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Is the color right in these 7D photos?

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guy schlacter

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I was hoping to gain some sanity if some of you could please provide some feedback / validation. I have been having some issues with prints at a brand new Cosco that just opened near my home iwth a Fuji 7700 Printer, Lustre paper, and "auto correction=Off".

I usally have a decent color workflow processing my 7D photos to print on Fuji 7700 printers at Sam's club or Costco. I have a decently calibrated LG 2252TQ monitor from using multiple interactive website / software (no hardware calibration). Please bear with me as I strongly believe this issue is Not that I use JPEG out of the camera, nor the fact that I don't have hardware monitor calibraiton. Been getting great digital prints for nearly 10 years.

This Costco on DryCreek provides ENhanced Printer Profiles for Soft Proofing (which I do in Photoshop CS2). But overall, sometimes I find it simpler to try to just natively match my monitor to equal the Soft Proof (an then simply skipping soft proof).

Below are 4 photos from a recent print batch. I am pretty satisfied with the way they display on my monitor (hence what I submitted to print).
-- These are all SRGBs (same as jpeg out of camera).
-- I am NOT Satisfied with the prints

-- All 4 prints have a cast to them that washes out the skin tones. Almost like a tan color mask was very slightly applied. Though, the cast is more noticable on two of them. In fact, i found it hard to even come back to the computer to be able to replicate and 'quantify' the differece. About the closest I could come was doing CURVES Blue Channel 179-> 161. Likely something else needed but want to spend more time on it.

Workflow:
1. Proper White balance in 7D (gray card or manual WB selection), JPEG out
2. CS2 on my soft calibrated monitor
3. Ajust as desired
4. Soft Proof using Profile

5. Save JPEG (no Convert to Profile since this will be saved as new jpeg for printing.
6. Submit to print with Auto Correction = Off during processing.

Here is my QUESTION for any help you can please provide:

after taking a look at the 4 photos below, do they look noticably washed out in the faces on your calibrated monitor?? IF NOT - then you provide the sanity that my monitor is in fact also near h/w calibration, BUT WHY do you think the photos are coming out so poorly compared to my Monitor? The worst prints (skin tone cast) were the group photos of my family.

THANKS in advance!
-Guy















 
guy schlacter said:
Here is my QUESTION for any help you can please provide:

after taking a look at the 4 photos below, do they look noticably washed out in the faces on your calibrated monitor??
Click to expand...
Washed out faces? No, but they all have an orangish/magenta cast to them being too warm too red. And yes your group photos are worse than the one of the girl. Looking at your 3rd photo, all the highlights are in the red channel, which is why their skin tones are all reddish.

Why are you going through the process of manual/grey card WB in-camera yet not shooting RAW to get the best out of your images? You'd probably have a fairly easy WB & tint fix if shooting RAW. Do you ever shoot RAW?
 
I'm not sure how much this helps, but the white balance does seem off to me, too warm. My canon cameras routinely shoot too warm and I adjust in post. The cheeks on the faces of your group shots do look a little muddy, not sure why.

"Been getting great digital prints for nearly 10 years." Not from your 7d.

I wonder why you are so convinced that it's not from shooting jpeg, are you saying you get the same results from shooting RAW? Your processing does recompress jpeg from jpeg, which will degrade image quality. If you are getting blotches though, seems like a dynamic range issue, either with your source files, or their printers?
 
It looks like you had mixed lighting and harsh, direct light, both of which played havok with highlights. Overexposed highlights ruin skin tones, even in RAW, but RAW would have given you better WB correction. This is as close to neutral as I could get on my monitor:


Member said:
Click to expand...
--

 
I stock with ooc jpegs for some minor reasons, but I mostly shoot sports and can do 300 shots in a game and usually am write happy with the results. Too much to deal with to process.

These photos didn't have blochiness that I observed on screen. I admit that while this group's color example is not perfect, the prints were that much worse but I can't figure out why???

Guy
 
Well, on my uncalibrated laptop monitor (which however is pretty accurate) the pictures have a pretty strong orange/reddish cast. They are also somewhat out of focus.
 
guy schlacter said:
I was hoping to gain some sanity if some of you could please provide some feedback / validation. I have been having some issues with prints at a brand new Cosco that just opened near my home iwth a Fuji 7700 Printer, Lustre paper, and "auto correction=Off".

I usally have a decent color workflow processing my 7D photos to print on Fuji 7700 printers at Sam's club or Costco. I have a decently calibrated LG 2252TQ monitor from using multiple interactive website / software (no hardware calibration). Please bear with me as I strongly believe this issue is Not that I use JPEG out of the camera, nor the fact that I don't have hardware monitor calibraiton. Been getting great digital prints for nearly 10 years.

This Costco on DryCreek provides ENhanced Printer Profiles for Soft Proofing (which I do in Photoshop CS2). But overall, sometimes I find it simpler to try to just natively match my monitor to equal the Soft Proof (an then simply skipping soft proof).

Below are 4 photos from a recent print batch. I am pretty satisfied with the way they display on my monitor (hence what I submitted to print).
-- These are all SRGBs (same as jpeg out of camera).
-- I am NOT Satisfied with the prints

-- All 4 prints have a cast to them that washes out the skin tones. Almost like a tan color mask was very slightly applied. Though, the cast is more noticable on two of them. In fact, i found it hard to even come back to the computer to be able to replicate and 'quantify' the differece. About the closest I could come was doing CURVES Blue Channel 179-> 161. Likely something else needed but want to spend more time on it.

Workflow:
1. Proper White balance in 7D (gray card or manual WB selection), JPEG out
2. CS2 on my soft calibrated monitor
3. Ajust as desired
4. Soft Proof using Profile

5. Save JPEG (no Convert to Profile since this will be saved as new jpeg for printing.
6. Submit to print with Auto Correction = Off during processing.

Here is my QUESTION for any help you can please provide:

after taking a look at the 4 photos below, do they look noticably washed out in the faces on your calibrated monitor?? IF NOT - then you provide the sanity that my monitor is in fact also near h/w calibration, BUT WHY do you think the photos are coming out so poorly compared to my Monitor? The worst prints (skin tone cast) were the group photos of my family.

THANKS in advance!
-Guy















Click to expand...
 
I agree, the images on my calibrated (admittedly low quality) monitor are reddish.

I used to think that my images looked good on my software/eye ball calibrated monitor.

I bought a monitor calibrator. I suddenly realized just how bad the image on my monitor had been. Images straight from my camera no longer needed major "corrections" to look good.

I now shoot everything in RAW with a daylight white balance and set the white balance in Lightroom. My images now need little more than my setting the white balance to match the shooting conditions that measured by the gray/white card I use.

I think that what you really truly need to do is go to hardware monitor calibration.

I strongly recommend either the X-Rite i1Display 2 or the Datacolor Spyder3 Elite as a low cost solution. Either of these will do a decent job of calibrating multiple monitors and provide automatic correction for changing ambient light conditions.

http://spyder.datacolor.com/product-mc-s3elite.php

http://www.xrite.com/product_overview.aspx?ID=788
 
Thank you all for your responses.
I do realize I have a preference toward slightly warmer preference in general.

Baker123-

Thank you for you attempt. I see how you cooled it just a bit. Can you describe the adjustments you made? Was it simply adding a small amount if blue curves?

So for competitive purposes, the prints that made me dissatisfied we equally more toward washed/yellow as the difference between your example and my what I posted. I would have been satisfied if the print would have matched what I posted, but the skin tones did not match.

SO what could be a possible explanation for the prints mismatch on the supposedly calibrated color enhanced profile printer???

Guy
 
Guy

I took the liberty to download one of your images and did some ‘primitive’ processing:

Exposure compensation [-0.50], White balance [used dresses as black], Sharpen [intensity +100-radius+0.5-threshold+4]. I then applied a Cooling filter [82] with a density of 25%.
The processing was done with DxO Optics and the filter with PS Elements 7.

I am not sure if this helps as I do not know how the images looked on your monitor but if they are similar to these then the problem is with the printer [calibration].

You say you like warm images and also ‘Too much to deal with to process’ but as others have mentioned you should consider shooting RAW.
P.







 
Paul,

Thanks for the effort. It was not too dissimilar as the other one Baker123 posted. My comment is the same in that my preference is toward the version I posted but do understand the more neutral version.

I have not needed to do much color processing if any on the out of the camera shots. Based on the feedback here, the observations seem to match what I am seeing. I need a way to somehow show you the resulting prints tags I got. LaterI'll scan one to site you the yellowish bias (slightly weak blue) I tried to describe.

Nobody commented on the work flow that would indicate a misinterpretation of my jpeg by the printer. A again for most of my photos OOC, the custom white balance is great and evenue with flash wb is to my liking so no color adjustments on my end are done. The only idea I have left is to print the calibration photo and challenge any print variance that might be obvious to the naked eye.

Can some one confirm that the printer profile is strictly for Soft Proofing confirmation since the printer doesn't accept embedded profiles?

Guy
 
"guy schlacter wrote:
Been getting great digital prints for nearly 10 years."

No, you have not!!! That is just something you have convinced yourself!!!

Shooting RAW and printing from the TIFF file (or any other uncompressed file type) would give you great digital prints of a different magnitude than what you have wasted 10 years of doing!!!
 
guy schlacter said:
Baker123-

Thank you for you attempt. I see how you cooled it just a bit. Can you describe the adjustments you made? Was it simply adding a small amount if blue curves?
Click to expand...
Sorry to take so long to answer, but I slept till noon. I used the "color balance" tool in PS CS5, and made no other adjustments. It allows independent adjustment of highlights, midtones and shadows, and I did adjust all three. Here's a screenshot of the tool opened:


Member said:
So for competitive purposes, the prints that made me dissatisfied we equally more toward washed/yellow as the difference between your example and my what I posted. I would have been satisfied if the print would have matched what I posted, but the skin tones did not match.

SO what could be a possible explanation for the prints mismatch on the supposedly calibrated color enhanced profile printer???

Guy
Click to expand...
Sorry, but I simply lack adequate knowledge of how photo printers operate to give you anything more than uninformed speculation about that. :)

--

 
Hello Guy,

I can't really comment on your Print workflow, but like most others have said, these seem to have a red/orange cast. The faces don't appear washed out.

One VERY simple way to bring your photos in the ball park as far as a color cast goes (If you're not happy with the results) is this...

1) Duplicate your photo - to this select Filter/Blur/Average. The photo will turn all one tone.

2) Make your original photo the active window. Select Image/Adjustment/Curves. Click on the middle eyedropper and click on the DUPLICATE COPY of your image. It will also make changes to the original, and usually will improve any color cast (or at least get you close.
I hope you don't mind what I did...
Regards,
Kevin

Adjusted...



Original...



--
pBase...
http://www.pbase.com/keving54
 
Costco printing quality varies from location to location. I've had print quality problems in the past with some Costco locations. Especially from one location, where I've had to reprint 4 times and the results still were not satisfactory even when images were reprocessed with their provided ICC profiles and inaccordance to their directions. However, when I submit the same images to another Costco location even using an incorrect profile, the images come out 95% of my expectation.

The conclusion I drew was that you either let them do "adjustments" for you or you have to find a Costco that works best with your preference and work flow.
--
Tangster
 
tangster,
Yes these are my suspocians as well.

Some if the responses list sure that my main issue is the lack ofew matching, not the tonal cast on screen. I wool scan the printh example probably tomorrow.

Guy
 
sorry about the typos from my Droid above, here is the corrected text:

tangster,
Yes these are my suspocians as well.

Some of the responses on this list seem to have lost focus that my main issue is the lack of prints matching my screen, not the tonal cast on screen. I will scan the printh example probably tomorrow.

I also went to Costco and they reproduced the mismatch on their screen. The manager is going to call the Fuji technician to invistigate recalibrating their printer.

Guy
 
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