DSCL - Still not getting the results I am after :(

the thread has been cleaned, can we please NOT discuss poor customer service in this one, if you have a grievance, take it up with the company via their website or privately. If youre a company, either pay for advertising, or stop posting links to your site. Other companies pay good money to advertise here and its not fair on them. Several warnings later, my patience is now getting very thin
 
the thread has been cleaned, can we please NOT discuss poor customer service in this one, if you have a grievance, take it up with the company via their website or privately. If youre a company, either pay for advertising, or stop posting links to your site. Other companies pay good money to advertise here and its not fair on them. Several warnings later, my patience is now getting very thin

Thanks Matty.

To everyone who has contributed so far, I really appreciate it. Please try and keep this thread within the rules so I can get to the bottom of this, as it's incredibly frustating. Also I am willing to offer a small monetary thank you to anyone who helps me nail this issue once and for all.
 
Thanks Matty.

To everyone who has contributed so far, I really appreciate it. Please try and keep this thread within the rules so I can get to the bottom of this, as it's incredibly frustating. Also I am willing to offer a small monetary thank you to anyone who helps me nail this issue once and for all.

I certianly hope no-one accepts anything you try and offer! Its a nice gesture but its not what the forums are about
 
So the shirt is Pink, its just that when you send them to print everything seems duller when they are returned.
Ok, i seem to recall someone else having this problem.
Would i be correct in saying the print is roughly 1 to 1.5 stops darker?
If it is and i really do recall someone else with this issue then upload 3 prints to DSCL with what you normally do and 1 at 0.5 and 1 at 1 stop brighter.
Give them a call and ask them what they think is the best one.
If i remember i believe the solution to the other person was to PP as normal on his monitor but when he uploaded make it 0.85 brighter for the print.

Ps..I do realize what i just wrote there sounds as stupid as a big bag of stupid things in a stupid factory but it did actually work for the person.
 
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I certianly hope no-one accepts anything you try and offer! Its a nice gesture but its not what the forums are about

I'm just so frustated with it and has been bugging me for months, ill do anything to get it right
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Ok, I am going to ask the bloody obvious - you do appreciate that your screen is backlit and therefore, any print will look marginally duller than it appears on screen?

As suggested above, you may have to speak to DSCL and do a bespoke calibration job whereby you send several different versions and see which comes back best and use those settings for prints based on your screens ability to replicate what is going happen when printed.
 
So the shirt is Pink, its just that when you send them to print everything seems duller when they are returned.
Ok, i seem to recall someone else having this problem.
Would i be correct in saying the print is roughly 1 to 1.5 stops darker?
If it is and i really do recall someone else with this issue then upload 3 prints to DSCL with what you normally do and 1 at 0.5 and 1 at 1 stop brighter.
Give them a call and ask them what they think is the best one.
If i remember i believe the solution to the other person was to PP as normal on his monitor but when he uploaded make it 0.85 brighter for the print.

Ps..I do realize what i just wrote there sounds as stupid as a big bag of stupid things in a stupid factory but it did actually work for the person.

I think you're on to something here Craig. I uploaded the DSCL calibration JPEG into LR and tried to get the screen version to match the one I had received in print from them.

I brought the exposure down by .95 to try and match the overall exposure of the test print, which by no coincidence is similar to the figure you mentioned! So if I had to darken their jpeg to get it to look like their print, i'd have to brighten mine by that amount to get it to look like theirs. :thinking:
 
I'm sure there's an option with DSCL to let them correct the print via their technicians.
 
Ok, I am going to ask the bloody obvious - you do appreciate that your screen is backlit and therefore, any print will look marginally duller than it appears on screen?

As suggested above, you may have to speak to DSCL and do a bespoke calibration job whereby you send several different versions and see which comes back best and use those settings for prints based on your screens ability to replicate what is going happen when printed.

completely appreciate that the screen is backlit. Some of my photos have an obvious glow to them that is aesthetically pleasing to me, and the print's just dont come close in some cases.

I spoke to DSCL who were very friendly and helpful, but the solution they suggested was to calibrate by eye using their test image and print. Which doesn't seem very reliable for me. They also suggested PP'ing the difference to get the prints to match next time :shrug:
 
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I'm sure there's an option with DSCL to let them correct the print via their technicians.

I did enquire about it, but they said its not really something to do, which is fair enough as they are an automation based printing lab.
 
completely appreciate that the screen is backlit. Some of my photos have an obvious glow to them that is aesthetically pleasing to me, and the print's just dont come close in some cases.

I spoke to DSCL who were very friendly and helpful, but the solution they suggested was to calibrate by eye using their test image and print. Which doesn't seem very reliable for me. They also suggested getting PP'ing the difference to get the prints to match next time :shrug:

Why is that not reliable? I hate to say this, they might just have a point though. My laptop screen is calbrated, originally with a huey and now with an Eye 2 thingy, but its still crap and cannot produce images that look anything like they do on other screens or in prints. Its a cheap crappy screen, I know that and I am guessing you are using a much better one if processing on it, but the point is, that even with calinbration, it can be wrong and the evidence of your own eye might actually be better in this case. You say its frustrated you for months, so why not actually give their advice a go and see what happens? ;)


FWIW BTW, Loxley do colour correct, so why not give them a trial and see what you get back?
 
Why is that not reliable? I hate to say this, they might just have a point though. My laptop screen is calbrated, originally with a huey and now with an Eye 2 thingy, but its still crap and cannot produce images that look anything like they do on other screens or in prints. Its a cheap crappy screen, I know that and I am guessing you are using a much better one if processing on it, but the point is, that even with calinbration, it can be wrong and the evidence of your own eye might actually be better in this case. You say its frustrated you for months, so why not actually give their advice a go and see what happens? ;)


FWIW BTW, Loxley do colour correct, so why not give them a trial and see what you get back?

I'm with you on all points. I have their calibration print here but I can't find a way of adjusting any of the sliders on Win7 on a Dell Studio laptop. So till I find the right menus to fiddle with, i have been working in LR to recreate the test print from their digital proof.

I am going to try Loxley and a few others (y)
 
Regardless of who prints - if any lab received the first file the results would be much the same. If there's nothing there, nothing can be done to recreate it.

Now with the second image - as detail was there, a lab doing colour & density corrections could make it better - but as each time it's printed a different correction might be applied you'll not get any consistancy.

The only way to do this is to get a good screen - and calibrate it. As someone pointed out they tried to calibrate their laptop - but got nowhere... You need a decent screen - and a good calibrator such as a colormunki, a spyder3 or Gretag/x-rite i1.

Please remember that calibrating your screen is getting you part way there. If you took your screen outside at mid-day - and again at midnight it will look quite different - as your eyes are adaptive. Also the longer you look at the image the more shadow detail you'll see - it's a bit like the days of going into a darkroom - at first under the safelight you saw very little, but after a while you could see loads!

The colour of the wall behind your monitor can effect your perceptions too.

Then the light that illuminates the print you are looking at makes a difference - the ICC standard is for quite a lot of light on your print - so under normal domestic rooms in the evening it's way darker, making the print appear dark....

The help I was giving with the test file is a second method - look at the numbers (but this can be hard in Lightroom etc - as the readout is in percentages!)
 
Sorry, Matty. My frustration spilled over.
 
so, there is an issue with the overall brightness of my screen, but some of the reds look muted across a sample of other prints i received. Could it be that their is gamut clipping (whatever that is!)?
 
The tie is black with the same colour stripe in, its a good match to the shirt. You sure it should be red??????????????
 
The tie is black with the same colour stripe in, its a good match to the shirt. You sure it should be red??????????????

its hard to explain, the shirt colour that I am seeing on screen isn't what I got in print, the difference appears to be some reds not being saturated fully and duller overall.

I have now downloaded a manual calibration tool called CLTest and am calibrating by eye to see how that works.

My other question is, does that image look overly warm or yellow? The CLTest software is indicating I need a boost of my yellows, which would mean I have been compensating in LR.
 
Hmmm...
Really strange. Downloaded Raw and heres what i get after ACR. Only ACR though.
I assume this is pretty much how it should be.
If so, then ermm..it seems to be user error at the actual taking the picture stage either that or your camera is doing some weird **** in camera.

Original.jpg




This looks to be were one of the problem lie, it the software use to convert the RAW.

I have downloaded your original RAW file opened it in Canon DPP and the just used the convert and save function. NO editing or adjustments what so ever, and it looks nothing like the Abode ACR conversion.

Original.jpg
 
This looks to be were one of the problem lie, it the software use to convert the RAW.

I have downloaded your original RAW file opened it in Canon DPP and the just used the convert and save function. NO editing or adjustments what so ever, and it looks nothing like the Abode ACR conversion.

Original.jpg

The second one is how it looks in LR with no adjustments. So that would mean that my import was correct?
 
CL Test didnt work for me at all. So i removed every colour profile. Reran spyder 3 pro with a luminance of 90ish and the prints are matching the screen a lot better. Any variation in the brightness, I would put down to a backlit display. The reds are still slightly muted, but thats something I can live with for now or PP in some changes for the printers. What a headache!!! :bang:

Every article/advice I read about calibrating said to have the laptop luminance @ 120 cd/m2, so I never tried deviating from that and testing again. I think its clear now that may have been my underlying problem. Will do another few test prints from new images I have taken to see how close a match I get.
 
The luminanace setting of 120cd/m2 is a starting point - and it depends on the brightness of the room you are working in - and the brightness of the reference light on your prints.

If you find that print coming back from your lab are too dark you need to reduce the brightness of the screen - and if they are too light, brighten the screen.

CRT's used to have a recommended value of 100 and I have seen people run them at 80 if they were in a darker enviroment.

Also a hood on your monitor can make a difference to the shadow detail in particular - and laptop screens can often vary a lot depending on your viewing angle...

There will always be colours that appear on screen better than you can print - and there are some colours that will print that you can't see on your monitor - and of you go into 12 colour inkjet printers there are even more.... That's because the gamult of the printer is not the same shape as your monitor - have a look at drycreek's site for a more full explanation.

Also - how good are your eyes?

Here's a test you can take to find out - the lower the score the better - and it will also show the colours you are worst at!

http://www.xrite.com/custom_page.aspx?PageID=77
 
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