I've been getting some of my enlargements made at Costco. The color is not always as I see it on my monitor.

Question

Someone once wrote to me about doing something with RGB before sending my digital files to them for processing. Can anyone explain? Can anyone tell me more? Maybe someone knows of a better place to get this work done.

Answer 1

The following information is based on you using a digital camera.

1. Digital cameras need to be color balanced before they are used. Check your manual to figure out how to use the Custom White Balance option. This is the first step in producing an image that looks the same on the monitor and in print.

2. There is a very high chance your monitor is too bright (especially with today's LCD screens). If you have Photoshop, check your control panel for Adobe Gamma and run it. This is a very cheap way to calibrate your monitor, but is better than nothing.

3. If you have Photoshop, open up the Levels tool (CTRL + L) -> Select the half-black eye dropper tool and click on an area of your image that is the blackest. Then select the half-white eye dropper tool and click on an area of your image that would be pure white.

4. Now - those are 3 very watered down, simple steps that will provide you basic color calibration. However, they will work fine for what you are trying to achieve. You can go and photograph a grey card then sample that agains your photographs in photoshop -> you can use the threshold adjustment layer to assist the levels command in photoshop. However, the above 3 steps will work well enough

Answer 2

If you do not have a color calibrated monitor, then there is no way for you to know if your monitor is displaying the colors correctly when you look at them on your computer. Greens may not be true greens, reds not true reds, etc. The settings on your monitor is going to vary from another and will certainly vary with the printer's color output.

The first step to good color management is to calibrate your monitor. Most monitors can be calibrated satisfactorily, some better than others of course. If you have Photoshop, it comes with Adobe Gamma which you can use to get your monitor in the ballpark. If you are on a PC, you will find it in the Control Panel. The problem with that is that it is completely software based and relies on your eyes. The best way to calibrate is with a hardware based calibrator. I recommend the Spyder2. The Express version is well under $100. If you are serious with your photography and want your colors right, this is where you need to start.

Once you have your monitor calibrated, you now have a good reference point and you know that the colors you are seeing are pretty accurate. At this point you can edit your photos and you are going to have a reasonable chance of getting close to the printers colors.

However, if you are really serious, the next step to get total color management is to see if your Costco has their printer profile online that you can download. If so, then you can "soft proof" your image in Photoshop and get a very close representation of how it will look when printed. You can make any final adjustments needed, take your files to them, save it in sRGB color space, and ask them to print your images with no corrections. You should get photos back that are extremely close in color that you expect.

A very good website for digital color management is DryCreek photo. Take a while to go through it. They also have many Costco location's printer profiles there that can be downloaded.

http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/color_management.htm

But again you need to get that monitor calibrated!

Answer 3

Some of the other contributers gave you some very good information so put it to use. I worked at a high production lab (Kodak) and our systems were calibrated every day but this was working with film.

You need to first calibrate your monitor as stated by the others then what you need to do is send the exact same file to a couple of different print labs to find out which does the best work. You will see the difference in the prints. I did this when testing a couple of different labs one of my images looked almost b&w.

Have a look at these websites:

http://www.snapfish.com
http://www.kodak.com

Hope this also helps,
Kevin

Answer 4

Lets get down to brass tacs, the fact of the matter is that if you don't have your monitory calibrated properly whatever it is you are doing in photoshop or any photo editing software is absolutely useless. For instance your monitor may have a color cast to it, for example lets say you set your background art on your monitor to a medium gray yet there is a slight blue or orange color cast to your monitor. So when you take your images into photoshop and color correct your images you are correcting your images for that color shift in your monitor and not the actual colro of the photo. Suggestion is that you get a monitor calibration tool such as the one made by monaco.
However,then we come to your second problem, dealing with Costco. Ideally you want to have full calibration control over your input and your output. In the case of costco's printer, well you cant exactly calibrate the machine yourself.