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Author Topic: Help! My color management can't deal with customers crappy lighting  (Read 1448 times)

jhein

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Scenario:
My HP wide gamut monitor is calibrated with an I1 spectro.  My Z3200 has its own spectro of course.  All my prints are inspected under my Solux lamp.  Everything works!  I get great matching between prints and screen.  My paper is Red River Palo Duro Satin.

Problem:
Customers are not happy with their pictures (mostly senior pictures) when viewed at their house.  Flesh tones are too saturated as are the  reds in general.  After some detective work I determined the issue appears to be with the cheap very warm LED lighting used in their house.  I bought some of the same generic LED bulbs (Ace Hardware house brand) and I can replicate the problem.

My only current fix is to lower the overall saturation in PS by 10 to 20 percent which looks very pale on my screen BUT the prints do look better under these cheap LEDs.

Any thoughts/ideas?

thanks
Jim

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Aram Hăvărneanu

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Re: Help! My color management can't deal with customers crappy lighting
« Reply #1 on: December 27, 2018, 06:49:57 pm »

Bundle your prints with better "free" lights.
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digitaldog

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Re: Help! My color management can't deal with customers crappy lighting
« Reply #2 on: December 27, 2018, 07:41:32 pm »

Sounds like an OBA issue with the paper, try an OBA free one.
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Doug Gray

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Re: Help! My color management can't deal with customers crappy lighting
« Reply #3 on: December 27, 2018, 08:54:57 pm »

Scenario:
My HP wide gamut monitor is calibrated with an I1 spectro.  My Z3200 has its own spectro of course.  All my prints are inspected under my Solux lamp.  Everything works!  I get great matching between prints and screen.  My paper is Red River Palo Duro Satin.

Problem:
Customers are not happy with their pictures (mostly senior pictures) when viewed at their house.  Flesh tones are too saturated as are the  reds in general.  After some detective work I determined the issue appears to be with the cheap very warm LED lighting used in their house.  I bought some of the same generic LED bulbs (Ace Hardware house brand) and I can replicate the problem.

My only current fix is to lower the overall saturation in PS by 10 to 20 percent which looks very pale on my screen BUT the prints do look better under these cheap LEDs.

Any thoughts/ideas?

thanks
Jim

Cheap LEDs tend to have a strong response in the orange but are fairly weak in the reds. They are also very weak in the cyans. If you print a colorchecker image they will likely have a weak cyan and blue but pretty saturated orange but the red is subdued compared to a real colorchecker in incandescent at the same CCT.

With I1Profiler you can capture a cheap LED's illuminant and make a printer profile that will make reasonable looking prints under those LEDs. I think Argyll has the ability to do that as well but I haven't tried it. Your I1 Pro spectro might be able to enable I1PRofiler depending on what license the I1Pro has. You can download it and find out if your I1Pro is licensed.

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Aram Hăvărneanu

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Re: Help! My color management can't deal with customers crappy lighting
« Reply #4 on: December 28, 2018, 06:43:13 am »

Yeah, but it will look bad in every other light. Not to mention you can't proof properly.

It's a constant game of whack a mole, you can't win.
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elolaugesen

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Re: Help! My color management can't deal with customers crappy lighting
« Reply #5 on: December 28, 2018, 09:25:19 am »

Welcome to the world of printing for artists who display their prints/originals in many different galleries.....   then sell a print and customer goes back to look at the original in a gallery with professional lighting systems.     We all run into this .....

  The solution sell the original to a client on a different continent....     then bring out the prints

Cheers...
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Rand47

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Re: Help! My color management can't deal with customers crappy lighting
« Reply #6 on: December 29, 2018, 02:28:59 pm »

Scenario:
My HP wide gamut monitor is calibrated with an I1 spectro.  My Z3200 has its own spectro of course.  All my prints are inspected under my Solux lamp.  Everything works!  I get great matching between prints and screen.  My paper is Red River Palo Duro Satin.

Problem:
Customers are not happy with their pictures (mostly senior pictures) when viewed at their house.  Flesh tones are too saturated as are the  reds in general.  After some detective work I determined the issue appears to be with the cheap very warm LED lighting used in their house.  I bought some of the same generic LED bulbs (Ace Hardware house brand) and I can replicate the problem.

My only current fix is to lower the overall saturation in PS by 10 to 20 percent which looks very pale on my screen BUT the prints do look better under these cheap LEDs.

Any thoughts/ideas?

thanks
Jim

Education is a key element in running a custom print shop, IMO.  One of the first questions I ask a client is what type/level of lighting the prints will be displayed in.  AND, I always "deliver" the print job here at my little studio, where their prints are displayed on a large gray magnetic panel on the wall, illuminated by a 7 fixture Solux track light with 4700 k  bulbs.   I also have a little Fiilex gooseneck lamp that can cycle output at 3200, 4000, 5000, and 6500k.  I'll often take one of their prints and show how it looks at the various temps, illustrating that how they choose to light the work I've done will have an impact on how it "appears."   There are times when knowing that they have unusual lighting, I'll target the output for that lighting.  As a practical matter, that becomes problematic in a hurry when one is trying to price the work in a way that justifies the labor and skill involved, yet keep the price per print somewhere in the range of "rational" for the client.   The more sophisticated client "gets this."  Those that don't get a recommendation to give Costco a try.  And I mean that sincerely, and not cynically.

Illustrative Anecdote:  I belong to a local camera club where the membership ranges from neophyte to some pretty advanced folk.  I teach basic color management mini-seminars from time to time.  I also provide a "gift to the club" of making a nice print to give each recipient of the "photo of the month" award.  Our club meeting room has fluorescent lighting that has a distinct and nasty green cast to it.  After the first couple of presentations of very nice prints, I became discouraged by how horrid they looked in our club meeting room.  So, I bought an easel, a smaller grey magnetic panel (25" square) and a Solux fixture that clamps on to the easel providing nice 4700k output.  The prints look brilliant!  It often becomes a great object lesson for our members to see a properly made, properly illuminated print - and then viewing it under the room's ambient lighting! 

Rand
« Last Edit: December 29, 2018, 02:40:15 pm by Rand47 »
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Rand Scott Adams

BobDavid

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Re: Help! My color management can't deal with customers crappy lighting
« Reply #7 on: January 03, 2019, 07:03:52 pm »

I now use a continuous current LED (+95 CRI) that's adjustable from 3000K to 5600K. It's great for seeing how a print will look in different types of light. My Solux 4700K bulbs match well with the LED @ 4700K.
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digitaldog

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Re: Help! My color management can't deal with customers crappy lighting
« Reply #8 on: January 03, 2019, 07:16:35 pm »

CRI is a nearly meaningless metric.
it's a bit of a kludge to make a light source appear to be closer to daylight for marketing and light manufacturers. CRI was developed in large part to aid in the sales of Fluorescent tubes. There are BCRA tiles used to compare under a reference light source but only eight. That's too small a set of tiles. That make it easy to create a spectrum that will render the 8-14 tiles and doesn't tell us that the light source is full spectrum. It doesn't tell us how the other colors will render. My understanding is there are two reference sources; Tungsten for warm bulbs and D50 for cool ones: Above and below 4000K. That means that a normal tungsten bulb and perfect daylight both have a CRI of 100! As such, a high CRI is a decent gauge of how well a light will preform in your home but not such a great indicator of how well it will work for photography and proofing. Both a Solux 48 and a "full spectrum" tube from home depot may have a CRI of 97. I can assure you the Home Depot bulb has a giant mercury spike and some spectral dead spots.

A better metric is called CQS (15 very colorful patches). That doesn't tell us about the spectrum which is even a better way to evaluate the illuminant.
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Aram Hăvărneanu

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Re: Help! My color management can't deal with customers crappy lighting
« Reply #9 on: January 03, 2019, 08:12:37 pm »

I think the best metric is TLCI (second set of results).
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faberryman

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Re: Help! My color management can't deal with customers crappy lighting
« Reply #10 on: January 04, 2019, 06:33:15 am »

I think the best metric is TLCI (second set of results).
Why not just buy a Solux bulb and be done with it.
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digitaldog

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Re: Help! My color management can't deal with customers crappy lighting
« Reply #11 on: January 04, 2019, 01:22:39 pm »

Why not just buy a Solux bulb and be done with it.
If possible, indeed.
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