published/downloaded ICC profile of the print device making the print.
In other words, there is no way you can ensure "the photos I save to disc will print properly at any kiosk" because not every kiosk will be attached to the same brand/model of print device.

 

[Light Guru]

My first thought is why are you worried about giving people color managed photos when you have not even bothered to calibrate your own display that you are editing the images on. Any image you would give them would not be edited in a way that you know the colors are right anyway.

My second thought is that why don't you make having the prints purchased from you (if you do them yourself of send them to a lab does not matter) being color managed from edit to print being one of reasons to order prints from you. Let them pay you the money if they want color managed prints.

But FIRST thing you need to do is calibrate YOUR monitor.

A basic calibrator is CHEEP
Amazon.com: Datacolor Spyder4Pro S4P100 Colorimeter for Display Calibration: Electronics

 

[BeckyK]

My first thought is why are you worried about giving people color managed photos when you have not even bothered to calibrate your own display that you are editing the images on. Any image you would give them would not be edited in a way that you know the colors are right anyway.

My second thought is that why don't you make having the prints purchased from you (if you do them yourself of send them to a lab does not matter) being color managed from edit to print being one of reasons to order prints from you. Let them pay you the money if they want color managed prints.

But FIRST thing you need to do is calibrate YOUR monitor.

A basic calibrator is CHEEP
Amazon.com: Datacolor Spyder4Pro S4P100 Colorimeter for Display Calibration: Electronics

I have eye-ball calibrated my monitor, but haven't purchased a calibrator as of yet, because I can't afford it right now (you may feel it's cheap, but I can't afford it, otherwise, I would have one!) Also, I am in Canada and can't order from Amazon.com and haven't found anything reasonable under $200 here.

My client wants all the photos from a shoot I did on her son when he was 6-months. She doesn't want prints of everything- just a CD of the photos for saving, but she said she may print some at some point, so I want to be sure I am formatting them the right way. I have explained to her that if she prints them, she may not get the same results as she sees on her computer, etc. etc., but she is ADAMANT that she received a CD from her wedding photographer and the photos printed exactly the way they looked on the computer and is questioning why I can't do the same, so I am trying to determine if there is a way to do that (that's why I have asked here).

Thanks for your reply.

 

[BeckyK]

Moved from the Beyond the Basics forum

Tutorials on Color Management & Printing

Needless to say, giving clients photos on a disc is risky in that they usually know little about how to go about having quality prints made from the files on the disc. You put your reputation as a photographer into their uninformed hands by allowing them to produce prints of your work.

What if they want a 5:4 or 7:5 aspect ratio print from a DSLR native 3:2 aspect ratio image you provided on the disc. Cropping the 3:2 aspect ratio image is required to get to any other aspect ratio.

Since you don't use a calibrated computer display you have no way to ensure the gamma (brightness) or colors in the images you put on the disc are accurate.
If you are using a Twisted Nematic (TN) type display accurate image editing is almost impossible. Parallel Vertical alignment (PVA), or better still In-Plane Switching (IPS) type computer displays are preferred.

Note in the above tutorials the part that covers 'soft-proofing' in your image editing software application using the published/downloaded ICC profile of the print device making the print.
In other words, there is no way you can ensure "the photos I save to disc will print properly at any kiosk" because not every kiosk will be attached to the same brand/model of print device.

Thanks very much for the link to the tutorials! I will take a look at them

 

[BeckyK]

Ok two golden rules for colourmanagement:

1. Whenever giving photos to some other than a print lab with trained staff who know what they are doing, convert to sRGB. No iffs or buts. The benefit your photos get when using a wider colour space (if any) will be horrendously outweighed by negative publicity of an unhappy customer. Never ever give the customer yet another way to possibly screw something up because even if you fix it you won't get their recommendation or repeat business. Also never assume a kiosk or any lab will be able to handle any colour space other than sRGB. ALWAYS ASK FIRST.

2. NEVER embed a printer profile. That's not what they are there for. Your photos should never have anything other than the working profile applied to them. It is up to the printing company / print driver / print spooler to manage colour changes. If you must take over colour management yourself then you do so only using the print dialogue from your program (i.e. tick photoshop manages colour). Don't attempt dodgy workarounds by changing the working profile to the printer profile. That's asking for trouble and can only be described as colour mismanagement . Colour management exists to do this for you.

I was under the impression that when in photoshop, I should soft-proof for the printer I'll be using (which I do), then before saving for printing, I should set the photo profile to the appropriate printer, which is why I save the photo to the ICC profile given to me by the lab I take it to. I talked to the lab about this, and this is what they advised; they also said I should ask them not to apply any of their own color corrections. I am also following a book to learn this all: "Photoshop CS6 Quick Visual Guide."

On that same note- I have learned that sRGB is the best profile to use for web photos, and Adobe (1998) is best profile to use for printing... incorrect??? I've been very diligent about leaning this, so I'm not trying to do this blindly

Thanks for your response!

 

[KmH]

Not all print labs can handle images in the Adobe RGB color space.

 

[Garbz]

I have eye-ball calibrated my monitor

Ok stop there. There are serious problems with eye-ball calibrating your screen.
1. Your eyes adjust to conditions. For instance if you use your screen and try and white balance using some eyeball tools you will invariably find that your screen is properly white balanced, regardless of colour temperature setting or any tint. Your eyes stab you in the back in this case.
2. Gamma adjustments calibrate your monitor for one single shade.
3. When you adjust your screen you invariably introduce drifts. Calibration software compensates for this by adjusting the tone for a range of grey values. You'll find even high quality screens are quite horrible in this regard.
4. Finally (for my point at the moment anyway), calibration is pointless without profiling. The first thing any software with a calibrator does when you calibrate your screen is generate a screen profile. There's no point in having a perfectly calibrated screen with a deltaU value of close to zero if Photoshop has no idea what shade of red your screen is actually showing.

Anyway you've already said you're working on this, just don't fall into a false sense of security.

I was under the impression that when in photoshop, I should soft-proof for the printer I'll be using (which I do), then before saving for printing, I should set the photo profile to the appropriate printer, which is why I save the photo to the ICC profile given to me by the lab I take it to. I talked to the lab about this, and this is what they advised; they also said I should ask them not to apply any of their own color corrections. I am also following a book to learn this all: "Photoshop CS6 Quick Visual Guide."

On that same note- I have learned that sRGB is the best profile to use for web photos, and Adobe (1998) is best profile to use for printing... incorrect??? I've been very diligent about leaning this, so I'm not trying to do this blindly

I'll start with the last comment. You are in general correct, but it's important to know the reasons why, and more importantly when and how. sRGB is the standard gamut used for computer displays for many a year. Due to 20 years of dragging feet in the colour management it is about the only colour profile you can actually trust. There's no guaranteeing that any other colour profile will be viewed or printed correctly by other people if you don't use sRGB. Even many browsers don't support colour management properly, though this has gotten better in the past 2 years. All the wonderfully colourful pictures you see on the net are sRGB so if you're trying to match your favourite photographer remember that the colour gamut is unlikely to be the limiting factor if you haven't seen the image in some wonderful gallery on some high quality printing process.

As for when and how, the sRGB colour gamut covers nearly everything you can see in nature. Brilliant sunsets, deep cyans from shallow oceans, and artificial lighting like LEDs and lasers are wider than the sRGB gamut but for the most part you're well inside it. You can check this yourself in photoshop by taking your image, setting the softproof target to sRGB, and then enabling the gamut warning. The tiny areas of grey are bits which fall outside the sRGB gamut, often only slightly. If nothing is grey then there's no point in using anything wider than sRGB.

Finally how, when using colour profiles that are wider than sRGB it is HIGHLY recommended to use 16bit processing and save files in a 16bit format at all times. The reason is that there are more than 16.7million different discernible colour shades in wider gamuts. Using wide gamuts with formats like JPEG can quickly destroy some delicate gradients. Colour management needs to be treated carefully before it makes things worse.

Now to that end the lab must be smoking crack. The output profile should never match the working profile. That's the whole point of printing. The reason is simple, suppose you go in today and get your wonderful print done, all looks great and fine. Tomorrow they get their printer re-calibrated (which they should be doing frequently), or update some software, or do some other minor modification, you go in again with the same colour profile and your results suck. The conversion from a working profile to an output profile should only ever be done on the fly at the time when the output is displayed.

The soft-proofing steps are correct. You need to understand how your image will look with the limited gamuts printers will print. This is especially important at the edges of the gamut where saturated colours can make textures or patterns disappear. Soft-proofing gives you the chance to desaturate or otherwise adjust to compensate so your image will look correct when *THEY* apply their carefully setup colour corrections.

Now the method you use will work, providing the profile they provided is 100% up to date, you know what you're doing, and they play along and disable their own colour corrections. It is a horrendous perversion of the colour management process but caveat emptor, and if the lab come back with a picture that doesn't look right I'm sure you've given them all manner of excuses as to why the result isn't as you expect.

 

[Light Guru]

I have eye-ball calibrated my monitor

Your not helping yourself by telling us that.

My client wants all the photos from a shoot I did on her son when he was 6-months. She doesn't want prints of everything- just a CD of the photos for saving, but she said she may print some at some point, so I want to be sure I am formatting them the right way. I have explained to her that if she prints them, she may not get the same results as she sees on her computer, etc. etc., but she is ADAMANT that she received a CD from her wedding photographer and the photos printed exactly the way they looked on the computer and is questioning why I can't do the same, so I am trying to determine if there is a way to do that (that's why I have asked here).

Tell her she lucked out when having her wedding photos printed.

Even if you did give her color corrected images (which you cannot because you don't have a calibrated monitor) then her screen is not calibrated so they will not look the same as they would on yours.

Just give her the photos on a disk and call it done. And then use the money she pays you to buy a monitor calibrator.