makings prints soon need help.. cs - jpeg loss of quality

[Rjsimpson1]

im not sure if this only occurs with me or everyone else, but ive noticed that when youre editing your photo in cs5 it looks great, nice and sharp, and when you upload a photo to flickr its the same case (high in color, and sharp). what i dont understand is when you open that same edited photo through for example: my documents>mypictures in jpeg form, the photo will look very soft and low quality.

i am going to be making prints soon and was wondering on how the prints will turn out, will they look like they do on my computer soft and low quality? or will they look sharp and clear like they do in cs5 or flickr?

thanks :thumbup:

 

[GooniesNeverSayDie11]

Its probably how you are saving it, or has to do with the colorspace you are working in. You should be saving in sRGB. Google colorspace and photoshop. The web mainly uses sRGB.

 

[Rjsimpson1]

so youre saying before i make prints i should have the image saved in srgb format then go and process the prints at a photo store? (im trying to avoid the print turning out looking like they do in jpeg form)

 

[GooniesNeverSayDie11]

If they look different in different programs. For instance, photoshop looks great, but when uploaded they do not, then it is most likely a colorspace issue. The internet standard is sRGB. So if you saved in AdobeRGB or ProPhotoRGB for instance, the file will not be read correctly and will result in a very crappy looking pic. Also, your typical local printing labs are only capable of printing in sRGB.

 

[Rjsimpson1]

thats the strange thing they look good in photoshop, and even when uploaded to a website such as flickr. but when i open the file without a program simply from my computer. its looks bad

 

[KmH]

Read these tutorials: Tutorials on Color Management & Printing

 

[DiskoJoe]

print them as tiff files then if you dont want to use the jpeg of you can increase the file size on the jpeg to something above 300dpi and quality should still be good.

 

[KmH]

Digital photos are in PPI (pixels-per-inch), not DPI (dots-per-inch). Pixels and dots are not the same thing and the terms PPI and DPI are not interchangeable. DPI is a measure of inkjet and offset printer resolution.

The PPI of a JPEG may does not directly affect the file size. Only the JPEG quality setting does.

The pixel dimensions of the photo to be printed may not allow using 300 PPI. The PPI assigned to the print, and the pixel dimensions, determines the print size.

A square pixel can only be rendered by a several round dots if a continuous tone print, rather than a half-tone print, is to be made. High quality inkjet printers have print heads that squirt almost 200 dots per ink color and use as many as 1200 dots to render a single pixel.

Many print labs make chromogenic prints rather than inkjet prints. Chromogenic prints aren't made by making dots. They are made by exposing light sensitive paper with the image to be printed, and then the image is developed chemically.

Many print labs won't accept TIFF files, because they are much larger files and use up to much memory space compared to a JPEG.

 

[spacefuzz]

I used to have that happen before I started saving all of my web work to srgb. If I used picture viewer in windows they were flat and dull looking because they were saved in an adobe color space. I now save using the export for web and devices option to convert them to sRGB while keeping my original files in the standard adobe format.

color space can be a deep dive of knowledge.....its suprisingly complicated when you bring in monitors, printers, web colorspace, etc.

 

[Rjsimpson1]

so im reading you guys saying that i should save it as srgb format, others are saying save it as tiff file which one is it?

all i really need to know is what format i should save my photo as so when i bring it into a photo print store, the end result will look sharp and of high quality for display purposes
:thumbup:

 

[Tomasko]

Don't confuse file type for color space and vice versa! Learn about it a little bit more, because you won't be able to get the results you want this way... KmH provided you a perfect link, but I don't believe you looked at it at all.

 

[Rjsimpson1]

youre right i didnt read it at all =] i thought maybe you guys could give me some help. reading about color space is pretty boring to me

 

[Josh66]

so im reading you guys saying that i should save it as srgb format, others are saying save it as tiff file which one is it?

all i really need to know is what format i should save my photo as so when i bring it into a photo print store, the end result will look sharp and of high quality for display purposes
:thumbup:

You are confusing color space and file type. .JPG or .TIFF is a file type. sRGB (or AdobeRGB) is a color space.

The conscious so far is save as .JPG and sRGB.

 

[Tomasko]

youre right i didnt read it at all =] i thought maybe you guys could give me some help. reading about color space is pretty boring to me

But if you don't understand the difference between file type and color space, we can't help you. We can tell you to do this or that, but what would it help, if you don't understand WHY you have to do it? That's the same as if you bought a DSLR and wanted from us the exact settings "how to take great pictures". If you want good results, you need to understand what are you doing and why.
Don't be lazy

 

[KmH]

so im reading you guys saying that i should save it as srgb format, others are saying save it as tiff file which one is it?

all i really need to know is what format i should save my photo as so when i bring it into a photo print store, the end result will look sharp and of high quality for display purposes
:thumbup:

Thank you for reading the links I provided you. Apparently, you're more interested in easy, than gaining a good understanding of what is involved.

From Mpix.com: Mpix.com - Help

How to prepare your files for printing
Please save your files in sRGB color space in 8-bit color, not 16-bit, to achieve the best print results. Also, please do NOT embed any profiles. Please - no CMYK, Grayscale, RAW, PSD or LZW compressed files, and if you work in layers, be sure to flatten the file and remove any extra channels before sending. We print from JPEG format files. Lossless or highest quality JPEG compressions are more than adequate for high quality printing. In the early days of digital that wasn't always the case; however, the compression algorithms have become very sophisticated and it is nearly impossible to distinguish a JPEG print from a TIFF print with the naked eye.