The trouble with printing

Greetings Wetpixels,

I'm having what I suspect is a classic struggle trying to get a few photos processed for printing. The trouble with them is that they are made up of mostly blue tones and they don't hold up well when I soft-proof them using several of the online printers profiles (Mpix and EZPrints for example). The blues in the water tend to run into gamut warning issues. The divers are already pretty low contrast, but on prints they tend to disappear. The soft proofing also shows that the spots at the front of the fish tend to fade and get blurred.

I see the same issues with my personal Canon i9900, but Epson printer/paper profiles I have tried out seem to indicate they would do better. For some reason Epson seems to have better coverage in the blue space. Sadly I don't have access to an Epson printer so I thought I would see if anyone in the Wetpixel community might have any ideas.

The photo was taken at about 100 ft so the light was a challenge and admittedly I was shooting a bit fast resulting in the lower exposure.

Any comments or ideas on processing are appreciated as I have a couple of others from the same pass that I hope to be able to salvage.

I can also make the RAW image available if it is helpful.

Thanks,

Sagen

Blues are always tough even though some printers (like the Epsons) have Cyan inks. The divers in the background are just a darker cyan. Best bet will be to use an Epson 8 ink printer (4880 or up) with the vivid cyan inkset or similar printer using a glossy stock. If you want the crispest (is that a word?) print, a lightjet printer will give you the best definition. forget 4 ink printers. for shots like this, they are hopeless.

Blues are always tough even though some printers (like the Epsons) have Cyan inks. The divers in the background are just a darker cyan. Best bet will be to use an Epson 8 ink printer (4880 or up) with the vivid cyan inkset or similar printer using a glossy stock. If you want the crispest (is that a word?) print, a lightjet printer will give you the best definition. forget 4 ink printers. for shots like this, they are hopeless.

My Canon i9900 is an 8 ink printer and it does ok, but the soft-proofing I have done with Epson profiles looks a good bit better. My biggest challenge though is that if I set up things to allow other people to order prints and have that fulfilled by one of the online print shops, I don't think they will be satisfied with the prints.

Oh, and I'd like to avoid acquiring a completely different printer. Perhaps that's my only outlet though.