Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Digital Cameras & Shooting Techniques => Topic started by: dwdallam on January 26, 2007, 02:14:51 am
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I've been having this problem for some time now. I just compared some prints I had made a few weeks ago, which i thought were way to dark, next to my monitor. WAY too dark compared to the monitor version in the shadows.
I have a Phillips Brilliance 23" LCD panel: 230WP7NS has a 23 inch 12 ms S-IPS (LG.Philips) panel.
It's calibrated using the Spyder Suite software.
And we're not talking a little dark in the shadows on the prints compared to the monitor, but ALOT dark in the prints.
I assume the best way to overcome this is to tell the software that I'm seeing more shadow detail than I really am? Is so, what calibration step would I do that? I again assume it has something to do when visiallly setting the black and white point? In that step, the Spyder II ask you to adjust the brightness of the monitor until you can see all 8 number of blocks from a black to a lighter color of black. If my assumptions are correct, I should then lower the brightness (or whatever the setting is for that adjustment/calibration when calibrating)? That way the calibration software will think I can actually see more shadow detail than I can.
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What you need to do is find a different print vendor that exhibits basic competence when printing digital files. If you've calibrated and profiled your monitor properly, any decent minilab should get pretty close to what you see on-screen. If not, take your business elsewhere.
NEVER jack up your profiling to attempt to accommodate a print vendor's incompetence. You're chasing a moving target if they aren't calibrating properly, and adjusting to match them will be like trying to nail jelly to a tree.
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How does it look when you soft-proof using the printer's profiles?
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Actually, I have used them on the odd occasion and found their profiles surprizingly acurate. As others have said softproofing is the key.
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I've been having this problem for some time now. I just compared some prints I had made a few weeks ago, which i thought were way to dark, next to my monitor. WAY too dark compared to the monitor version in the shadows.
I have a Phillips Brilliance 23" LCD panel: 230WP7NS has a 23 inch 12 ms S-IPS (LG.Philips) panel.
It's calibrated using the Spyder Suite software.
And we're not talking a little dark in the shadows on the prints compared to the monitor, but ALOT dark in the prints.
I assume the best way to overcome this is to tell the software that I'm seeing more shadow detail than I really am? Is so, what calibration step would I do that? I again assume it has something to do when visiallly setting the black and white point? In that step, the Spyder II ask you to adjust the brightness of the monitor until you can see all 8 number of blocks from a black to a lighter color of black. If my assumptions are correct, I should then lower the brightness (or whatever the setting is for that adjustment/calibration when calibrating)? That way the calibration software will think I can actually see more shadow detail than I can.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=97613\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
You don't state if you are using soft proofing with the custom profiles available for most Costco print sites. I've had very good results from my local Costco in Glenview, IL. Prints can not match the dynamic range of a good monitor, and their color gamut may be smaller. When turning on soft proofing in Photoshop, Bruce Fraser recommends looking away from the monitor so you will not be shocked. If the highlights and mid tones are good, the shadows will probably be dark.
Bill
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What you need to do is find a different print vendor that exhibits basic competence when printing digital files. If you've calibrated and profiled your monitor properly, any decent minilab should get pretty close to what you see on-screen. If not, take your business elsewhere.
NEVER jack up your profiling to attempt to accommodate a print vendor's incompetence. You're chasing a moving target if they aren't calibrating properly, and adjusting to match them will be like trying to nail jelly to a tree.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=97648\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
This is my thinking too. Thank you! The problem now is finding a place to do the printing. However, Costco does a great job when there aren't a great deal of shadows, such as portraits, urban landscape, you get the picture--even other landscapes other than sunsets where you have that large shadow area--such as when you need the sahdows to be dark, but teh refelctions in teh shadows to be bright, which incidentally look perfect monitor side.
What I was concerned with was that my monitor is much more bright than most being the type of panel it is. Even on other CRTs, I see more shadow detail on my monitor. So I was thinking maybe cheating a little on the "black point" calibration step still may work. But really, the shadows would require me to cheat too much, and then like you say, I'm trying to hit a running target. And what about if I want to print on other printers? You know at that point it never ends.
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How does it look when you soft-proof using the printer's profiles?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=97679\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Excellent. I always softprroof and then "convert" and look at it after the conversion. The shadows, and things like refelctions off teh pools of water inside the shadow area look brilliant. But not when I get the print back. Costco actually prints everyhting darker than teh profiles show--at least in high contrast prints. Portraits and well lit images are wonderfully printed on the Costco Noritsu machines. I still think tehya re a little darker even in the well lit area, which I've been told is just a matter of going from monitor to paper, which isn;t as brillaint. I understand that, but this darker than dark shadow area is getting to me.
I have compensated in the past some by setting "shadows" to 0 in Adobe Raw, and then using contrast to kick up the blacks in the shadow area. It does work to a degree. I read that somewhere. You should leave shadows to 0 if detail within shadows is important.
Still, using the profiles should accomodate for that, at least largely.
It would be interesting to see if one of you have a Costco near you. I could profile the image for that particular costco, and you could have it printed and see what you actually think. I'd be willing to pay for it too. If it actually was a great print showing the shadows like they should be shown, I'd pay for your time to send it to me so I can take it to the warehouse manager too. At that point it would be a printer specific problem that they would have to deal with.
I'd love to have a local printer to print the images, but where I live, they are all too small to actually own a high end 180, 000US printer that uses emulsions. I have a sneaking suspiciont that the Costco where I go is so busy they don't change their emulsions every day like they are suppsoe to. That can make shaodws very dark.
Believe me, those people in that printing department hate me. I've stopped talking to them all together after having to get the warehouse manager involved for a very rude employee telling me, "Don't tell me what my job is" after I asked a simple question about dust lines in a print that the photo manager told me was a bad print the day before. That in my mind is complete insolence and incompetence. Anyway, Ia hve nothing to do with those employee anymore.
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Actually, I have used them on the odd occasion and found their profiles surprizingly acurate. As others have said softproofing is the key.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=97683\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Let me get this right. When yuo say "soft proofing" you mean using Adobe's "Proof Setup" option? Of course.
I just hope I can come to some resolution, even finding a differnt printer. I'm just really over this stress of prints. I need to move forward and over this hump.
Again, if anyone wants to test print a file, I can proof it and then upload the jpg to your local Costco. That way I can see if it's my Costco specific or not. The closest Costco to me other than the local is about a three hour drive and at this time of year, most likely through the snow over the summit.
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You don't state if you are using soft proofing with the custom profiles available for most Costco print sites. I've had very good results from my local Costco in Glenview, IL. Prints can not match the dynamic range of a good monitor, and their color gamut may be smaller. When turning on soft proofing in Photoshop, Bruce Fraser recommends looking away from the monitor so you will not be shocked. If the highlights and mid tones are good, the shadows will probably be dark.
Bill
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=97694\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
So how do you get around the highlights and midtones looking good and the shadows printing darkly? I've read that Fraser article too now that you mention it. Yes, as stated below, I soft proof all the way to hell. lol. I mean if that is true, tehn it would seem you need to incrase (guess) how much to brighten the image, either in RAW or using levels. The problem is that it's a crap shoot.
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OK I found a print I did about a month ago and it came out way too dark in the shadows, and even overall. But the mids and highs are acceptable. On my monitor the shadows are nicely lit and you can see the detail of the water spray and the foam Ont eh water, and everything else. The print you cannot see those things at all. If you view it in direct sunlight, it is better, but the shadows are still way too muddy compared to the online print.
Both the print and the Costco profile are there. If anyone want to see how it looks on their machine using the Costco profile that the image is converted to, that would be very helpful. Maybe it is something on my end? At least we can determine how how the shadows look on your screen using the same profile.
http://dwdallam.com/shared/ (http://dwdallam.com/shared/)
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After looking at the profile and the image, I'm changing my diagnosis to a monitor calibration problem. Your blocked shadows are truly blocked; you have huge areas where the RGB values fluctuate between 2 and 3 in all channels (the large rocks on the left and right in particular). If you think you're seeing significant detail there, you're mistaken; it's noise and/or pixellated JPEG artifacts. Look at the histogram in Photoshop, and you'll see that 14.25% of your entire image is < RGB value 10, as well as a huge spike between levels 2 and 5. You should not expect to see shadow detail under such circumstances, and if your calibrated and profiled monitor is saying otherwise, your measuring tool is severely defective or miscalibrated. You should look into getting it repaired or replaced; hopefully it is still under warranty.
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After looking at the profile and the image, I'm changing my diagnosis to a monitor calibration problem. Your blocked shadows are truly blocked; you have huge areas where the RGB values fluctuate between 2 and 3 in all channels (the large rocks on the left and right in particular). If you think you're seeing significant detail there, you're mistaken; it's noise and/or pixellated JPEG artifacts. Look at the histogram in Photoshop, and you'll see that 14.25% of your entire image is < RGB value 10, as well as a huge spike between levels 2 and 5. You should not expect to see shadow detail under such circumstances, and if your calibrated and profiled monitor is saying otherwise, your measuring tool is severely defective or miscalibrated. You should look into getting it repaired or replaced; hopefully it is still under warranty.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=97745\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Jonathan,
The rocks and the true shadows are black, even on my screen or silloetted, but the forground is so dark in the prints so as to make it unseeable pretty much. In other words, on my screen I can see the waves breaking over the rocks and the spray off of them, and I can see the water in the forground perfectly all the way up on the beach, from the rocks back to the camera position. I can see the reflection off of the water and the refelction off of the beach too where the water is pulling back into the ocean. In the prints, you don' t see that. It's very dark. Put yet another way, the spray coming off of the rocks looks so dark as to look like part of the rock. How do those areas look on your screen?
Another way to look at this is if I want the forground to be bright enough to resemble my monitor in the prints, I'd have to use levels and really slide the middle level icon to the left to bring out the forground, and on my screen, it washes out the color in the clouds and sky.
Thanks for taking the time to do this. I feel like there may be hope in getting good prints from Costco after all--maybe.
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I've calibrated my monitor with a Gretag-Macbeth Eye-One Pro spectrophotometer, which has given me excellent matching between all of my monitors (2 LCD, 1 CRT, and a laptop), 4 printers, and several outside print vendors. So I'm pretty confident that it's working properly. Looking at your image, I see plenty of detail in the flatter areas of the water, and there is some detail in the front of the waves, although it is kind of dark and noisy and motion blurred. If that matches what you're seeing, then your monitor calibration isn't too far off, and your local Costco is the problem.
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I'm by no means an expert in this arena, but I haven't seen this touched on, yet, and its been useful for me in printing to various vendors, etc...
When soft proofing w/ black point compensation turned on, it can be tricky to judge what's going on in the shadows - its taken me a while to get used to seeing those things, and judging against what's going to come out in the print. I've generally found (on three different RA-4 based printers in different shops) that the printer has less dynamic range than my picture, and that the shadows block up a lot more in the print than they appear to on the monitor.
In order to "pack" the print into the dynamic range of the printer and retain shadow detail, I have to reset what I tell the printer is "black" - I do this via the Levels command in Photoshop, and I adjust the OUTPUT shadow slider (that's the bar at the very bottom - not the one directly under the histogram) upwards some until the softproof again shows the details that its missing. Many times, this works out to moving the slider 10-15 units.
The prints come back with black blacks, and look like the monitor - but its a bit unnerving to see it like that on the screen...
Just my experience... I'm sure someone will tell me I'm an idiot, now, but... oh well..
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OK I found a print I did about a month ago and it came out way too dark in the shadows, and even overall. But the mids and highs are acceptable. On my monitor the shadows are nicely lit and you can see the detail of the water spray and the foam Ont eh water, and everything else. The print you cannot see those things at all. If you view it in direct sunlight, it is better, but the shadows are still way too muddy compared to the online print.
Both the print and the Costco profile are there. If anyone want to see how it looks on their machine using the Costco profile that the image is converted to, that would be very helpful. Maybe it is something on my end? At least we can determine how how the shadows look on your screen using the same profile.
http://dwdallam.com/shared/ (http://dwdallam.com/shared/)
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=97728\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
The dynamic range of the best glossy prints is no better than 100:1, whereas a monitor can display 1000:1. Compression of the dynamic range is needed in order to print the image and usually an S-curve is applied and the deep shadows are clipped.
Here is an image of a Stouffer step wedge which has decrements of 0.1 OD (1/3 f-stop). The image was rendered with Adobe ACR with the shadow set to zero. Look at the image on your monitor and then print it. I can guarantee you that the monitor will show deeper shadows.
[attachment=1662:attachment]
Bill
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That's a kludge to compensate for the shortcomings of the print vendor's profile/calibration. If you use relative colorimetric rendering intent with black point compensation, and the profiles are accurate and the printer is reasonably well-linearized, the only possible problem you should have is visually unpleasant handling of out-of-gamut colors. Under no circumstances should you have extensive shadow blocking in areas that show detail on-screen.
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That's a kludge to compensate for the shortcomings of the print vendor's profile/calibration. If you use relative colorimetric rendering intent with black point compensation, and the profiles are accurate and the printer is reasonably well-linearized, the only possible problem you should have is visually unpleasant handling of out-of-gamut colors. Under no circumstances should you have extensive shadow blocking in areas that show detail on-screen.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=97769\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Jonathan,
I do not know to which post you are replying, but in the event that you are replying to my post, you are wrong. Black point compensation merely ensures that the black in the image is mapped to black in the destination, so that the entire dynamic range of the input is mapped to the entire dynamic range of the output. No profile can increase the dynamic range of a device. Rendering intent is essentially irrelevant in the deep shadows, where the eye does not perceive color.
It is simply impossible to show gradations in the deep shadows on a reflection print that are capable of being shown on a monitor or transparency. Why do you think that we use Stouffer wedges rather than Kodak Q14 targets? If you don't believe me, perform the test and report back with your results.
Bill
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i hae a softproofing question. which stage in the process are you using it?
is it the last step or can you put it on right away and so all edits will affect the soft proof?
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First, I was replying to X-Re, and second, you are wrong, at least under the conditions I specified. When you use relative colorimetric rendering intent and black point compensation, the white point of the source color space is mapped to the white point of the destination device space, and the black point of the source space is mapped to the black point of the destination device space. Intermediate tones are mapped proportionally between the destination white and black points, so that a 20-step gray pattern will appear to have an even luminance interval between steps on the monitor and the output device. The distance between the white and black points will vary somewhat depending on the printer and paper type. Matte papers have less DR than glossy, so while a 20-step gray pattern printed on matte will have a smaller tonal interval between steps than one printed on glossy paper, both prints will exhibit even step-to-step tonal gradations from white to black if the printer is properly profiled. I've verified this behavior with an Epson 7600, Epson R1800, Canon S9000, a couple of color laser printers, as well as a few other third party vendors I had make prints for me at one time or another.
Granted, prints have less DR than a monitor display. But that certainly does not mean that one must set the black point of an image to RGB 15,15,15 to avoid shadow blocking. All it means is that prints may appear less contrasty than a monitor display. If you have to raise the black point to RGB 15,15,15 to avoid shadow blocking when using RelCol+BP compensation, either your printer profile is bad, or you're trying to print some really dark, saturated out-of-gamut colors. Period.
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First, I was replying to X-Re, and second, you are wrong, at least under the conditions I specified. When you use relative calorimetric rendering intent and black point compensation, the white point of the source color space is mapped to the white point of the destination device space, and the black point of the source space is mapped to the black point of the destination device space. Intermediate tones are mapped proportionally between the destination white and black points, so that a 20-step gray pattern will appear to have an even luminance interval between steps on the monitor and the output device. The distance between the white and black points will vary somewhat depending on the printer and paper type. Matte papers have less DR than glossy, so while a 20-step gray pattern printed on matte will have a smaller tonal interval between steps than one printed on glossy paper, both prints will exhibit even step-to-step tonal gradations from white to black if the printer is properly profiled. I've verified this behavior with an Epson 7600, Epson R1800, Canon S9000, a couple of color laser printers, as well as a few other third party vendors I had make prints for me at one time or another.
Granted, prints have less DR than a monitor display. But that certainly does not mean that one must set the black point of an image to RGB 15,15,15 to avoid shadow blocking. All it means is that prints may appear less contrasty than a monitor display. If you have to raise the black point to RGB 15,15,15 to avoid shadow blocking when using RelCol+BP compensation, either your printer profile is bad, or you're trying to print some really dark, saturated out-of-gamut colors. Period.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=97780\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
No one uses absolute colorimetric for rendering of photographs and anyone who uses a canned non-intelligent profile and CMS to make artistic decisions is naive. If the gamut of the input device is greater than that of the output device remapping must be done and current CMS's do not take the image content into account, at least to the extent required for a good print in difficult situations. With a high contrast image, your mapping algorithm described above would give a flat low contrast image with poor midtones. In these cases one can use the highlight-shadow control of Photoshop or use HDR and possibly some judgment. No photographic artist would use a profile from Costco for such purposes.
Getting to the problem at hand, it will be interesting how to get the best print from the OPs image. Hopefully, you will report back.
Bill
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With a high contrast image, your mapping algorithm described above would give a flat low contrast image with poor midtones. In these cases one can use the highlight-shadow control of Photoshop or use HDR and possibly some judgment. No photographic artist would use a profile from Costco for such purposes.
You're confusing several things here. First, gamut and contrast are hardly the same thing. When viewing an image on a high-contrast monitor display, a print of the image is going to exhibit less contrast than the monitor image, no question. But recommending that print contrast be further reduced by setting the black point to 25,25,25 or some other value to avoid shadow blocking is rarely a good idea. Doing so to trade dynamic range for wider shadow gamut may make sense occasionally when there are a lot of heavily saturated colors in the deep shadows, but offering it as blanket advice to avoid shadow blocking makes about as much sense as recommending nose picking to solve world hunger. This is especially true when printing B&W images, or any image that fits within the printer gamut. In such cases, if you find it necessary to raise the image's black point from 0,0,0 to avoid shadow blocking, you can bank on your printer profile being bad.
Second, HDR addresses a completely different cause of shadow blocking than what was being discussed. If the image file has a lot of clipped highlights or shadows, HDR can help by capturing additional data to keep detail throughout the entire tonal range of the image. But when the image does not have clipped highlights or shadows, or areas of the image that do have 10-15 levels of detail still print as featureless solid colors, HDR will not help. HDR is only useful until no highlights or shadows are clipped in the image data. After that, you can accomplish the exact same result (bringing the brightest white and darkest black closer together tonally) with a simple level adjustment. But in any event, if there are no out-of-gamut colors in the image, and areas of the image containing detail are printed as a solid color, the profile is bad.
Third, I'm not recommending using profile conversion as the preferred method to deal with out-of-gamut colors. Using relative colorimetric with or without BP compensation can clip colors, which can cause detailed ares to be printed as solid color anywhere in the tonal range of the image. Using perceptual can cause significant color casts and hue shifts. The best way is to manually prep the file to bring all colors within the gamut of the output device.
Fourth, your comment about no "photographic artist" using Costco as a print source is a bit snobbish. Not all Costcos maintain their minilabs to a high degree of color consistency, but many do. I used the one in Vacaville, California for several years with excellent results. The staff there actually knew something about color calibration and profiles, and as a result, most of the pro photographers in the area used Costco for their high-volume print work up to 12x18 inches. If a vendor can meet high standards of quality at a low price with a fast turnaround time, there's no reason to use a vendor who charges more and takes longer to deliver the same result. The only reason I quit using Costco was because I bought a 7600 to be able to make my own prints latger than 12x18, an EyeOne spectrophotometer kit to make my own printer profiles, and QImage to easily and conveniently gang numerous small prints on a roll print job. Using the Epson and my own profiles wasn't that much of a quality advantage over the Dry Creek profile + Costco; what I mostly gained was the ability to print up to 24x36, and to do small print jobs without having to copy the image files to a memory card, drive down to Costco to drop off the files, and then drive back there again to pick up the prints.
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I've calibrated my monitor with a Gretag-Macbeth Eye-One Pro spectrophotometer, which has given me excellent matching between all of my monitors (2 LCD, 1 CRT, and a laptop), 4 printers, and several outside print vendors. So I'm pretty confident that it's working properly. Looking at your image, I see plenty of detail in the flatter areas of the water, and there is some detail in the front of the waves, although it is kind of dark and noisy and motion blurred. If that matches what you're seeing, then your monitor calibration isn't too far off, and your local Costco is the problem.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=97757\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
That is what I am seeing. Plenty of detail--brightnesss--in the forground water and the relfection on the beach area. I put alot of time reading and calibrating etc., so I was at an end as to what to do about it.
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I'm by no means an expert in this arena, but I haven't seen this touched on, yet, and its been useful for me in printing to various vendors, etc...
When soft proofing w/ black point compensation turned on, it can be tricky to judge what's going on in the shadows - its taken me a while to get used to seeing those things, and judging against what's going to come out in the print. I've generally found (on three different RA-4 based printers in different shops) that the printer has less dynamic range than my picture, and that the shadows block up a lot more in the print than they appear to on the monitor.
In order to "pack" the print into the dynamic range of the printer and retain shadow detail, I have to reset what I tell the printer is "black" - I do this via the Levels command in Photoshop, and I adjust the OUTPUT shadow slider (that's the bar at the very bottom - not the one directly under the histogram) upwards some until the softproof again shows the details that its missing. Many times, this works out to moving the slider 10-15 units.
The prints come back with black blacks, and look like the monitor - but its a bit unnerving to see it like that on the screen...
Just my experience... I'm sure someone will tell me I'm an idiot, now, but... oh well..
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=97762\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
That sounds like a logical conclusion to the problem. I've tried moving the sliders too, and leaving the "shadows" set to zero in ACR. I never tried the lower slider. I'll read up on its functin and why it's preferable to the upper sliders for prints. The problem is like Jonathan said though: When it looks good on yuor screen, adjusting to try to match what you will get in the printed version is like trying to nail jelly to a tree.
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The dynamic range of the best glossy prints is no better than 100:1, whereas a monitor can display 1000:1. Compression of the dynamic range is needed in order to print the image and usually an S-curve is applied and the deep shadows are clipped.
Here is an image of a Stouffer step wedge which has decrements of 0.1 OD (1/3 f-stop). The image was rendered with Adobe ACR with the shadow set to zero. Look at the image on your monitor and then print it. I can guarantee you that the monitor will show deeper shadows.
[attachment=1662:attachment]
Bill
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=97767\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Bill, that is true and I remeber that contrast information when I was doing research on that topic. The problem is, how to adjust for it consistently?
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i hae a softproofing question. which stage in the process are you using it?
is it the last step or can you put it on right away and so all edits will affect the soft proof?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=97779\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Last step, and then adjust to meet your criteria, proof again, repeat as much as necessary and then "convert" and save the file for printing-- but please post this as a different thread. It's called "thread hijacking."
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You're confusing several things here. First, gamut and contrast are hardly the same thing. When viewing an image on a high-contrast monitor display, a print of the image is going to exhibit less contrast than the monitor image, no question. But recommending that print contrast be furthe CLIP. . ..
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Sounds like some good information there. My problem is how I can get good output from my Costco?
I'll tell you what Jonathan. I can upload my RAW file of the image we've been looking at, and you can do the adjustments using my Costco's profile, and then upload the jpg. I'll down load it and print it and then send the actual print to you in mail. Then we can REALLY see if Costco is the problem, or something I'm doing.
Would you be willing to do that?
If so, if a print size of 8x12 would be big enough, you can upload an 8x12 print in jpg--after your processing and conversion--and I'll get it printed and then send you the print in email. This would definitively ascertain where the problem is becsaue then we would be looking at the exact same print. I'll have two printed. One for me and one for you.
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You're confusing several things here. First, gamut and contrast are hardly the same thing.
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=97846\")
You are the one who introduced these terms into the discussion with irrelevant references to "out of gamut colors". You are thinking of gamut as a two dimensional CIE diagram, but forget that there is a third dimension involving luminosity as explained [a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamut]here.[/url]
Gernot Hoffman (http://www.fho-emden.de/~hoffmann/cielab03022003.pdf) also has some good 3D representations of CIE Lab. As you may note, there is nothing the eye perceives as yellow at low luminosities.
When viewing an image on a high-contrast monitor display, a print of the image is going to exhibit less contrast than the monitor image, no question. But recommending that print contrast be further reduced by setting the black point to 25,25,25 or some other value to avoid shadow blocking is rarely a good idea.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=97846\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I hardly recommended setting the black point at 25, 25, 25. You want maximum black in the print to correspond to the maximum density that the printer can use, but if you want a decent rendering, you have to use non-linear methods in some difficult situations.
Third, I'm not recommending using profile conversion as the preferred method to deal with out-of-gamut colors. Using relative colorimetric with or without BP compensation can clip colors, which can cause detailed ares to be printed as solid color anywhere in the tonal range of the image. Using perceptual can cause significant color casts and hue shifts. The best way is to manually prep the file to bring all colors within the gamut of the output device.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=97846\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Again, you are missing the point. We are not talking about out of gamut colors. The eye does not perceive color at the black point and the OP did not complain about color shifts. Relative colorimetric is basically irrelevant to the discussion. Just as you should manually prep the file to handle out of gamut colors, you should also prep the file to handle luminosities that can not be represented in the print, rather than depending on some profile to automate the job for you.
Fourth, your comment about no "photographic artist" using Costco as a print source is a bit snobbish. Not all Costcos maintain their minilabs to a high degree of color consistency, but many do.
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Really,? I am the one who said he got good results from Costco, whereas you originally suggested that the OP go to another lab. Then you suggested that his monitor was mis calibrated. IMHO, he needs to do some nonlinear editing to brighten the quarter tones and not change the black point. A good profile will match up the black points. If you do your homework, you can get excellent results from Costco. However, recent photo ink jet printers exceed the gamut of the Noritsu printers with Crystal Archive paper and this is another reason to do your own printing (in addition to size as you mention).
Bill
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You are the one who introduced these terms into the discussion with irrelevant references to "out of gamut colors". You are thinking of gamut as a two dimensional CIE diagram, but forget that there is a third dimension involving luminosity as explained here. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamut)
Oh, please. You're carrying coal to Newcastle here. I'm well aware of the three-dimensional character of color spaces. You're the one defending the notion of raising the black point in an image file to something other than 0,0,0 as something that should be done on a consistent basis, rather than as a strategy to deal with saturated colors in the shadows or as a kludge to deal with a poor-quality profile with shadow problems.
The reason I brought up saturated shadow colors is because it one of the few instances where raising the black point of an image above 0,0,0 makes some sense. Raising the black point of an image above 0,0,0 can take advantage if the fact that gamut increases as luminance rises above the printer's black point. If shadow blocking is happening because the shadows of an image contain some very dark saturated greens the printer can't print, (common when there is foliage in deep shadow) raising the black point a little may in certain instances bring those greens into the printer's gamut. You trade a little DR for the wider gamut you get a little higher up the luminance axis.
Another strategy that can be useful is making a luminance mask, using it to select the shadows, and doing some selective shadow desaturation. This is usually a better option, as it allows you to keep 100% of the DR the printer has to offer, while avoiding blocking from out-of-gamut shadows. If done properly, the visual impact of the desaturation is minimal, but setting up the transparency curve for the selection mask can be a bit tricky to get right.
Again, you are missing the point. We are not talking about out of gamut colors. The eye does not perceive color at the black point and the OP did not complain about color shifts.
I'm not missing any point. The OP is complaining about blocked shadows. One cause of blocked shadows is saturated, out-of-gamut colors in the shadows that turn detailed portions of the file into dark, solid blocks of mostly-black. The posted image has a lot of saturated colors in the shadows, so it's one factor that needs to be considered.
Really,? I am the one who said he got good results from Costco, whereas you originally suggested that the OP go to another lab. Then you suggested that his monitor was mis calibrated.
I was trying to suggest the most likely cause of the problem, and that changed when I was given additional information. In the maintenance and medical fields, when there are multiple possible causes for a given set of symptoms, you start with the most likely one first. Sometimes you have to work all the way down the list of possibilities before solving the problem, but examining the most common causes first usually sames time and effort in the long run.
IMHO, he needs to do some nonlinear editing to brighten the quarter tones and not change the black point. A good profile will match up the black points. If you do your homework, you can get excellent results from Costco. However, recent photo ink jet printers exceed the gamut of the Noritsu printers with Crystal Archive paper and this is another reason to do your own printing (in addition to size as you mention).
We're in agreement here. That was part of the reason I got the 7600.
I'll tell you what Jonathan. I can upload my RAW file of the image we've been looking at, and you can do the adjustments using my Costco's profile, and then upload the jpg. I'll down load it and print it and then send the actual print to you in mail. Then we can REALLY see if Costco is the problem, or something I'm doing.
Would you be willing to do that?
Yes. Post a link to the RAW, and I'll do a workup on it with the posted profile as a guide, and post an 8x12 JPEG with a description of what I did. It may take a week or two, as I just shot a wedding and processing the shots has been occupying my limited spare time.
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The reason I brought up saturated shadow colors is because it one of the few instances where raising the black point of an image above 0,0,0 makes some sense. Raising the black point of an image above 0,0,0 can take advantage if the fact that gamut increases as luminance rises above the printer's black point. If shadow blocking is happening because the shadows of an image contain some very dark saturated greens the printer can't print, (common when there is foliage in deep shadow) raising the black point a little may in certain instances bring those greens into the printer's gamut. You trade a little DR for the wider gamut you get a little higher up the luminance axis.
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One thing that has to be considered is whether the problem related to saturation or luminance. Of course, saturation is relatively meaningless in black, where there is no color. A good printer driver would lay down black and not CMY for blue, which is the saturated color in this photo. In order to investigate this problem, I downloaded the original image (whose profile was the Costco luster) and converted it to AdobeRGB in Photoshop and performed some tests in GamutVision and made some comparisons to what might be obtained from the Epson 2200.
Here is the Delta E (color difference that takes luminance into account) going from the image in Adobe RGB to the Costco profile with relative colorimetric. As is evident, the Delta E is large in the shadows, where the OP is having problems.
[attachment=1685:attachment]
And here is a 3D gamut plot showing the differences between input and output. The difference is in luminance, not saturation. The Costco luster paper simply can't produce a high density black and the output goes to a higher luminosity. There is little change in saturation.
[attachment=1687:attachment]
Here are the same outputs for the Epson Premium Luster paper:
[attachment=1688:attachment]
[attachment=1689:attachment]
I'm just starting to use GamutVision and any pointers would be appreciated. However, from this analysis, the Epson should do quite a bit better than the Cosco printer.
Another strategy that can be useful is making a luminance mask, using it to select the shadows, and doing some selective shadow desaturation. This is usually a better option, as it allows you to keep 100% of the DR the printer has to offer, while avoiding blocking from out-of-gamut shadows. If done properly, the visual impact of the desaturation is minimal, but setting up the transparency curve for the selection mask can be a bit tricky to get right.
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Now you talking about non-linear editing and I agree with that. The mask could be used to adjust either lumonsity or saturation, but I think the former would be most helpful. The OP might try [a href=\"http://dustylens.com/luminosity_mask.htm]Steve Bingham's [/url] method if he was shooting in raw.
Bill
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One thing that has to be considered is whether the problem related to saturation or luminance.
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For further Gamutvison analysis see this post: [a href=\"http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=14526&view=findpost&p=98941]Click here[/url]
Bill
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No one uses absolute colorimetric for rendering of photographs .....[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=97823\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I do, sometimes. If the image looks right on the monitor without proof colors on, and absolute col does not show serious out-of-gamut areas with proof colors on, I'll sometimes use abs col. The alternative is to increase saturation and contrast in rel col proof colors.
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I do, sometimes. If the image looks right on the monitor without proof colors on, and absolute col does not show serious out-of-gamut areas with proof colors on, I'll sometimes use abs col. The alternative is to increase saturation and contrast in rel col proof colors.
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Ray,
I stand corrected then. I should have said hardly anyone uses absolute colorimetric.
Bill
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Sorry I haven't posted. I somehow didn't get any emails for the topic and just checked. All of this technical information is extremely interesting and I'm glad you all understand it in the death you do. I'm sure we will have some resolution for me soon, which will REALLY take the stress off of me. I have shows coming up and I need to get some reliable prints.
Jonathan, I'm not sure what is the most logical way to go about this test we have in mind. I think maybe the best way to go about it would be for you to process the image and convert to Adobe RGB for print. Print it at your Costco. Given that it looks close enough to your monitor, I'll take exact same file and print it on my Costco's printer. If it is greatly darker, then we know the printer is at fault.
The reason I say use Adobe RGB is that then both the files are identical, although the printers are not. I've tested that before running the same print through through the Costco Profile conversion and Adobe RGB, and the prints are both very close in color and all else.
The reason we need this to be a controlled experiment is that I will then take those prints and mail them with our explanation to the CEO of Costco. I've given them far to much time to fix this problem, so I'll get the CEO involved now.
If you have a better way to go about it, let me know.
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Sorry I haven't posted. I somehow didn't get any emails for the topic and just checked. All of this technical information is extremely interesting and I'm glad you all understand it in the death you do. I'm sure we will have some resolution for me soon, which will REALLY take the stress off of me. I have shows coming up and I need to get some reliable prints.
Jonathan, I'm not sure what is the most logical way to go about this test we have in mind. I think maybe the best way to go about it would be for you to process the image and convert to Adobe RGB for print. Print it at your Costco. Given that it looks close enough to your monitor, I'll take exact same file and print it on my Costco's printer. If it is greatly darker, then we know the printer is at fault.
Since I'm in Germany, the local Costco option (for me anyway) is out. Upload your RAW to your web site with the JPEG and the profile, and post the link in this thread so that I and other interested parties can DL it and process it to fit into the profile. Adobe RGB would be a bad idea, as the Noritsu+Crystal Archive gamut is significantly smaller than Adobe RGB in many places, and there would definitely be gamut issues. By default, the Noritsu ignores the profile tag, and assumes sRGB, so converting to Adobe RGB means you'll get less saturation and some color shifting in the more saturated colors.
A better idea would be to convert the tweaked-for-Costco file to the Costco profile, and try to get them to print that file with NO COLOR ADJUSTMENTS. You'll need to capitalize that in the printing instructions when you submit the file to be printing to make sure it actually happens. That's the correct way to ensure that you get the results you expect from the profile. The printer will not attempt any auto color adjustments or sharpening; it will simply send the RGB values through with no alteration, and the quality of the results will be directly related to how well the printer matches the profile. Mail me a copy of the print, and I'll post a critique of how well it matches my monitor. As a cross-check, I'll print a copy of it with my Epson R1800, and mail it to you so you can compare my print to your monitor. Send me a PM with your mailing address once you have the RAW posted.
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Since I'm in Germany, the local Costco option (for me anyway) is out. Upload your RAW to your web site with the JPEG and the profile, and post the link in this thread so that I and other interested parties can DL it and process it to fit into the profile. Adobe RGB would be a bad idea, as the Noritsu+Crystal Archive gamut is significantly smaller than Adobe RGB in many places, and there would definitely be gamut issues. By default, the Noritsu ignores the profile tag, and assumes sRGB, so converting to Adobe RGB means you'll get less saturation and some color shifting in the more saturated colors.
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I agree with Jonathan that it would be very helpful for forum members to have access to the raw file. You would not have the copyright watermark, but you probably would get a log of constructive feedback.
As to the color space that should be used for rendering of the raw file, you can not go wrong with 16 bit ProPhotoRGB if you use soft proofing and have a working knowledge of color management. Another more selective approach is to use the smallest color space that will contain the range of the colors captured by the camera as shown by the lack of clipping in ACR or whatever converter you are using.
It is true that the gamut of the Noritsu-Crystal archive combination is easily encompassed by sRGB, but you have no control of how out of gamut colors are handled once the camera output is clipped to sRGB. These matters are discussed at length by Bruce Fraser, Thomas Knoll, and other experts in the Lightroom podcast Number 8 (see [a href=\"http://photoshopnews.com/2006/07/07/lightroom-podcast-episode-8-posted/]Jeff Schewe's[/url] post for details).
Bill
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As to the color space that should be used for rendering of the raw file, you can not go wrong with 16 bit ProPhotoRGB if you use soft proofing and have a working knowledge of color management.
I use 16-bit ProPhoto as my main editing space, make a copy and tweak it as necessary for the output device, then convert to the device profile after I've dealt with any out-of-gamut colors. But I always keep a ProPhoto master copy so that I'm not starting with a device-limited file if I want to print to something with a wider gamut later.
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Yes, I've tested ARGB side by side with teh profile, but it is very close to the profile colors. Anyway, point taken.
NEVER, NEVER have I forgotten to do that. I usually upload the photos using thier web space, and then check off NO ADJUSTMENTS. I also look on the back of the print for the code. The code, as you probably know, for NO ADJUSTMENT is N-N-N-N-N.
Jonathan. Before we do anything, let's do this. Since our monitors are both hardware calibrated, let me send you a file processed for your printer. You can see then if I am doing anything wrong by simply looking at or printing the file on your Epson. We can see if I'm blocking up the shadows due to my monitor being out of calibration somehow, or some other error I am making. Then we can move on to see if Costco is the culprit.
If that sounds like a logical starting point, then I'll need your printer profile.
Since I'm in Germany, the local Costco option (for me anyway) is out. Upload your RAW to your web site with the JPEG and the profile, and post the link in this thread so that I and other interested parties can DL it and process it to fit into the profile. Adobe RGB would be a bad idea, as the Noritsu+Crystal Archive gamut is significantly smaller than Adobe RGB in many places, and there would definitely be gamut issues. By default, the No. . . .SNIP
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Jonathan. Before we do anything, let's do this. Since our monitors are both hardware calibrated, let me send you a file processed for your printer. You can see then if I am doing anything wrong by simply looking at or printing the file on your Epson. We can see if I'm blocking up the shadows due to my monitor being out of calibration somehow, or some other error I am making. Then we can move on to see if Costco is the culprit.
If that sounds like a logical starting point, then I'll need your printer profile.
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It sounds as though you guys are making progress, but there are a couple of points that I would like to mention and hope will be helpful. Firstly, the default black point setting of most raw converters clips the darkest shadows considerably as shown by this composite graph for the Nikon D200. With the default shadow setting, ACR rolls off the shadows starting at about log Exp of -2. This doesn't make much difference for most prints, which have a DMax of 2 or less. The Kodak Q14 reflective target has a DMax of 1.95 and this is the deepest black that can be produced on most reflection prints, and the default ACR curve for the Q14 is also shown.
[attachment=1759:attachment]
I have little doubt that the deepest shadows in your image can not be printed but can be seen on a good monitor with a higher contrast ratio than 100:1. As shown by my previous GamutVision plot, the Costco profile does remap the darkest tones in the print and soft proofing should be reasonably accurate. However, I think the best print will require special editing.
Since the final image will most require non-linear editing of luminance or saturation for the best printed results, it would not be a good idea to apply the Epson profile to the file you send Jonathan. I would send the raw file or at least a 16 bit tiff converted with a linear tone curve and shadow level of zero.
Since the DMax of Epson photo printers is greater than that of Costco with Crystal Archive luster, you can expect better results from the ink jet printer. Glossy would give the highest DMax, but the Epson Premium Luster also has a good DMax.
Bill
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It sounds as though you guys are making progress, but there are a couple of points that I would like to mention and hope will be helpful. Firstly, the default black point setting of most raw converters clips the darkest shadows considerably as shown by this composite graph for the Nikon D200. With the default shadow setting, ACR rolls off the shadows starting at about log Exp of -2. This doesn't make much difference for most prints, which have a DMax of 2 or less. The Kodak Q14 reflective target has a DMax of 1.95 and this is the deepest black that can be produced on most reflection prints, and the default ACR curve for the Q14 is also shown.
You're making a lot of assumptions that are only valid for absolute colorimetric rendering, which is only rarely used, and never by Costco. With relative colorimetric rendering and blackpoint compensation, the blackest black of the image source space is mapped to the blackest black the printer can print. The whitest white of the source space is mapped to the printer's paper white, and all intermediate values are scaled evenly between the printer's black and white points. No color value will fall out-of-gamut solely due to its luminance value, the hue/saturation must be out-of-gamut in order to cause a problem. If you send a grayscale image to the printer that has no clipped pixels, no pixels will be clipped during the color space conversion. A matte-finish print will exhibit less DR than a glossy print, but that is because the entire DR of the source image is being compressed into a smaller range with the matte print than with the glossy, not because any of the image's DR is being clipped away. So the discussion of step wedges and reflective targets isn't really relevant. Pixels may be clipped to the edges of the printer's gamut if they are too saturated, but any unclipped image can be printed without any pixel being clipped to the printer's white or black point.
Here's an example. The image is one I shot in Yellowstone a few years ago; the water going over the falls is in direct sun, and the rocks on the right are in deep shadow. Let's say the scene has a 10-stop DR altogether.
[attachment=1761:attachment]
If we print this to glossy paper, the remapping of the white and black points means the print will look something like this:
[attachment=1762:attachment]
If we print on matte, the narrower distance between the white and black points means the print will look something like this:
[attachment=1763:attachment]
But in neither case are the highlights or shadows actually clipped, at least not any worse than the original image was. All that has happened is the original image's DR was remapped into a narrower range, more so with the matte print, which looks correspondingly "flatter". Note that the same image file was sent to the printer in both cases; the change in black point was done by converting from the source space to the printer space, not by altering the black point of the image with levels or curves.
My default ACR conversion settings are shadows set to 0, and linear tone curve, or a custom curve to boost global contrast a bit without clipping any pixels. This keeps as much of the subject's DR in the image file as possible.
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You're making a lot of assumptions that are only valid for absolute colorimetric rendering, which is only rarely used, and never by Costco. With relative colorimetric rendering and blackpoint compensation, the blackest black of the image source space is mapped to the blackest black the printer can print. The whitest white of the source space is mapped to the printer's paper white, and all intermediate values are scaled evenly between the printer's black and white points.
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You are the one making invalid assumptions. As I said before, no one uses absolute colorimetric for ordinary photography. The Costco profiles are look-up table based and have tables for relative colorimetric and perceptual colorimetric. Since perceptual colorimetric distributes the tones in a visually uniform manner, BPC shouldn't be necessary with this rendering intent, but can be applied in the case of a bad profile. BPC does not apply to absolute colorimetric.
Your assumptions about linear mapping from black to white with relative colorimetric and BPC are incorrect. BPC is described in some detail by Adobe here: [a href=\"http://www.color.org/AdobeBPC.pdf]http://www.color.org/AdobeBPC.pdf[/url].
Black and white points are mapped more or less as you describe, but the mapping of intermediate values is not linear as you assume and this was clearly shown by my GamutVision plot shown in another related thread and reproduced below. For details of the mapping process, refer to section 7.3 of the reference. In step 3 of the algorithm, a decode function is used to map from L*a*b*, and different nonlinear equations are used to convert from L*a*b* to XYZ for L ≤ 8.0 and L > 8. XYZ output values are then calculated from the linear equations shown in the reference and the results are then handed off to the profile for further adjustment.
[attachment=1764:attachment]
Here is where the step wedges come in: in a short scale subject a linear mapping can be done as you describe. For a high dynamic range image, highlight and shadow tone compression can be performed according to the lookup table provided with the profile, and the values used are for average subjects. These profiles are not "smart" and do not take subject content into account. To maintain midtone contrast, an S curve may be applied to the shadows and highlights as determined by the lookup tables in the profile. Rendering from scene to output luminance in high contrast situations is complex and basically nonlinear. We are not talking about clipping, but tone mapping and the process may require artistic intervention. You appear to place too much confidence in the profile to make these decisions for you. In black and white work, this process was known as dodging and burning. With digital one can use tone curves or localized adjustments.
Bill
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Your assumptions about linear mapping from black to white with relative colorimetric and BPC are incorrect. BPC is described in some detail by Adobe here: http://www.color.org/AdobeBPC.pdf (http://www.color.org/AdobeBPC.pdf).
I never said anything about "linear", I said "evenly", as in even-looking tonal gradations in the final print. I'm well aware that human perception of luminosity is logarithmic, not linear. And my point (which you seem to have completely missed) was that with a good profile, you don't need to manually futz with an image's black point to get a good print, unless you are trying to trade DR for wider shadow gamut. Leaving the black point at 0 and the white point at 255 will give you all of the DR the printer has to offer, whatever that may be. Given the limited DR of most printers, Costco especially) that is a generally a good thing.
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I never said anything about "linear", I said "evenly", as in even-looking tonal gradations in the final print. I'm well aware that human perception of luminosity is logarithmic, not linear. And my point (which you seem to have completely missed) was that with a good profile, you don't need to manually futz with an image's black point to get a good print, unless you are trying to trade DR for wider shadow gamut. Leaving the black point at 0 and the white point at 255 will give you all of the DR the printer has to offer, whatever that may be. Given the limited DR of most printers, Costco especially) that is a generally a good thing.
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To put things simply, if you squeeze a 2 pound sausage into a 1 pound casing, something gets compressed. Linear and evenly mean that everything is compressed equally. That produces an unattractive result. Most profiles would compress the shadows more so as to maintain the more important mid tones. If you compress the shadows, you will lose gradation there. Shadow compression was clearly shown in my GamutVision plot. What you need to do is to open up the shadows in cases such as the current one where shadow gradation is important. The profile does not know the artistic impressiion you wish to convey. Without black point compensation the shadows would be clipped, and for the umpteenth time I am not talking about clipping or reseting the black point. The black is output at maximum paper black and the quarter tones should be lightened.
Bill
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To put things simply, if you squeeze a 2 pound sausage into a 1 pound casing, something gets compressed. Linear and evenly mean that everything is compressed equally. That produces an unattractive result. Most profiles would compress the shadows more so as to maintain the more important mid tones.
That's not been my experience when using RelCol+BP compensation, and doesn't match the description in the PDF you cited earlier very well. If you look "Step 3: Attempt To Set DestinationBlackPoint" in the PDF, you'll see that the destination profile is examined to see how even the tone curve is, and if the test is passed, NearlyStraightMidRange is set to true, and the tone curve present in the original image is not materially altered during profile conversion, it is simply scaled between the destination white and black points. This is generally what happens when you have a good quality profile on a reasonably well-linearized printer. It is the case with all of the custom profiles I've made for my Epson 7600, Epson R1800, and Canon S9000 printers with My Eye-One Pro spectrophotometer & Eye-One Match. The tonal relationships are evenly scaled to the printer's available DR, and it is not generally necessary to do tone curve adjustments specific to a particular printer. I've done tests printing the same image on multiple papers and multiple printers, and have not observed significant tonal alterations from one print to another. The only noticeable difference was the deeper blacks in the glossy prints, but shadow and highlight details were similarly distinguishable in all of the prints.
If the profile has a lot of lumps in its TRC, then NearlyStraightMidRange is set to false, and then (and only then) the uneven tonal tweaking you're talking about comes in to play, as illustrated in figures 5 and 6. If you need to custom-adjust the tone curve of your image for a specific output device, that's a pretty good clue that the profile is poor quality, or the printer it was made for is poorly linearized. Which goes back to my original point that doing such tweaks is generally a kludge to compensate for a bad profile. If the profile is good quality and made from a well-linearized printer, the only shadow tweaking necessary is to deal with limited shadow gamut.
The whole point of profiles is to eliminate the need for output-device-specific tweaking as much as possible, so that the print matches the monitor as closely as possible within the physical limitations of the devices. The only output-device-specific tweaking you should ever have to do is dealing with out-of-gamut colors. If you have to readjust the tone response curve of the image as well to get a decent print, then your profile has problems and you're compensating for profile deficiencies, not just trying to fit a large gamut into a small space without losing any more aesthetic appeal than necessary.
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That's not been my experience when using RelCol+BP compensation, and doesn't match the description in the PDF you cited earlier very well. If you look "Step 3: Attempt To Set DestinationBlackPoint" in the PDF, you'll see that the destination profile is examined to see how even the tone curve is, and if the test is passed, NearlyStraightMidRange is set to true, and the tone curve present in the original image is not materially altered during profile conversion, it is simply scaled between the destination white and black points.
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The NearlyStraightMidRange boolean set to true does not mean that the tone curve is even or without lumps but that the L* source and destination values in the midrange of the curve (as one iterates through l values from 0 to 100 in steps of 1) are approximately equal. Using Gamutvision, I noted that a L* of 50 in the source mapped to L* of 50 in the destination, satisfying this condition. Step 3 is used only to set the destination black point. After the black point is set, the higher tone values are determined by the black point scaling included in the lookup tables of the profile. This is clarified by examination of the Gamutvision plots with black point compensation off and then on.
With BPC off, the D-Max of 1.79 is reached at log (pixel level/255) of about -0.8 or a pixel level of 40 in gamma 2.2 space. Equal changes in the log pixel value cause equal and proportional changes in output density. Below this level, clipping occurs.
[attachment=1775:attachment]
With BPC turned on, the D-max of 1.78 is reached at input log pixel value of -1.3 or a 2.2 gamma pixel value of 13. A density of 1.8 corresponds to L* of 13.15. The DestinationBlackPoint is therefore L* 13, which coincidently is also the 2.2 gamma pixel value. Input L* of 0 is mapped to output L* of 13.15. On checking in Gamutvision, the lowest L* I found in the OP's image was L*= 0.99 with output L* of 13.90, which correlates well with the graphically derived value. Equal changes in log pixel value of the source image yield smaller changes in output density as the pixel values go towards black. This is not the even spacing you predicted, but rather represents compression of the shadows.
[attachment=1776:attachment]
The same thing is observed in the Gamutvision 3D plot. Source L* of 1 are raised to L* of 13 in the output, and higher values of L* are compressed to a lesser degree, but not proportionally as you claim.
[attachment=1777:attachment]
For those who do not wish to perform the calculations for Log(Pixel level/255) to pixel value, this table does the work and also gives the L* values as calculated by Bruce Lindbloom's companding calculator:
[attachment=1779:attachment]
This table displays output density with the corresponding Percent Reflection, L*, and 2.2 gamma pixel values:
[attachment=1780:attachment]
This is generally what happens when you have a good quality profile on a reasonably well-linearized printer. It is the case with all of the custom profiles I've made for my Epson 7600, Epson R1800, and Canon S9000 printers with My Eye-One Pro spectrophotometer & Eye-One Match. The tonal relationships are evenly scaled to the printer's available DR...
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False, as shown above. The shadows are compressed.
If the profile has a lot of lumps in its TRC, then NearlyStraightMidRange is set to false, and then (and only then) the uneven tonal tweaking you're talking about comes in to play, as illustrated in figures 5 and 6. If you need to custom-adjust the tone curve of your image for a specific output device, that's a pretty good clue that the profile is poor quality, or the printer it was made for is poorly linearized. Which goes back to my original point that doing such tweaks is generally a kludge to compensate for a bad profile. If the profile is good quality and made from a well-linearized printer, the only shadow tweaking necessary is to deal with limited shadow gamut.
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False as explained above. Figures 5 and 6 are for determining the destination black point when NearlyStraightMidRange is false. After the destination black point is calculated, the same mapping is used as when the flag is true.
Bill
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Just to lighten the conversation a little, I'd like some advice on the various rendering intents. With an Epson 7600, premium lustre paper and the Bill Atkinson profile, I find that both perceptual and rel col require massive adjustments to the image (proof colors and simulate paper color on) to get a print that matches the monitor experience. Absolute col produces a more accurate print without any such adjustments, except with regard to out-of-gamut shadows which are easy to lighten and bring back into gamut. Saturation Intent actually significantly increases the over-all saturation of the image on the monitor, generally without producing any out-of-gamut colors.
As regards which intent to use, I find I'm flying by the seat of my pants; juggling the necessity of adjusting the images in one rendering intent as opposed to not adjusting, or making a lesser adjustment, with regard to another rendering intent.
Is this normal?
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Just to lighten the conversation a little, I'd like some advice on the various rendering intents. With an Epson 7600, premium lustre paper and the Bill Atkinson profile, I find that both perceptual and rel col require massive adjustments to the image (proof colors and simulate paper color on) to get a print that matches the monitor experience. Absolute col produces a more accurate print without any such adjustments, except with regard to out-of-gamut shadows which are easy to lighten and bring back into gamut. Saturation Intent actually significantly increases the over-all saturation of the image on the monitor, generally without producing any out-of-gamut colors.
As regards which intent to use, I find I'm flying by the seat of my pants; juggling the necessity of adjusting the images in one rendering intent as opposed to not adjusting, or making a lesser adjustment, with regard to another rendering intent.
Is this normal?
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=99599\")
At the risk of oversimplifying things, I have found this link useful in understanding [a href=\"http://www.steves-digicams.com/techcorner/July_2005.html]Rendering Intents[/url].
Perceptual was formerly recommended by many experts if there are a lot of out of gamut colors in the source and relative colorimetric if there are only a few out of gamut colors. The problem with perceptual is that it is not "smart": it looks at the container (color space) of the image rather than the colors that are actually present in the image and may apply more compression than is necessary.
For this reason, many experts prefer relative colorimetric and tweak the out of gamut colors to bring them within range. Bruce Fraser (http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/12641-1.html) gives some examples. Absolute colorimetric and saturation intents are not normally recommended for photographic printing.
The above is probably nothing new to an experienced photographer as yourself, but it does sound as if there is something wrong with your setup. Is it monitor calibration or are some of the orifices of your printer plugged up? Or do you simply have very difficult to reproduce images with a log of out of gamut colors? If a color in the image is out of gamut for the monitor, it simply can't be reproduced on screen and soft proofing may fail. This situation is less likely if you use aRGB or sRGB as your working space, but often arises with ProPhotoRGB. 3D gamut mapping software such as Gamutvision or Colorthink might be useful in addressing the problem. The better inkjet printers such as yours can print saturated colors at low luminosity that are outside of the gamut of most monitors.
Bill
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The above is probably nothing new to an experienced photographer as yourself, but it does sound as if there is something wrong with your setup. Is it monitor calibration or are some of the orifices of your printer plugged up? Or do you simply have very difficult to reproduce images with a log of out of gamut colors?
Bill,
My prints match what I see on the monitor, including the most subtle shadow details, so I have no reason to suppose there's anything wrong with my setup.
It seems to me there's a significant variation in how rendering intents react with different profiles for different printers and papers. My printer takes 30m rolls which I don't change often. Premium Lustre is the paper I use most and I merely make the observation that Absolute Colorimetric has the least effect on the appearance of an adjusted image with this paper and profile when using custom proof. The perceptual and rel col intent require significant increases in saturation and contrast before printing an image.
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I'll specify my equipment, if it makes things clearer. Pentium dual processor 3.00Ghz, Win XP 64 bit edition, Sony G400 19" CRT monitor (quite old now), Eye One Display 2 colorimeter, Matrox Millenium PCIe 128 video card, Epson Stylus 7600 printer, Epson Premium Lustre paper, Bill Atkinson profile.
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Bill,
My prints match what I see on the monitor, including the most subtle shadow details, so I have no reason to suppose there's anything wrong with my setup.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=99630\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Ray,
Now I am confused. It seems to me if "massive adjustments" are necessary for the soft proof on screen to match the print, something is wrong. The quote above does not seem consistent with the quote below.
"Just to lighten the conversation a little, I'd like some advice on the various rendering intents. With an Epson 7600, premium lustre paper and the Bill Atkinson profile, I find that both perceptual and rel col require massive adjustments to the image (proof colors and simulate paper color on) to get a print that matches the monitor experience."
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Now I am confused. It seems to me if "massive adjustments" are necessary for the soft proof on screen to match the print, something is wrong. The quote above does not seem consistent with the quote below.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=99636\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
That's how it is, Bill. I tell no lies. My prints, whatever adjustments I have made, match very closely the detail, saturation, tonality and contrast that I see on my monitor.
However, the appearance of the image changes significantly on my monitor when I toggle between the various rendering intents, in relation to the premium lustre profile and with 'paper color' ticked in proof setup.
Specifically, perceptual and rel col dull the image significantly (on the monitor). Absolute col leaves it looking approx the same but with a risk of shadows being out-of-gamut. Saturation intent has the effect of boosting over-all saturation but generally without the effect of inducing out-of-gamut colors.
My work flow is generally to get the image looking right without reference to any specific profile, and then make adjustments later in relation to a specific profile with 'proof colors and 'gamut warning' ticked.
Absolute col intent generally requires the least further adjustment to the image in 'proof color' mode.
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Bill, I think I've figured out the root of our disagreement, and we're both right , to an extent. You are correct that there is a bit of a toe and shoulder built into the luminance curve of profiles. But I am also correct in stating that a good printer profile does not alter the tonal relationship between the highlights, midtones and shadows, when printing using relative colorimetric + blackpoint compensation, from what is observed on the monitor. Here's why: If the monitor and printer profiles are both generated to the same standard, the same luminance TRC will be used in both profiles, and when luminance values are scaled from one profile to the other, they stay in the same places on the curve; the curve is simply stretched or squashed so that the endpoints are attached to the white and black points. As a result, the behavior I have observed when preparing thousands of images to be printed is that the relationship between shadows, midtones, and highlights are NOT altered, the overall contrast will change somewhat, depending on the specific printer and paper type, but that is it, as long as all image colors fall in the printer gamut. A grayscale step wedge that appears to have even tonal gradations on-screen well also have even tonal gradations in all prints. This is especially true in my case, where all my monitors and printers are profiled by the same Gretag-Macbeth Eye-One spectrophotometer and Eye-One Match software.
However, in the case of a somewhat non-standard profile, or a poorly-made profile, the internal TRC's of the source and destination profiles will not match exactly, which means that the TRC of the image is going to be altered, which may brighten or darken shadows, highlights or midtones in relation to one another, or even cause clipping; basically the same effects that can be caused by doing a random curve adjustment on the L channel.
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Bill, I think I've figured out the root of our disagreement, and we're both right , to an extent. You are correct that there is a bit of a toe and shoulder built into the luminance curve of profiles. But I am also correct in stating that a good printer profile does not alter the tonal relationship between the highlights, midtones and shadows, when printing using relative colorimetric + blackpoint compensation, from what is observed on the monitor.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=99920\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Jonathan,
Your explanation makes sense, and I am delighted to agree. To be honest, I have never made a profile and rely on the Epson generated ones for my 2200. In this exchange, I have learned quite a bit, and in the process I discovered the profile for Premium Luster Paper that I had downloaded from the Epson site was defective. On examining the predicted DMax in Gamutvision, I discovered that it was 3.82, which is hardly realistic. I communicated with Norman Koren, who supplied me with the correct one, which is on the PSCS2 disc but not updated by Epson on their web site. The correct DMax is about 1.99 and the plot I posted earlier showed much better shadow detail than one can actually get with this paper and printer.
I know the pros use ColorThink, but for me Gamutvision is more ecconomical and Norman's support is superb.
Bill
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Having made all of my own printer and monitor profiles, I knew I had practical experience on my side; it just took me a while to figure out why. No hard feelings.
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Having made all of my own printer and monitor profiles, I knew I had practical experience on my side; it just took me a while to figure out why. No hard feelings.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=99930\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I'm gonna have some hard feelings if you don't tell me exactly how you want to go about trouble shooting my problem with Costco!!!! LOL
So I had a week off. Not to delve too deeply into my personal life, but a long lost love--a female photographer working in New York--got in touch with me and said--"It's time we spend time together" I agreed, she took off work, flew out to California for a week, and we disappeared into each other.
In any event, let me appologize again for not getting back to you sooner.
So the original thread is about how to go about finding a solution to images printed at my Costco being way too dark in the shadows and even overall actaully--now that I look at them.
I thought that what I would do it upload the RAW file and a JPG of it after I processed it for printing. Then you would take a look and see what it looks like on your monitor and my adjustments I made in ACR. If it looks close enough to what you would do to get the print to look like your screen, then we know there is a problem with COSTCO. To confirm that, you would process the RAW file for printing at Costco, I would print your version, and then send it to you in the mail to have a look.
The link to the package is in your PM, and it includes the ICC profile from Dry Creek, the jpg with notes on the conversion, and the RAW file with the XMP sidecar data so you can see my RAW adjustments, and the password for the RAR file.
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I got you'r PM; I'll work on it this weekend. I have Friday AND Monday off.
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I got you'r PM; I'll work on it this weekend. I have Friday AND Monday off.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=100664\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
OK great.
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Jonathan,
I may have fixed the problem. I did two test prints, and they turned out very nice in the shaodws and over all.
I recalibrated my monitor, and when it came to the visual test of "jsut able to make out all of the darker shades, from gray to black blocks) I turned that aspect down on my monitor, which is the brightness. It says tht most of the time you shoould leave this at 100%, but after looking away from teh image and back again, I could still make out all of the shades at 80%. I boooseted it up to 85% jsut to make sure I wasn't kidding myself. Then I went ahead and let it calibrate for color.
I'm still not convinced this did the trick, but I'll write back after I do more tests. As it is right now, they look pretty darn good overall and good in the shadows. If I keep getting this result, then I'll recalibrate and use 80% on the brightness. This should completely take care of any "boosting" of the shadows and overall image brightness that I am still doing--although very little compared to what I was doing.
If you or any of you want to know the results, let me know. I'll post back.
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Jonathan,
I may have fixed the problem. I did two test prints, and they turned out very nice in the shaodws and over all.
I recalibrated my monitor, and when it came to the visual test of "jsut able to make out all of the darker shades, from gray to black blocks) I turned that aspect down on my monitor, which is the brightness. It says tht most of the time you shoould leave this at 100%, but after looking away from teh image and back again, I could still make out all of the shades at 80%. I boooseted it up to 85% jsut to make sure I wasn't kidding myself. Then I went ahead and let it calibrate for color.
I'm still not convinced this did the trick, but I'll write back after I do more tests. As it is right now, they look pretty darn good overall and good in the shadows. If I keep getting this result, then I'll recalibrate and use 80% on the brightness. This should completely take care of any "boosting" of the shadows and overall image brightness that I am still doing--although very little compared to what I was doing.
If you or any of you want to know the results, let me know. I'll post back.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=103685\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
That is interesting, but I don't see how a change in monitor calibration would affect the shadows in the prints, unless you are adjusting the three quarter tones in post processing according to the appearance on the monitor. In other words, a straight print would not be affected by monitor calibration, but print matching with the monitor would be affected
I don't know about your Phillips monitor, but many LCDs are quite bright, ranging up to 200 cd/m^2 and this can cause problems with print matching if you are using standard viewing conditions (D50 illumination at 500 lux). Rather than using a percent of maximum, it would be better to calibrate for output luminance of the monitor, say 120 cd/m^2. I had previously been calibrating to 140 cd/m^2, but some recent threads by experts have suggested that this is too high. What do others on the forum use?
Bill
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I had previously been calibrating to 140 cd/m^2, but some recent threads by experts have suggested that this is too high. What do others on the forum use?
I have my Eizo CG19 set to 100 cd/m^2 .
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That is interesting, but I don't see how a change in monitor calibration would affect the shadows in the prints, unless you are adjusting the three quarter tones in post processing according to the appearance on the monitor. In other words, a straight print would not be affected by monitor calibration, but print matching with the monitor would be affected
I don't know about your Phillips monitor, but many LCDs are quite bright, ranging up to 200 cd/m^2 and this can cause problems with print matching if you are using standard viewing conditions (D50 illumination at 500 lux). Rather than using a percent of maximum, it would be better to calibrate for output luminance of the monitor, say 120 cd/m^2. I had previously been calibrating to 140 cd/m^2, but some recent threads by experts have suggested that this is too high. What do others on the forum use?
Bill
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=103736\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
That is what I meant. After calibrating and turning down the brightness, I proces images on screen, which are darker on screen than before. Then the images match teh screen better in brightness, especially in shadows.
My Phillips is a 700:1 contrast ratio.
How do I calibrate for output luminance? I have no idea hoiw to do that. However, if lowering the brightness helped shadows and image brightness overall, then if lowering the luminance output would do the same thing, then that is the solution for sure.
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That is what I meant. After calibrating and turning down the brightness, I proces images on screen, which are darker on screen than before. Then the images match teh screen better in brightness, especially in shadows.
My Phillips is a 700:1 contrast ratio.
How do I calibrate for output luminance? I have no idea hoiw to do that. However, if lowering the brightness helped shadows and image brightness overall, then if lowering the luminance output would do the same thing, then that is the solution for sure.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=103831\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Anyone tell me how to calibrate "down" the luminance?
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Anyone tell me how to calibrate "down" the luminance?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=107222\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I'm amazed that this whole thread, with all the disagreements between Jonathan and Bill Janes, is based upon a miscalibration of your monitor.
At the same time, I sympathise with you. Calibrating a monitor is not always straight forward. Inexplicable things can happen. A basic is to remove any previous calibration, such as Adobe Gamma. Monitor settings of contrast and brightness before calibration can also influence the outcome.
I'm reluctant to offer any specific advice because individual circumstances can vary considerably. It was through trial, experiment and upgrading of colorimeter that I finally got a satisfactory calibration.
Life's not made to be easy, you know.
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I'm amazed that this whole thread, with all the disagreements between Jonathan and Bill Janes, is based upon a miscalibration of your monitor.
At the same time, I sympathise with you. Calibrating a monitor is not always straight forward. Inexplicable things can happen. A basic is to remove any previous calibration, such as Adobe Gamma. Monitor settings of contrast and brightness before calibration can also influence the outcome.
I'm reluctant to offer any specific advice because individual circumstances can vary considerably. It was through trial, experiment and upgrading of colorimeter that I finally got a satisfactory calibration.
Life's not made to be easy, you know.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=107228\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Made to be easy? hahaha
It is what it is man. But yeah it is hard in all respects. Nice to know someone else sees that too. With all the "I love life and am the biggest optimist" types walking around on paxil and other medications, it's refreshing to see someone who still understands it's not all optimism and party times.
Well, I started getting better shadow reproduction after I lowered my brightness doing the calibration. I'm using a Spyder Suite. I'm just not quite sure what the best way is to "fool" the monitor into showing less shadow detail so that prints look like they do onscreen, as those two guys explained above, which results in bumping up the shadow areas. The colors look right on in prints, except for some reds and other anomalies that we have to live with. Highlights look good to and now the shadows are better, but still not "on screen" looking like the colors are. So I'd like to know what the others were talking about and how to "tone down" the contrast. I think the contrast on my monitor is called brightness. But they were talking about numerical increments or something.
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Made to be easy? hahaha
So I'd like to know what the others were talking about and how to "tone down" the contrast. I think the contrast on my monitor is called brightness. But they were talking about numerical increments or something.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=107249\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Calibration involves adjusting the device's behavior so that it produces a specific output according to the input. Most current LCD monitors can adjust only the intensity of the backlight, so there is no way to set the color temperature or the black point and hence the contrast. Rather than true calibration, this process is describing the characteristics of the device, not adjusting the device to produce a given output. The most common practice is to calibrate for the native color temp of the monitor and set the white point with the monitor's brightness control. Further adjustments can be made in the video lookup table, but with an 8 bit LUT you lose levels pretty fast. The gamma function is applied in the LUT.
Once the behavior of the monitor is known and described by the profile, Photoshop's soft proofing should be able to display how the printed picture would look. You don't really want to set the monitor to match the output of the printer, since you would be wasting the dynamic range of the monitor.
Bill
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Calibration involves adjusting the device's behavior so that it produces a specific output according to the input. Most current LCD monitors can adjust only the intensity of the backlight, so there is no way to set the color temperature or the black point and hence the contrast. Rather than true calibration, this process is describing the characteristics of the device, not adjusting the device to produce a given output. The most common practice is to calibrate for the native color temp of the monitor and set the white point with the monitor's brightness control. Further adjustments can be made in the video lookup table, but with an 8 bit LUT you lose levels pretty fast. The gamma function is applied in the LUT.
Once the behavior of the monitor is known and described by the profile, Photoshop's soft proofing should be able to display how the printed picture would look. You don't really want to set the monitor to match the output of the printer, since you would be wasting the dynamic range of the monitor.
Bill
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=107330\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Bilol,
My monitor has color temp adjustments and Brightness and Contrast, which I do not think are backlight--since Spyder tells you how to tell if it is backlight or not. I don't remember actually, but if I do I do not have a backlight adjustment on this monitor. And anyway, your explanation does not explain how others are adjusting their contrast settings above. I'd like how theya re doing that explained.
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Bilol,
My monitor has color temp adjustments and Brightness and Contrast, which I do not think are backlight--since Spyder tells you how to tell if it is backlight or not. I don't remember actually, but if I do I do not have a backlight adjustment on this monitor. And anyway, your explanation does not explain how others are adjusting their contrast settings above. I'd like how theya re doing that explained.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=107380\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I would like to know that too. There may be something new, but as explained in Real World Color Management, 2nd edition, page 128, by Bruce Fraser et al most adjustments that you mention are simply tweaks the videoLUT. Some high end LCD monitors have 10 bit LUTs built into the display and can use these to adjust color temp and gamma while still maintaining the full 256 levels per channel. Bruce does say that LCDs have a fixed contrast ratio.
LED (light emitting diode) monitors use red, blue and green LEDs and these can perform a real adjustment of color temp.
Bill
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I would like to know that too. There may be something new, but as explained in Real World Color Management, 2nd edition, page 128, by Bruce Fraser et al most adjustments that you mention are simply tweaks the videoLUT. Some high end LCD monitors have 10 bit LUTs built into the display and can use these to adjust color temp and gamma while still maintaining the full 256 levels per channel. Bruce does say that LCDs have a fixed contrast ratio.
LED (light emitting diode) monitors use red, blue and green LEDs and these can perform a real adjustment of color temp.
Bill
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=107384\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
But above, you say this,
"I don't know about your Phillips monitor, but many LCDs are quite bright, ranging up to 200 cd/m^2 and this can cause problems with print matching if you are using standard viewing conditions (D50 illumination at 500 lux). Rather than using a percent of maximum, it would be better to calibrate for output luminance of the monitor, say 120 cd/m^2. I had previously been calibrating to 140 cd/m^2, but some recent threads by experts have suggested that this is too high. What do others on the forum use?"
Bill
So what are you doing here?
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But above, you say this,
"I don't know about your Phillips monitor, but many LCDs are quite bright, ranging up to 200 cd/m^2 and this can cause problems with print matching if you are using standard viewing conditions (D50 illumination at 500 lux). Rather than using a percent of maximum, it would be better to calibrate for output luminance of the monitor, say 120 cd/m^2. I had previously been calibrating to 140 cd/m^2, but some recent threads by experts have suggested that this is too high. What do others on the forum use?"
Bill
So what are you doing here?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=107385\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
"So what are you doing here?". I don't understand how this question relates to the matters that we just discussed.
All I am doing there is simply adjusting the backlight of the monitor to achieve the intended luminance. I just reduced my luminance to 120 cd/m^2. That is the only adjustment that I can make on my monitor. When you calibrate a display, you are really working with not just the monitor itself but also the video driver the video card. You may be able to make further adjustments in these areas.
Bill
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But above, you say this,
"I don't know about your Phillips monitor, but many LCDs are quite bright, ranging up to 200 cd/m^2 and this can cause problems with print matching if you are using standard viewing conditions (D50 illumination at 500 lux). Rather than using a percent of maximum, it would be better to calibrate for output luminance of the monitor, say 120 cd/m^2. I had previously been calibrating to 140 cd/m^2, but some recent threads by experts have suggested that this is too high. What do others on the forum use?"
Bill
So what are you doing here?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=107385\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
The Spyder was the first calibration system I used a few years ago. I bought it because, in part, it came with a free 'Real World' Photoshop 6 book. As I recall, the calibration was started with CRT monitor at maximum contrast. Brightness had to be manually adjusted during calibration in order for the calibrated output range to be ideally in the range of something like 65-90 cd/m^2. The maximum brightness of my ViewSonic monitor was, from memory, around 135 cd/m^2.
I had a lot of trouble getting a satisfacory calibration, during which time of course I was verbally abused by dear old Jonathan who seemed to think I was a complete nitwit.
The fact is, I did eventually get a reasonable calibration, through trial and error, but was never quite sure why and the calibration was never perfectly satisfactory.
Some time later, I upgraded to an X-rite DTP-94 with ColorEyes software and then the Eyeone Display 2 with GM software which at the time was the only software which would work with Win XP 64.
My calibration problems are solved .
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The Spyder was the first calibration system I used a few years ago. I bought it because, in part, it came with a free 'Real World' Photoshop 6 book. As I recall, the calibration was started with CRT monitor at maximum contrast. Brightness had to be manually adjusted during calibration in order for the calibrated output range to be ideally in the range of something like 65-90 cd/m^2. The maximum brightness of my ViewSonic monitor was, from memory, around 135 cd/m^2.
I had a lot of trouble getting a satisfacory calibration, during which time of course I was verbally abused by dear old Jonathan who seemed to think I was a complete nitwit.
The fact is, I did eventually get a reasonable calibration, through trial and error, but was never quite sure why and the calibration was never perfectly satisfactory.
Some time later, I upgraded to an X-rite DTP-94 with ColorEyes software and then the Eyeone Display 2 with GM software which at the time was the only software which would work with Win XP 64.
My calibration problems are solved .
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=107394\")
Ray,
As you say, calibration of a monitor is not a simple operation, and I'm happy for you that you have solved your problems. Here are some recommendations by [a href=\"http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=11086&view=findpost&p=67460]Dr Karl Lang[/url] (a recognized expert in this area) that may help those who are having problems.
He points out that current mid to high end LCDs have 3D lookups, which are altered by the front panel settings on the monitor and can be used for adjustment of white point and other parameters.
He recommends using native WB unless you are using multiple monitors, in which case one or more of the monitors may have to have WB adjustments so that they appear the same. He describes a test to determine if your monitor has a 3D lookup.
Additional recommendations are:
1. Do not adjust "contrast", "brightness" or "gamma" on the front panel.
2. Do not use a Matrix/TRC based profile, but rather a full lookup. Whether or not this is available depends on the profiling software.
3. Do adjust the backlight, sometimes incorrectly labeled as brightness
New displays using LED backlight solve some of these problems as discussed in this NEC whitepaper (http://www.necdisplay.com/corpus/S/6/LCD2180WG-LEDTechPaper_121605.pdf).
Bill
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Additional recommendations are:
1. Do not adjust "contrast", "brightness" or "gamma" on the front panel.
2. Do not use a Matrix/TRC based profile, but rather a full lookup. Whether or not this is available depends on the profiling software.
3. Do adjust the backlight, sometimes incorrectly labeled as brightness
New displays using LED backlight solve some of these problems as discussed in this NEC whitepaper (http://www.necdisplay.com/corpus/S/6/LCD2180WG-LEDTechPaper_121605.pdf).
Bill
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=107447\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I just read this thread and that is pretty much what I am doing. I only adjusted the "brightness" which is most likely "backlight" and that helped solve much of my shadow problems, although I still take care to ramp them up a little for printing. I think what I will do before I print any more is recalibrate and then use and even lower backlight setting. I'm at 81 now, down fro 100, so I'll try 78 next time.
I may also consider a better calibration hardware/software package. However, the Spider does a good job of color accuracy, it is less than desirable for the black and white points I think? So what is the absolute best package available to get this job done correctly and most automated? The thing is, I would hate to buy a new package and then have it be no better than the Spyder I already own.
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I may also consider a better calibration hardware/software package. However, the Spider does a good job of color accuracy, it is less than desirable for the black and white points I think? So what is the absolute best package available to get this job done correctly and most automated? The thing is, I would hate to buy a new package and then have it be no better than the Spyder I already own.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=108231\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I'm currently using a Sony 19" Multiscan G400 which has no individual adjustments for the R,G,B channels. It's a monitor which I failed to calibrate properly with the Spyder (which may have been an earlier model than yours), although I did get a reasonable calibration with a ViewSonic monitor that does have adjustable R,G,B channels, after a lot of trial and error.
I'm now using an Eye-One Display 2 colorimeter with GratagMacbeth Eye-One Match 3 software. I set this old Sony monitor to maximum contrast and minimum brightness, do a fully automatic calibration which specifies 2.2 gamma and D65 white point, and seem to get the most accurate calibration I've ever experienced. After calibration, I leave the monitor at its settings of max contrast and min brightness. No need to touch anything.
It's as easy as falling off a log.
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I'm currently using a Sony 19" Multiscan G400 which has no individual adjustments for the R,G,B channels. It's a monitor which I failed to calibrate properly with the Spyder (which may have been an earlier model than yours), although I did get a reasonable calibration with a ViewSonic monitor that does have adjustable R,G,B channels, after a lot of trial and error.
I'm now using an Eye-One Display 2 colorimeter with GratagMacbeth Eye-One Match 3 software. I set this old Sony monitor to maximum contrast and minimum brightness, do a fully automatic calibration which specifies 2.2 gamma and D65 white point, and seem to get the most accurate calibration I've ever experienced. After calibration, I leave the monitor at its settings of max contrast and min brightness. No need to touch anything.
It's as easy as falling off a log.
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So waht do I need to adjust to make my shadows show on screen like I need dto brighten tehm so that the printing process will open the shadows as I see them, or clsoe to it, on screen? I did recalibrate and loewred teh "brightness" on my 23 inch Phllips to 78. Still then shadows are not as good printed as on screen--meaning they are still too dark compared to the screen. It is closer though than it ever has been.
Should I adjust the brightness with the software that came with my video7800GTX (nVidia).
Also, is there other software that would do a better job setting black and white point. The Spyder requieres you to set it manually while looking at a bar of white to black blocks. So, if tehre is software I can use with the spyder saoftware, let me know. Also, I'm getting excellent screen to print color accuracy. So that is not a problem--and the software does that automatically.
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What was Jonathan's response to your PM? Wasn't he working on this problem for you?
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What was Jonathan's response to your PM? Wasn't he working on this problem for you?
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I think he thought it was maybe partially fixed. I haven't received anything from him.
I'm wodering is tehre is an alternate software I should be using besides the Spyder included software. BTW, I'm using the Spyder II Suite version, which was their newest offering around 6 months ago. I'm not opposed to buying a better calibration system if need be.
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What was Jonathan's response to your PM? Wasn't he working on this problem for you?
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I suspect that we have not heard anything from Jonathan because his proposed fix did not work the way he thought it would. The laws of physics are still in force.
Bill
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Also, is there other software that would do a better job setting black and white point. The Spyder requieres you to set it manually while looking at a bar of white to black blocks. So, if tehre is software I can use with the spyder saoftware, let me know. Also, I'm getting excellent screen to print color accuracy. So that is not a problem--and the software does that automatically.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=110743\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
How many different levels of backlighting settings prior to calibration have you tried? Sounds to me like a bit of experimentation is required. If print shadows are too dark, that implies to me that maybe your monitor brightness (backlighting) was too high prior to calibration.
My Sony CRT is 6 or 7 years old and I calibrate with brightness at a minimum and no further adjustment.
Does ColorEyes work with the Spyder? Before my current GratagMacbeth system I was also getting good results with Coloreyes and the X-rite DTP94.
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I just read this thread and that is pretty much what I am doing. I only adjusted the "brightness" which is most likely "backlight" and that helped solve much of my shadow problems, although I still take care to ramp them up a little for printing. I think what I will do before I print any more is recalibrate and then use and even lower backlight setting. I'm at 81 now, down fro 100, so I'll try 78 next time.
I may also consider a better calibration hardware/software package. However, the Spider does a good job of color accuracy, it is less than desirable for the black and white points I think? So what is the absolute best package available to get this job done correctly and most automated? The thing is, I would hate to buy a new package and then have it be no better than the Spyder I already own.
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Perhaps a more experienced person in calibration matters will offer some advice, but I think a monitor luminance of 81 cd/m^2 is too low. In his color management book, Bruce Fraser suggested that for print matching, the luminance of the print paper in the viewing booth should be equal to the monitor brightness. ISO 3664 specifies standard print viewing conditions as D50 at 500 lux with a 20% surround reflectance. White paper reflects about 90% of the incident light so the luminance of the paper under these conditions (assuming diffuse Lambertain reflectance) would be 500*0.90/pi or 143 cd/m^2.
Also, what is the luminance of your monitor's blackpoint? This can't be adjusted with most LCDs, but the information can be incorporated into the monitor profile
According to [a href=\"http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0083J8]this[/url] discussion on Photo.net, the surround can have a large effect on the shadow appearance (see figure 5), so you might want to check your viewing conditions.
Finally, your monitor probably has a greater dynamic range than your prints, which have a DMax of about 2 (reflectance 1%) according to the Costco profile. The dynamic range of the print would therefore be no greater than about 90:1. Most current monitors have a higher dynamic range and can display deeper blacks than the paper; in this situation there is no way the print could match the straight (non-proof) on screen view of a high dynamic range image. The best you could expect is decent tone mapping.
Bill
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Dwdallam,
Perhaps you should go through the precise steps you are taking prior to sending your processed image to Costco.
It's not clear to me what it is you are doing. I get the impression that either you don't have your own printer, or you do have a printer but don't have custom profiles for it and are therefore using a third party to make your prints.
If this is the case, then I presume you have downloaded the relevant Costco profile for the paper you've requested for your prints and have soft-proofed your image in relation to that Costco profile, and have converted the working space profile (or whatever's embedded in the image) to the Costco profile, prior to sending them your image for printing.
Below is what my 'Proof Setup' dialog box looks like. The 'Device to Simulate', ie. 9600 PrmLustre....., is the profile for the Premium Lustre paper I use. I imagine that this is what your Proof Setup dialog box should look like, except you'll have a Costco profile there instead of 9600 PrmLustre. Is that right?
[attachment=2253:attachment]
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I suspect that we have not heard anything from Jonathan because his proposed fix did not work the way he thought it would. The laws of physics are still in force.
Bill
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All Jonathan was going to do is process teh file like he thuoght it should look, especially in teh shadows, according to his monitor and calibration compared to the Costco profile I am using--nothing magic. Then I was going to download the file he processed and have it printed. If the shadows were still showing problems, then I know it's Costco. if not, then I have work to do.
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How many different levels of backlighting settings prior to calibration have you tried? Sounds to me like a bit of experimentation is required. If print shadows are too dark, that implies to me that maybe your monitor brightness (backlighting) was too high prior to calibration.
My Sony CRT is 6 or 7 years old and I calibrate with brightness at a minimum and no further adjustment.
Does ColorEyes work with the Spyder? Before my current GratagMacbeth system I was also getting good results with Coloreyes and the X-rite DTP94.
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I have no idea how to adjust backlighting. My monirtor only ahs "brightness" and "contrast" on the user interface. I think I've posted my exact monitor above somewhere. The calibration software says one is for white point and one for black point--brightness being black and contrast being white, I believe.
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Ray, that is correct.
I use the Costco profile from Dry Creek, which is the extended (or whatever the best profile is) profile, not the basic.
Then I do all my adjustments, and soft proof with the profile. Then I adjust to where I think it looks as good as I can get it when softproofing.
Then I send it to Costco for printing without Costco doing any adjustments. They print it on their Noritsu printer, and most of the time the shadows in landscape, sunset images are much darker than on screen, which means the shadows are much more black than on screen. When I print portraits, other images such as night shoots of cities, etc. the shadows are perfect. It only happens with large tonality landscape sunset images. Of course these are the most important regarding shadows because lots of the image is in shadow--I think I've posted images above.
Dwdallam,
Perhaps you should go through the precise steps you are taking prior to sending your processed image to Costco.
It's not clear to me what it is you are doing. I get the impression that either you don't have your own printer, or you do have a printer but don't have custom profiles for it and are therefore using a third party to make your prints.
If this is the case, then I presume you have downloaded the relevant Costco profile for the paper you've requested for your prints and have soft-proofed your image in relation to that Costco profile, and have converted the working space profile (or whatever's embedded in the image) to the Costco profile, prior to sending them your image for printing.
Below is what my 'Proof Setup' dialog box looks like. The 'Device to Simulate', ie. 9600 PrmLustre....., is the profile for the Premium Lustre paper I use. I imagine that this is what your Proof Setup dialog box should look like, except you'll have a Costco profile there instead of 9600 PrmLustre. Is that right?
[attachment=2253:attachment]
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=111420\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
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I have no idea how to adjust backlighting. My monirtor only ahs "brightness" and "contrast" on the user interface. I think I've posted my exact monitor above somewhere. The calibration software says one is for white point and one for black point--brightness being black and contrast being white, I believe.
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=111433\")
I thought it was mentioned earlier in the thread that brightness on an LCD monitor is synonymous with backlighting. I vaguely recall when I was trying to get a good calibration with a Spyder on my CRT monitors there was a recommended post-calibrated brightness of 65-95 cd/m^ for best results. In other words, if the monitor was brighter than 95 cd/m^ after calibration, then you couldn't expect good results, and the closer to 65 cd/m^ the better. But I guess LCDs are a different ball game.
Anyway, before getting a reasonably satisfactory calibration, I tried many times with different settings. Sometimes the calibration was so bad, I could get an improvement by doing an Adobe Gamma adjustment afterwards, so in effect I had two calibration systems working together, which is definitely not recommended.
I never had such problems with ColorEyes. Why don't you try the free demo at [a href=\"http://www.integrated-color.com/cedpro/coloreyesdisplay.html]http://www.integrated-color.com/cedpro/coloreyesdisplay.html[/url] .
I believe ColorEyes supports the Spyder.
However, not having your own printer with a custom profile would tend to make calibration experimentation rather slow and cumbersome. wouldn't it? Not to mention expensive. You have to keep ordering prints from Costco, don't you?
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However, not having your own printer with a custom profile would tend to make calibration experimentation rather slow and cumbersome. wouldn't it? Not to mention expensive. You have to keep ordering prints from Costco, don't you?
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Well, actually, a 12 x 18 print is 3.00 US which is cheaper than an inkjet. The progblem may be that the printer itself may not always be consistent. I will look at the coloreyes. thanks.
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Well, actually, a 12 x 18 print is 3.00 US which is cheaper than an inkjet. The progblem may be that the printer itself may not always be consistent. I will look at the coloreyes. thanks.
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The [a href=\"http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/monitor_calibration_tools.htm]Drycreek.com[/url] site has a review of calibration tools and rates the coloreyes highly. I was dismayed to see that my current tool (the original Spider with Optical) was rated the lowest. Some of your monitor/print matching problems could arise from a bad measurement of the black point of the monitor. In his color management book, Bruce Fraser noted that setting the black point can be problematic. With my current tool and LCD monitor, I can't change the black point but merely take a reading of it for incorporation into the profile. If I take several readings, they do not reproduce well. With CRTs that can adjust the black point, some packages allow a manual setting according to the appearance of an image that is mostly black but with a watermark slightly above black.
Once you get the monitor to match the print, you might find it helpful to remap the quarter tones to get improved shadow detail. The default TRC of most raw converters use an S curve for better mid-tone contrast, at the expense of shadow and highlight contrast.
Although a 12 bit raw file is not HDR, some photographers are converting the image to 32 bit floating point in Photoshop and use the HDR tone mapping tools to map the tones. With the HDR tools, one can use local operators which take into account the pixel's location in the image in order to determine the appropriate scaling for this pixel. So, a pixel of a given intensity will be mapped to a different value depending on whether it is located in a dark or bright area (reference (http://www.hdrsoft.com/resources/dri.html#tone_mapping)).
Sarah Thompson, a rocket scientist with considerable expertise in digital imaging, has developed a Photoshop plugin that uses a convolution kernel for synthetic HDR (http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=15795&view=findpost&p=109507). That might be useful for your image. I downloaded your raw file to see how the plugin would work with it, but the rar appeared to be password encrypted.
Bill
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Well, actually, a 12 x 18 print is 3.00 US which is cheaper than an inkjet. The progblem may be that the printer itself may not always be consistent. I will look at the coloreyes. thanks.
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When things are not right, you have to determine the cause by a process of elimination. It might well be the case that the Costco branch you are sending your prints to, is being run by a bunch of trainees. They are making mistakes perhaps which natuarally they would be reluctant to admit.
There are so many variables but so far in this thread you haven't eliminated any of them. Do you know that your video card is ideally suited for calibration with the Spyder/Optical package? Is your brand and model of monitor particularly unsuited, or has a problematic reputation, for accurate calibration? Have you definitely followed instructions and warmed up the monitor prior to calibration and made sure no other calibration system, such as Adobe Gamma, is in operation? Have you tried sending the same file to another online processor to compare results with Costco?
These are just some of the things you should be doing, otherwise there are simply too many variables to make sense of it all.
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Sarah Thompson, a rocket scientist with considerable expertise in digital imaging, has developed a Photoshop plugin that uses a convolution kernel for synthetic HDR (http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=15795&view=findpost&p=109507). That might be useful for your image. I downloaded your raw file to see how the plugin would work with it, but the rar appeared to be password encrypted.
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I doubt it, Bill. This is a different issue. Dwdallam's problem is that what he sees on his monitor is not what he gets on the print (from Costco). He's not complaining that his images per se lack shadow detail.
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I doubt it, Bill. This is a different issue. Dwdallam's problem is that what he sees on his monitor is not what he gets on the print (from Costco). He's not complaining that his images per se lack shadow detail.
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Ray,
Perhaps, but I think that there may be more than one issue here. That is why I included the following preface in my message:
"Once you get the monitor to match the print, you might find it helpful to remap the quarter tones to get improved shadow detail. The default TRC of most raw converters use an S curve for better mid-tone contrast, at the expense of shadow and highlight contrast."
The fact is that the image does lack shadow detail as observed by Jonathan in an early post in this thread:
"Your blocked shadows are truly blocked; you have huge areas where the RGB values fluctuate between 2 and 3 in all channels (the large rocks on the left and right in particular). If you think you're seeing significant detail there, you're mistaken; it's noise and/or pixellated JPEG artifacts. Look at the histogram in Photoshop, and you'll see that 14.25% of your entire image is < RGB value 10, as well as a huge spike between levels 2 and 5. You should not expect to see shadow detail under such circumstances,..."
If the OP gets his screen to match the prints, I think he will still have problems. It might be that the 12 bit raw file contains shadow detail that can be tweaked. Thus far he has not acted on any of the suggestions that have been suggested, and I fear that we are wasting our time.
Bill
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The fact is that the image does lack shadow detail as observed by Jonathan in an early post in this thread:
Bill,
I missed that comment. Where is it? The last I heard from Jonathan was that he was going to work on the image in the PM from Dwdallam over the weekend. But Jonathan seems to have absconded with Dwdallam's image, never to be heard from again.
My understanding of this issue is that the dark parts in the prints from Costco are darker than what Dwdallam sees on his monitor. It's either a calibration issue or a lighting issue when viewing the prints.
If the OP gets his screen to match the prints, I think he will still have problems. It might be that the 12 bit raw file contains shadow detail that can be tweaked. Thus far he has not acted on any of the suggestions that have been suggested, and I fear that we are wasting our time.
Maybe. But I generally find that appropriate shadow and contrast adjustments in the RAW converter, coupled with a shadow/highlight adjustment in PS gives you as much shadow detail as you want. The quality of that detail is another matter, however.
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Bill,
I missed that comment. Where is it? The last I heard from Jonathan was that he was going to work on the image in the PM from Dwdallam over the weekend. But Jonathan seems to have absconded with Dwdallam's image, never to be heard from again.
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That comment was in [a href=\"http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=14432&view=findpost&p=97745]Post # 11[/url]. If Jonathan had the answer to the problem, I'm sure we would hear from him, but I think that, contrary to his initial assertions, his custom profiles were not up to the task.
My understanding of this issue is that the dark parts in the prints from Costco are darker than what Dwdallam sees on his monitor. It's either a calibration issue or a lighting issue when viewing the prints.
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I agree with you 100%.
Maybe. But I generally find that appropriate shadow and contrast adjustments in the RAW converter, coupled with a shadow/highlight adjustment in PS gives you as much shadow detail as you want. The quality of that detail is another matter, however.
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I mostly agree here. Proper use of these controls probably can achieve the same results as more complex manipulations such as double conversion of the raw files and combining them with a luminance mask. If you need more shadow detail, true HDR may be the best answer if the subject is static and multiple exposures are feasible. However, the local operators in the PS HDR implementation or in other software such as Photomatix may be of some help when one has only a single raw image file.
Bill