Editing for screen and print

J

Jamie perks

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Name
Jamie
Edit My Images
Yes
Had a few issues with photos looking good on screen and then looking a bit dark when printed. Anyone help?
 
Calibrate screen and printer together - made a huge difference for me as I was experiencing exactly this problem
 
I guess part of the problem is I use my iMac for editing but take prints to a studio to print.
 
The Mac OS display calibration does a reasonable job if you use the expert mode (hold down the option key whilst pressing the calibrate button) in system prefs/display/colour. DSCL also recommend setting brightness to 50%.

I too have been a 'victim' of printed photos coming out darker than I wanted in the past because I had the brightness set higher. I'm waiting on a test print to come back (hopefully today) to see what difference changing this has made.
 
ashtennisguru said:
The Mac OS display calibration does a reasonable job if you use the expert mode (hold down the option key whilst pressing the calibrate button) in system prefs/display/colour. DSCL also recommend setting brightness to 50%.

I too have been a 'victim' of printed photos coming out darker than I wanted in the past because I had the brightness set higher. I'm waiting on a test print to come back (hopefully today) to see what difference changing this has made.
Click to expand...

Thanks I will try this today and try a test print.
 
Your screen is illuminated from behind whereas prints rely on reflective light.
Mac screens by default are way to bright and my calibration system normally requires me to drop my brightness by more than half.

In Lightroom, I still bump up the print brightness a notch or two depending on the image.
 
I'd guess that 50% brightness will be in the right area - it could even be a bit less. But it's a good starting point. Some other options will depend on your particular display. I don't remember having such issues in the long-ago dark days of crt monitors - it's more a curse of the modern, flat panel world.

Do that, and print. Then compare the print with the image on screen. Maybe tweak the display then to match the print?
 
^^^ Dropping the screen brightness to 50% and processing to that definitely helped, just had my print back from DSCL and it looks much closer in colour and brightness to the screen work than previous prints I've had done. So will now use that as a reference going forward. Definitely worth trying OP.
 
Did the screen calibration so I'll get a test print done to check. Is DSCL who you use for prints?
 
Dscl used to provide a calibration print along with a cd of there profiles and a digital version of the calibration print
 
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