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Author Topic: Printer & file settings when printing high key skin  (Read 1278 times)

deelight

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Printer & file settings when printing high key skin
« on: October 17, 2009, 05:42:28 am »

Hi all!

Right now I am printing my new book and its nearly finished now. Two pictures are left and both show a close-up of oiled skin (very white female) with light reflexes. On the print the skin looks kind of greyish instead of high key red/brown, which makes the skin really ugly instead of beautyful.

One thing first: my workflow is fully color managed and I usually do not have major problems, achieving the look on prints that I already have on the screen.

So: on the screen the skin file looks pretty but the print is far away from this. For several hours I tried printing/reworking/reprinting... now and I received better quality with stronger gradation and more saturation. But more saturation causes the darker skin areas to show up more than the lighter areas. So a second monochrome skin tone color layer at around 20% opacity filters the darker areas.

Also I noticed a better skin tone with printer set to "relative colormetric" instad of "perceptual". What about "saturation" and "absolute colormetric" (both are not recommended for photos)? Did not try these yet.

I already replaced existing grey pixels by using the "color replace" tool, I think these grey pixels occured through the sharpening of the picture. I also tried the "color replace" tool for the "ugly" areas, but also loose way too much structure there.

It looks acceptable now, but the downside of the layer thing is, that I am loosing a fair amount of the skin structure.

FWIW, I print on Z3100 and Hahnemuehle Photo Rag Duo.

So, especially for the guys of you who do and print nude and beauty photography: do I miss something? Is there a trick or "official" way to get nice close up skin tones out of the printer (not on screen, here I have no problem achieving the look I wish to have).

Thanks in advance!

Best regards,

Clem
« Last Edit: October 17, 2009, 06:02:45 am by deelight »
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Jonathan Wienke

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Printer & file settings when printing high key skin
« Reply #1 on: October 18, 2009, 07:16:31 am »

Relative colorimetric is generally your best bet, as it fits the white and black points of the source and destination color spaces together when converting from one color space to the other. Perceptual can cause hue shifts when trying to fit saturated colors in the destination space. Saturation and absolute colorimetric are both very poor choices--don't even bother trying.

You may be running into a gamut issue caused by image colors too bright and saturated for the printer to reproduce. Try converting a copy of the problem image(s) to the printer profile using relative colorimetric and black point compensation, then look at the histogram. If you see clipping at the high end of the scale, your printer simply can't print the colors you're having problems with, and you'll need to dial back the luminosity of the image. Going back to the original master copy, duplicate, darken, and convert to printer profile until you find the smallest possible adjustment necessary to prevent clipping. Print that, and you'll have the closest your printer can come to printing the original image.
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deelight

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Printer & file settings when printing high key skin
« Reply #2 on: October 20, 2009, 05:09:32 am »

Thanks, Jonathan!

I finally managed to print the two pictures beautyfully, but they had to be retouched very much to make the skin look nice. It seems, thats the way it is...  

Best regards,

Clem
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