PREPARING YOUR IMAGES FOR PROFESSIONAL OUTPUT SAINT LOUIS CAMERA CLUB - MAY Wednesday, May 15, 13

Transcription

1 PREPARING YOUR IMAGES FOR PROFESSIONAL OUTPUT SAINT LOUIS CAMERA CLUB - MAY

2 2 Tonight s program is about preparing your digital image files for output by various professional photo labs locally and nationally like Diversified Lab, Mpix, White House Custom Color, Costco Photo Center, and more. If you prepare your files correctly and to the specifications of your particular photo lab, they will come back with accurate and vivid color every time and you will save yourself countless dollars and endless hours of frustration. Each service has slightly different requirements and specifications for exactly how they want you to prepare your file for printing, so we can use them as case studies for the various situations you are likely to encounter when you send files out for printing. By a show of hands, how many of you saw my program last year on How to Get Quality Prints at Home Without Breaking the Bank? (And you still came tonight? I applaud your bravery!) In many ways, this presentation is meant to follow directly from that discussion because all of the same issues and concerns are at play. We are, at heart, dealing with the art and science of color management as it relates to photography. The question of how do we keep consistent color as we move from camera to computer to print? For those of you who didn t attend last year or who maybe need a quick refresher on color management, here is the quick and dirty version... In order to get consistent, reproducible color, we need to talk a little bit about how we capture and reproduce color using camera, computer, projector, and print. What we really need is a reference standard or benchmark for color and luminance that works independently of whatever cameras, computers, monitors and printers are being used. The same way that musicians need a reference pitch to all stay in tune with each other. Otherwise it becomes a Tower of Babel situation where everybody ends up with their own particular color response based on their equipment, the lighting environment in their workspaces, and even their own eyesight which can vary not only as we age, but even varies between women and men. We need to make sure that red is red is red, for all of us.

3 3 This graph, which all of my students should recognize by now, is a chart of the visible spectrum of light - a system for graphing all the colors that the human eye is capable of perceiving. All devices we use for reproduction (camera, screen, printer, scanner, etc.) are capable of reproducing only subsets of that entire color chart. (And they are increasingly narrow subsets as you progress from eye to camera to screen to print, I might add.) These are represented by the triangular areas in the CIE diagram. (ProPhoto, AdobeRGB, srgb) Printer gamuts are even smaller ranges within those triangles. In this image, you can see the blob-shaped gamut in the middle for the Epson 2200 printing with Enhanced Matte Paper. In the program last year, we talked about the fact that these subsets are caused by differences in the physical nature of color reproduction (pigments of color on paper vs photons of color emitted from screen) Transmitted color vs. reflected color (or additive vs subtractive color if you prefer) These two primary color models show us the difference between a print and an onscreen image. On the left, you have reflected or subtractive color. Pigments of ink on paper reflecting photons of light back at the eye. On the right, you have transmitted or additive color. Colored beams of light combine and are being emitted by your screen and are seen directly by the eye. They are illuminated is if from behind like a slide transparency. And thus have a glowing quality to them that prints will never achieve. We need to find a way to convert between the different modes of reproduction while maintaining the highest accuracy and fidelity of colors so that Red we see = Red we capture = Red we reproduce. (Which is crucial if you are, for example, Coca Cola whose PMS 185 red is considered a memory color.) The way we do this is by working within a Color Managed Workflow so that WYSI actually WYG (or as close as possible given the different physical means of color reproduction.) And we accomplish this seemingly Herculean task via the use of ICC color profiles, little bits of coded data that describe the particular bias of a given device. For most of you who work in Photoshop, this is done in the Convert to Profile dialogue which can be found in the Edit menu. Invoking this dialogue will cause Photoshop convert your image data from one color space to another following some guidelines you will set. As we talk about the various labs, we ll be discussing the various ways profiling is used to prep your images. Here are the questions you need to answer in order to get good output from your lab: How does your image data get converted to account for the bias of printing on a particular device? How does it go from what you see on your screen to the print that comes back to you? Do you do the converting? Does the lab do the converting? This is what we re going to examine for the next few minutes with some different sample cases.

4 SUBMIT ALL IMAGES AS SRGB COLOR SPACE ICC PROFILES AVAILABLE FOR SOFT PROOFING ONLY 4 Our first test case will be Diversified Lab since I know many of you use them for output. The main thing we ll have to determine with each different photo lab is: a) do we convert our file to a different color profile (for their specific output device) or do we use srgb, AdobeRGB or another standard color space b) do we embed that profile in the file we are submitting. In the case of Diversified, they expect everything to be submitted in the srgb color space. Period. End. So convert your image to srgb if it isn t already. Save and submit. Done and done. Diversified offers Lustre, Matte, and Pearl finish papers for their standard print service. And you can get ICC profiles from them that allow for soft proofing of your images on the three different stocks. But they are very explicit on their website that you should convert to their profiles, nor should you embed their profiles in your images and that they expect everything to be submitted in the srgb color space. So, with these guys. We have it pretty easy as far as file prep goes.

5 SUBMIT ALL IMAGES AS SRGB COLOR SPACE ICC PROFILES AVAILABLE FOR SOFT PROOFING ONLY 5 Like Diversified, Mpix wants an srgb file. But they want it without an embedded profile! So you ll convert to srgb but you won t embed the profile when you save the file. Each service has their own little wrinkle, you see. So be sure you read all of their FAQ s regarding color management and file preparation. Like Diversified, they also offer ICC profiles you can use for soft proofing your image on the various papers they have.

6 RECOMMENDS SRGB AND ADOBERGB ACCEPTS/REQUIRES ANY EMBEDDED PROFILE ICC PROFILES AVAILABLE FOR SOFT PROOFING ONLY 6 Okay, on to another photo lab example... White House Custom color is a bit different. They accept images with any valid profile embedded and will convert them to the destination space upon print. They suggest srgb or AdobeRGB but claim they can work with any valid profile. Unlike the previous two services, White House is specifically requiring you to embed the profile so their print software will know how to interpret your image file. Like the previous services, they offer ICC profiles you can download and use for soft proofing. But they are very clear that you should not convert your files to their printer profiles or embed those profiles in your images. (Stick with your own srgb or AdobeRGB files.)

7 A FEW THOUGHTS ON THE VALUE OF SOFT-PROOFING 7 You ll notice that most of these services give you ICC profiles for soft proofing only. So what s the deal here? Soft-proofing is a concept whereby your computer software attempts to display an on-screen or soft proof of what your image would look like if you printed it on a particular device and paper combination. It s a soft proof because it s not actually a proof at all. It s simply an attempt to render the appearance of printed output on a computer screen. As far as getting a realistic view of how your printed image will look, I find soft proofing to be of dubious value. The only thing that will truly give you an accurate view of how your image will print is to actually have it physically printed by the lab and get a HARD proof back that you can hold in your hands. Then and only then will you know for certain how a given image will print on a given device. In fact, many of the labs we are discussing will run test prints for you on all of their various paper stock so you can see for yourself before you submit an important job. Take advantage of this and run test prints with your lab. You ll be glad you did! Where soft-proofing does have merit, in my experience, is in getting a sense of which colors will fall out-of-gamut and won t print properly. You can use the soft proof to highlight the out-of-range tones and adjust the image saturation and luminance so that some of those unprintable tones are brought back into range.

8 SOFT PROOFING IN PHOTOSHOP 8 You can enable soft proofing in Photoshop via the View menu. View > Custom will invoke the custom proof setup that gives you access to all of your installed color profiles. When the dialogue box appears, you choose the device whose color space you wish to emulate onscreen (Diversified s lustre paper, for example, if you have it installed) and you choose some options about how that on-screen emulation will appear. These include the rendering intent for your colorspace conversion as well as a simulation of paper color and black ink density. I find the paper color and black ink simulations to be useless. So I almost always leave these off. As far as rendering intent goes, we are are talking about how the conversion between color spaces will be handled. Specifically, what will be done to accommodate out of gamut colors that don t fit in the destination color space. I like Relative Colorimetric because the out of gamut colors are pulled in to their nearest in gamut neighbor and none of the other in gamut colors are shifted. If you choose Perceptual instead of Relative, in gamut colors can be shifted to look perceptually more pleasing with the also-shifted out of gamut colors. So, I like Relative because it alters my colors the least amount during the conversion process. Occasionally, I will choose Saturation if I am trying to amp up the colors on my print a bit. 99 times out of 100 I m using Relative. I leave Black Point Compensation on. Without it, you can get muddy blacks in the conversion. Once you have set everything up for the Custom Soft Proof view, you can OK the dialog and toggle your soft proof view on and off with a CMD or CTRL-Y. You may optionally switch to simulating a different device or paper choice to see how it affects your image. This allows you to soft proof your image without actually converting it to the destination color space. You can then enable a gamut warning to show you an overlay that indicates which colors and tones fall out of gamut on that output device. This is a great tool for getting feedback you can use to adjust the image to deal with the out of gamut colors. Lightroom (as of version 4) now has soft proofing as well. It uses a similar mechanism and controls to configure proofing.

9 ICC PROFILES AVAILABLE FROM DRY CREEK PHOTO CONVERT TO DESTINATION PROFILE AND OPTIONALLY EMBED 9 And then there s Costco which is yet another different case study of how some labs work. In the case of Costco, there is a website you can go to at DryCreekPhoto.com and at that site you can download ICC profiles for the specific printers at your specific local branch of Costco. (Dry Creek Photo calibrates all the stores in the chain at least twice a year.) My closest branch is South St. Louis and they have two different kinds of printers and two different kinds of paper stock for each printer. So I have downloaded all four ICC color profiles. For the Noritsu photo printer, I have their Lustre and Glossy paper profiles, and for the large format Epson 7660 inkjet printer, I have their Photo Satin and Semi-Gloss Poster Board profiles. If I print at the Manchester Costco, I m going to get all of their specific profiles. (They have a Fuji Frontier instead of the Noritsu for their photo printer, for example.) So, depending on what printer and what paper I m using for output, I will choose one of the four profiles I downloaded from the Dry Creek site and have installed on my computer. When I export from Lightroom or Photoshop, I will be sure to convert to the destination profile. In Photoshop, it s Edit > Convert to Profile > Choose Appropriate Destination Profile in Lightroom, choose the correct color space in the filetype section of the export dialogue. You may optionally embed the profile in the file, (which happens by default in Lightroom) but from what I ve researched, both of these particular printers will ignore the embedded profile and print the file numbers directly without conversion. In either case, you need to make sure you let them know that you want NO AUTOCORRECT. This is the magic phrase that will keep your pictures from coming back with wonky colors. You ve already converted to their destination profile and any other monkey business will mess up what you ve done.

10 UPLOAD CHOOSE SIZES AND PAPERS NO AUTOCORRECT!! 10 I like Costco because they are fast, cheap, convenient, and have solid quality output. You can upload to their website from your computer, you can upload directly from many online services like DropBox, Facebook, flickr. Google Drive, Instagram, etc. Once your images are uploaded, you choose what size you want and what paper you want them printed on. (Glossy or Lustre) Below a certain size, your images will be printed on the photo printer as either glossy or lustre stock. If you go above a certain size, your images will be printed on the Epson inkjet and you ll choose from the two other paper stocks. Make sure when you submit your order that you tell them NO AUTOCORRECT. Otherwise all your hard work with color control will come to naught.

11 DEALING WITH ASPECT RATIO MISMATCHES IMAGE SHAPE VS PRINT SHAPE DSLR POINT & SHOOT 11 One problem you will frequently encounter when sending your work for lab output is the issue of fitting your image size and shape to a standard print size and shape. The shape your camera shoots doesn t always match the shape your print will be and you ll need to account for the differences. If your image isn t the same aspect ratio as the print you are outputting to, it will get scaled to fill the entire frame and likely be cropped when you send it for output. This can lead to unexpected and unwanted composition of your image. By aspect ratio, I mean the overall proportions of width to height. The shape of your image. For those of you shooting with a DSLR, this means your un-cropped frames are being captured at an aspect ratio of 3 wide by 2 high (landscape orientation) or 2 wide by 3 high (in portrait orientation). This shape comes from 35mm film. If you are shooting with a smaller point-and-shoot camera, your aspect ratio will likely be somewhere closer to 4:3 (more like a TV set shape) Though some newer cameras are offering options for 3:2, 4:5, 1:1 square, and 16:9 movie ratios. If you are printing the entire frame of a 2:3 (or 3:2) aspect ratio photo, it fits evenly into some of the standard print sizes: 4x6, 8x12, or 20x30. (These numbers divide evenly by 2 and 3 respectively) But if you try to fit that 3:2 frame into some of the other standard print sizes like 5x7 or 8x10 (into which it will not divide evenly), you are forced to crop part of the image out because of the mismatch between the two aspect ratios. The smaller ratio can t contain the entire image so you are forced to chop part of it off. When you choose print sizes on the Costco Photo Center website, the service will show you a crop warning if part of your image will be cropped or scaled given the print size and shape you have chosen. And they offer you the ability to re-crop it on the website to get a better framing. In many cases, you can make an acceptable crop and fit your image into a given print shape without too much compromise. But there are some times when you really want your image exactly the size and shape you cropped it to on your computer and do not want it scaled or cropped to fill a standard print size. Sometimes your image isn t remotely shaped like a standard print size! In this case, you ll need to take your original image and pad it out with blank matte space (white or black usually) to fill up the empty areas of a standard print size. This way, when the file is output, no scaling or cropping will occur because the entire image area is filled and you can simply trim your print to the exact size. As long as you get the shape or aspect ratio correct, your image should scale to fit perfectly within the same ratio of a print size. Use the Canvas Size dialogue in Photoshop to expand your image to the correct aspect ratio (in this case 5x7), you can then fill in the blank area with white or blank and submit the file for output. When it comes back, your image will be the correct size and shape and you can trim the padding off the print.

12 PREPARING FOR CANVAS OUTPUT 12 When Roger McCarthy asked me to do this presentation, I promised him I would talk a little bit about preparing for output to canvas, and specifically how to handle prepping the image itself for edge wraps. So here are a few thoughts on the subject. As far as color spaces go, you should submit your canvas images as srgb files. Almost every canvas service I looked at while researching this program requested that as the source. The only big question you have to answer is how you want to handle your edge wraps or if you want them at all. The image printed on to the canvas has extra material on it so that when the canvas is stretched on a frame, the overlapping material wraps around the frame edges and is fixed to the inside of the frame. When it hangs on a wall, you can see the image along the edges as well as the face of the canvas print. You ll have to choose how deep you want your frame to be. Most services offer edge wraps at varying depths of frame. 1/4, 1/2, all the way up to several inches. Some services offer you an option of a solid color for your edge wrap. Almost all offer the option to wrap the image itself around the frame by either stretching or reflecting the content. So you ll have a choice of how you want your wrap to be rendered. As an extension or as a reflection.

13 EASY CANVAS WRAPS WITH PERFECT RESIZE FROM ONONE 13 If you happen to own Perfect Resize from OnOne Software as either a standalone plugin or as part of the OnOne Suite, then you have a super easy way to generate precise gallery wraps for your images. The program has a built in feature specifically designed for this purpose. It s pretty nifty. Invoke Perfect Resize via File > Automate in Photoshop or via the Perfect Suite app if you are running it as a stand-alone. Scroll down to the Gallery Wrap section and flip the switch from Off to On to enable the feature. Choose what Type of wrap you d like from four options: Reflect, Reflect soft, Stretch, and Stretch Soft. I personally like the reflection effect, so that s what I tend to go with. Choose how deep your canvas wrap will go in terms of thickness. You may optionally add an overlay color to the wrap and control the opacity of that overlay. Finally, there is a checkbox that will output the gallery wrap on it s own new layer in Photoshop. I recommend that one since it gives you maximum flexibility. When you apply the plugin it will create your wrap and return you to photoshop where you can save the file for output.

14 SOME TIPS GET TO KNOW YOUR PHOTO LAB REQUEST A COLOR KIT/SAMPLE KIT RUN TEST PRINTS 14 I want to leave plenty of time for questions, but before I finish I want to give you a few tips for getting the most out of your professional lab experience. 1) Get to know your particular photo lab. Find one you like and work with them to get consistent results from your jobs. 2) Request a Color Kit and or Sample Kit from your lab to check your own calibration against their prints. 3) Run Test Prints to see how your work actually outputs on their printers and paper. I can t stress enough how important it is to take advantage of this if your lab offers it.