Printing

[dandaluzphotography]

Guys,

I've noticed that while my pictures look sharp on my monitor, when they print, they're soft.

I read that when printing, you want to over-sharpen. My first question is, is this correct? If so, how much over-sharpening do I apply? I guess if it is correct, the amount of over-sharpening depends on each individual image.

Thanks,
Danny

 

[Opher]

you tend to do an unsharp mask before printing but i wouldn't go over bored with it... I have not had many printing problems on luster and gloss but my mat prints tend to be less sharp.

 

[dandaluzphotography]

you tend to do an unsharp mask before printing but i wouldn't go over bored with it... I have not had many printing problems on luster and gloss but my mat prints tend to be less sharp.

I usually use smart sharpen when sharpening. Does this produce a different result than Unsharp Mask?

Thanks,
Danny

 

[Big Mike]

I think it's a somewhat different process...but the results between USM and SS are pretty close. I'd stick with SS.

As for how the prints look and how it looks on the monitor...that may be a different issue. What zoom setting are you viewing the images at? What size/resolution are you sending to the printer and what size print?

 

[dandaluzphotography]

I think it's a somewhat different process...but the results between USM and SS are pretty close. I'd stick with SS.

As for how the prints look and how it looks on the monitor...that may be a different issue. What zoom setting are you viewing the images at? What size/resolution are you sending to the printer and what size print?

Whenever I do sharpening and some other edits, but always sharpening, I view it at 100%

For example, the last image I had printed was an 8x10 image from my 12 MP XSI (I don't remember the pixel height and width after cropping but definitely enough for an 8x10), resolution was 240, and I sent a roughly 65MB tiff file. And it came out soft.

 

[KmH]

Guys,

I've noticed that while my pictures look sharp on my monitor, when they print, they're soft.

Danny

Printed how? When on your screen, are they displayed at 1:1, so 1 monitor pixel = 1 image pixel?

Do you soft proof? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_proofing
You may also want to read about 'Color Managgement': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Management

There are 3 main print types:

1. C-prints (chromogenic) Chromogenic color print - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
2. Inkjet (squirt, squirt) Inkjet printer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
3. off-set press Offset printing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Big Mike]

Are you talking about your printer or a lab? Why TIFF? JPEG should be fine and it's a much smaller file size.

So for an 8x10 print, was your file 1920 x 2400 pixels?

 

[dandaluzphotography]

Guys,

I've noticed that while my pictures look sharp on my monitor, when they print, they're soft.

Danny

Printed how?


There are 3 main print types:

1. C-prints (chromogenic) Chromogenic color print - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
2. Inkjet (squirt, squirt) Inkjet printer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
3. off-set press Offset printing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I have no idea. I have even begun to look into that stuff. I guess whatever Mpix uses. That's who I've been sending my images to to be printed.

The strange thing about it is, it doesn't happen to all my shots. I had a landscape shot printed to 16x24. It was perfect and I didn't do anything special to it. The way it looks on screen is the way it printed.

I wonder if my eyes are somehow deceiving me and I think the photo is sharp on screen when it's really not totally sharp. I'm going to pay much more attention to this going forward.

 

[dandaluzphotography]

Are you talking about your printer or a lab? Why TIFF? JPEG should be fine and it's a much smaller file size.

A lab. mpix.

So for an 8x10 print, was your file 1920 x 2400 pixels?

It was bigger than that, but I selected a print size of 8x10. I believe the max print size was like 16x20 (sorry don't remember).

As far as why a tiff, maybe I'm mistaken but my understanding is that since a tiff file is lossless, it will look better than the compressed jpeg when printed.

 

[KmH]

I have no idea. I have even begun to look into that stuff. I guess whatever Mpix uses. That's who I've been sending my images to to be printed.

Mpix (MpixPro, and Miller's) does all 3 types of printing. so it depends what type of product you are ordering.

Prints made on the Kodak Endura, Metallic, and B&W papers are all C-prints.

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.

Fine art stuff is usually high quality inkjet (also known as a giclée)., and books and such are offset press.

Is your display calibrated?

Mpix has an inexpensive, get-you-in-the-ballpark calibration kit you can buy, but they recommend you use an i1 Display 2 colorimeter to calibrate your display, plus you can download their ICC printer profiles for soft proofing.

If you haven't already, read through the following http://mpix.com/support/Help.aspx?id=3 and at the bottom of the page you'll find the link to download the ICC profiles.

 

[Big Mike]

The compressing of a JPEG happens when you save it as a JPEG...so yes, technically a TIFF file (as processed from a RAW) will be 'better' than a JPEG...but I'd bet that neither you or me could tell the difference.

The thing you want to avoid with JPEG files...is opening them and saving them over and over and over again. So if you are working on an image and you do it over many sessions...you probably don't want to be using JPEG.
And even then, you can choose the level of JPEG compression (quality)...scale up to 12 in Photoshop. When you save once, I don't think that any of us could tell the difference between a JPEG at 12 (full) and say one at 8 (maybe even 6 or 7), certainly not 10. But, you can cut the file size in half, just by taking it down from 12 to 10 or 11. So anytime you need to transfer files, taking it down a notch can really help, and probably won't hurt in any way that you will see.

 

[dandaluzphotography]

The compressing of a JPEG happens when you save it as a JPEG...so yes, technically a TIFF file (as processed from a RAW) will be 'better' than a JPEG...but I'd bet that neither you or me could tell the difference.

The thing you want to avoid with JPEG files...is opening them and saving them over and over and over again. So if you are working on an image and you do it over many sessions...you probably don't want to be using JPEG.
And even then, you can choose the level of JPEG compression (quality)...scale up to 12 in Photoshop. When you save once, I don't think that any of us could tell the difference between a JPEG at 12 (full) and say one at 8 (maybe even 6 or 7), certainly not 10. But, you can cut the file size in half, just by taking it down from 12 to 10 or 11. So anytime you need to transfer files, taking it down a notch can really help, and probably won't hurt in any way that you will see.

On screen I agree. I can't tell the difference between a max quality jpeg the same image in tiff format. I just thought that tiff would look better when printed. I'll definitely try both formats next time.

 

[dandaluzphotography]

I have no idea. I have even begun to look into that stuff. I guess whatever Mpix uses. That's who I've been sending my images to to be printed.

Mpix (MpixPro, and Miller's) does all 3 types of printing. so it depends what type of product you are ordering.

Prints made on the Kodak Endura, Metallic, and B&W papers are all C-prints.

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.

Fine art stuff is usually high quality inkjet (also known as a giclée)., and books and such are offset press.

Is your display calibrated?

Mpix has an inexpensive, get-you-in-the-ballpark calibration kit you can buy, but they recommend you use an i1 Display 2 colorimeter to calibrate your display, plus you can download their ICC printer profiles for soft proofing.

If you haven't already, read through the following Mpix.com - Help and at the bottom of the page you'll find the link to download the ICC profiles.

I've been using the consumer level mpix, with which mpix does the color correction for you, so as I understand it, I don't need to be calibrated. Also, I always print on metallic paper, so I guess C-prints. I really like the way it looks.

I'm not planning on doing the fine art stuff anytime soon so I don't think I need to be calibrated just yet.

 

[KmH]

Back in the day, a lot of this kind of stuff was handled by the print lab, and the customer was not aware it was being done.

Color correction is not sharpening, and sharpening is a subject so involved and technical entire books have been written about it: Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop, Camera Raw, and Lightroom (2nd Edition)

If you want your prints to look like what you see on your display, you have to calibrate and you also have to do your own color management. Some more, on point, reading: http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adob...ly/prophotographer/pdfs/pscs3_renderprint.pdf

If you don't want to bother with any of that, there will be unavoidable inconsistancies with any prints you order.

 

[dandaluzphotography]

Thx for all the info. So you're saying that even though mpix is doing color correction, I should still calibrate. I'm for bothering with whatever will make my work as close to perfect as possible!

Yup, sharpening and color correction are two different things.

Thx

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