Best formats to use for commercial printing?

Any tips on how to get the best results getting your digital images printed by a photostore/lab?

Assume that your monitor is calibrated...

I'm having a hard time getting decent/good large (8x10) prints from a local photostore. The colors are consistently wrong or the pictures are too dark or washed out. I asked them to *not* use any automatic color correction and that gave better results but not really good enough for me to justify the price...

They insisted on a jpeg so I took my 16 bit TIFF and converted into sRGB highest quality jpeg.

The original pictures were RAW taken with a D70s.

Are there specialized labs that charge more but do this type of thing correctly?

Is sRGB ICC what's needed for printing? or does it matter with the commercial printers?

Would they get better results if they used TIFFs?

Any input would be appreciated. I've got some shots that I'd really like to frame and put up in my office but need decent quality prints for that...

Try Pictopia. They are relialble and the prints look awesome. They have tools that deal with the calibration issues as well. Not the cheapest, but worth a try...

Pictopia Website

Also, I sure think Adobe RGB would be better than sRGB.

Hi Laith,

What you need to do is get a printer profile from the print service you intend to use. What you do is then apply the profile to the photo you are looking at on your monitor.

Since most printers can't produce the same glowing vibrant colors you see on your screen, when you apply the printer profile to your image, it will look darker and duller. Then you can correct it accordingly.

A calibrated monitor and applying the printer profile for your "output device" is the ONLY way you can get WYSIWYG prints.

Cheers

James

I forgot to add my location info... Pictopia services don't extend outside the US.

Adobe RGB better than sRGB... Have to try that.

And I need to see if the photo store I use even knows what a printer profile is!

I'll check it out.

Thanks for the inputs!

Laith -

It isn't a matter of sRGB vs. AdobeRGB. You have to get ahold of a profile from your target printer, and find out whether they automatically do a conversion or not. I've had to ask some of the people I use to print specifically *not* to anything to my image (because I have already accounted for their color profile, and have tagged the image with it).

If you take your print to a photo processor who automatically does a color profile conversion, you may get good results using AdobeRGB or sRGB.

But if they do not, and mostly cater to consumers, I'd bet that they just try to make sRGB prints look good, since most people will be submitting images directly from the camera...

Eric is correct, you need to set up the file in the way the shop reccomends. In most cases your local grocery stores will be set up for sRGB and may not be able to deal well with AdobeRGB. The same goes for TIFFs, I have had problems with large TIFF files shoking the kiosks (which makes the staff rather grumpy to say the least). Neither really represents a big problem. If you wish to edit your files in Photoshop, make sure that you edit convert your raw files to 16bit TIFFs. Edit the 16bit file and save as an 8bit JPEG. Otherwise you will get banding and blocking in your smooth gradients (water background).

Your other option is to find a local pro shop or use one of the better online options. They tend to be more expensive but are willing to work with you on filetypes and special requests.

An excellent color management resource can be found at http://www.drycreekphoto.com. They profile printers for labs and publish the results online. Their website also has some excellent whitepapers on color spaces. You can look for companies that have published their ICC profiles in their database. Once you get to the website, select the 'View the Database' link in the lower left section.