First use of DSColour labs - muddy brown prints

ancient_mariner

ancient_mariner

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Toni
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Just had my first order back from DS Colour labs, and all the images including a true untoned mono have come back with a brown cast (the mono looks sepia). Images were output using sRGB in the same way that I have done for my usual (more expensive) printer. I've emailed for info, but was wondering if anyone else has experienced this? I did not download a printer profile, but surely for a mono image there should be no colour cast?

They're good value if I can find a solution, but very expensive if I cannot.
 
It is still possible for a colour cast to manifest itself... I would definitely soft proof with their profile (I print in house so don't have direct experience of DSCL).

Soft proofing allows you to 'tweak' so that the best output can be attained (reliant of course on an accurate monitor profile).

I find that with a good paper/ink profile that mono prints are neutral (I create my own profiles) but when testing a canned profile there was a cast. Is it possible to instruct DS that it is a mono image and to treat it as such?
 
Do you use lightroom? They have a number of printer profiles for their various media they use which you can add into lightroom. I've not had an issue with them and I use them a lot as it worked out cheaper than having a photo printer for me for my quantities. It does sound like a colour profile issue.
What do DSCL say - they are very good at resolving issues.
 
ancient_mariner said:
Just had my first order back from DS Colour labs, and all the images including a true untoned mono have come back with a brown cast (the mono looks sepia). Images were output using sRGB in the same way that I have done for my usual (more expensive) printer. I've emailed for info, but was wondering if anyone else has experienced this? I did not download a printer profile, but surely for a mono image there should be no colour cast?

They're good value if I can find a solution, but very expensive if I cannot.
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Firstly, I would suggest you download the DSCL profile for the paper you are using.

In my experience of DSCL even B&W prints can vary in tonal range.
On occasion, I have processed images to give a "Selenium" tone or "Sepia effect", and these have always been faithfully reproduced by the printing process.
I've never had any complaints, DSCL prints always come back matching what I see on my monitor screen.
 
Had an email, sent an ecxample file (the untoned mono image) and awaiting outcome. The other printer uses fuji paper & inks too, and while I accept a profile may be necessary to exacty match tones, I'm a bit horrified it's required to get a neutral image from a true mono. But I'll happily live & learn - awaiting the outcome - to see if I've been a wally.
 
Never had an issue with them whether I used their profile or not. However, if it is obvious I would have hoped their QC would have picked up the issue.
 
Well they are convinced it needs the profile, so I'll do that & send an image as they suggested for a test. If it comes back neutral then I'll send another test set, but if not then will move on.

LR print module seems a PITA to use, although familiarity may reduce the hassle, but it feels like they have made a very simple export job damned awkward. Is there a way to use a profile in the normal export mode?
 
LR print module is the worst part of the whole program in my opinion. However, having said that, I have had some really nice results using dscl (once I compensated brightness for my iMac). The first couple of batches I sent were a little too dark. That was my fault not theirs though!
 
sk66 said:
Yes. But are they saying they want you to convert the color space to the printer's profile? That's not normal...
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Thanks - yes, I believe they are, in the way one would select a printer colour profile to output to a printer at home.
 
ancient_mariner said:
Well they are convinced it needs the profile, so I'll do that & send an image as they suggested for a test. If it comes back neutral then I'll send another test set, but if not then will move on.

LR print module seems a PITA to use, although familiarity may reduce the hassle, but it feels like they have made a very simple export job damned awkward. Is there a way to use a profile in the normal export mode?
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I struggled the first time. I think DSCL has instructions on its website, if you can't find it I'll try to find a link. There may also be a video available. I have the profile stored and just select it when exporting.
 
ancient_mariner said:
Thanks - yes, I believe they are, in the way one would select a printer colour profile to output to a printer at home.
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That's not the same thing... a printer profile is to specify how the image colors will be interpreted, not to convert the image colors into. I.e. you do not make an image's color space that of a printer/paper... you softproof using the printer/paper profile, and at home you tell the printer to use the profile (typically for a specific paper).

If they want the image converted to the printer profile, that means the printer/system doesn't use profiles at all and they are ignored. Or it means their system has the printer profiles also installed, which is just odd.
 
They ask (as I understand it) for images to be sent in srgb. But they have print profiles for various output media to be used for soft-proofing images before saving for print as srgb. That enables you to see what adjustments might be necessary before saving. For instance, you might have to up the contrast for a given ink / paper (I said ink, but I suspect that we're talking C-types here, but the same applies). From my experience if your display is set up right, colour is never an issue.

Prints I've had from DSCL have been excellent in colour AND mono. Which can only make me suspect Toni that something in your workflow is wrong, though I hate to say it. I can't think what, though. Being very old-fashioned, I've never printed from LR - always from PS.
 
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I and many friends have used them for prints and always get back spot on images.
One you need to have the file 100% correct and converted to the right profile, they have them for each paper, You also must have a fully calibrated screen both colour and brightness.
DSColour will not do any correction and print as is. You say you had mono how did you save it? was it in RGB mode and what colour space?
How are you making the Mono in ACR or Photoshop or LR Have you soft proofed them>?
 
I use these too. Yes prints as do many at our camera club. Some use the profile and some dont I fall into the later. Cant say I've heard of this issue.

Gaz
 
Their instructions seem to imply that you should convert to their profile (step 5) after soft proofing, that IMHO should not be correct as if they are printing using a profile then the print will be double profiled which will result in incorrect colours etc. When you soft proof either in LR or PS the profile is only applied (no conversion is made) so that you can compensate for the particular ink/paper/printer combination when that profile is used to print...

BTW the print module and soft proofing in LR are great once you get the hang of them.
 
PhilH04 said:
Their instructions seem to imply that you should convert to their profile (step 5) after soft proofing, that IMHO should not be correct as if they are printing using a profile then the print will be double profiled which will result in incorrect colours etc. When you soft proof either in LR or PS the profile is only applied (no conversion is made) so that you can compensate for the particular ink/paper/printer combination when that profile is used to print...

BTW the print module and soft proofing in LR are great once you get the hang of them.
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I have spoke to their lab guy a while back about this and he said that their colour profiles should only ever be used for soft-proffing and not for conversion. The onlline info was wrong and was going to be changed. Conversion should only be to sRGB.

They only provide a limited number of colour profiles now. I am sure their profiles covered more of the range of papers.
 
gremlin16 said:
LR print module is the worst part of the whole program in my opinion.
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It's actually very powerful, you just need to read the instructions

For the print profiles, if on a PC it's download, right Click, select install... If on a Mac you have to put them into the /Library/ColorSync/Profiles folder
If you select Soft Proofing below your photo in the Develop Module.then you get a soft proofing panel on the right menu. You can select the profile there, then jump betweem the two profiles with the icons, monitor or paper.

On the colour management section of the print output, select the print profile and use print to file. Then you open a whole world of templates you can use if required.

Julie Kost has a great video on softproofing
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHgdLYr87l4
 
momoka said:
I have spoke to their lab guy a while back about this and he said that their colour profiles should only ever be used for soft-proffing and not for conversion. The onlline info was wrong and was going to be changed. Conversion should only be to sRGB.

They only provide a limited number of colour profiles now. I am sure their profiles covered more of the range of papers.
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Thanks for clearing that up, I did wonder, that now makes perfect sense, thank goodness I print in-house with my own custom profiles....
 
Byker28i said:
On the colour management section of the print output, select the print profile and use print to file. Then you open a whole world of templates you can use if required.
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I believe as has been stated they expect the file to be in sRGB, so when using the print to file function do not select the printer/ink/paper profile, select sRGB.

The DSCL profile is only needed for soft proofing in order to tweak your file to their output.
 
Also I believe that they print files 'as sent' - ie without any auto or manual adjustments to tone / colour - so it's up the sender how they print. Which is good - I wouldn't want anything messing with my carefully-prepared files.
 
ancient_mariner said:
... while I accept a profile may be necessary to exacty match tones, I'm a bit horrified it's required to get a neutral image from a true mono.
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sk66 said:
Monitor calibration and softproofing...
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I'm very inexperienced when it comes to colour management, but this shocked me too. Surely, if the image has no colour in it (ie pure grey scale), it should *always* print without a colour cast?

I mean, I understand that if your monitor isn't calibrated then it might not look completely neutral, but that doesn't matter. And if you're printing at home and your printer isn't calibrated, the print might not come out completely neutral. But with a professional printer, and with only mono tones in the image, surely it should print right. Shouldn't it? If not, why on earth not?
 
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PhilH04 said:
I believe as has been stated they expect the file to be in sRGB, so when using the print to file function do not select the printer/ink/paper profile, select sRGB.

The DSCL profile is only needed for soft proofing in order to tweak your file to their output.
Click to expand...

For DSCL I use their paper profiles if there is one to use for the medium I've chosen. I found it made a difference with some of the specialist papers

Here at DS COLOUR Labs Ltd we use Fuji Frontier 570 printers. All images should be supplied as sRGB or with our own profiles as JPEG files at 300 dpi and sized to the correct output size required. If your files are not sized we will scale your Image to fill the paper selected only on option 1 & 2. We have our own profiles which can be downloaded above. Prints are available in glossy, lustre or Pearl (Fuji Metallic). Please note all files should be set as sRGB not as CMYK.
 
StewartR said:
I'm very inexperienced when it comes to colour management, but this shocked me too. Surely, if the image has no colour in it (ie pure grey scale), it should *always* print without a colour cast?
I mean, I understand that if your monitor isn't calibrated then it might not look completely neutral, but that doesn't matter. And if you're printing at home and your printer isn't calibrated, the print might not come out completely neutral. But with a professional printer, and with only mono tones in the image, surely it should print right. Shouldn't it? If not, why on earth not?
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Because, in terms of color/color space "monotone" is not B&W. It is RGB... it's kind of like taking dark blue and reducing the luminance so as to appear black when it is really blue. And this is how a color printer (ink/led) prints in B&W... by mixing the various colors to generate various darknesses of monotone shades (print color is subtractive/CMYK reproduction of the additive/RGB image colors). Also keep in mind that tint/temp still affect a B&W image, this is similar to softproofing for a paper that is not pure white (it might be slightly blue/bright, or slightly yellow/warm)... If that image is then printed on a paper that IS pure white it will have a color cast, because the paper color/tint was subtracted from the RGB mix in the image during softproofing.
The only way to avoid this is to tell the printer to use black ink only (home) which doesn't usually work as well, or use a dedicated B&W printer that has multiple shades of black/grey inks (which isn't typical).

So if something is wrong with the color spaces in use, or with the interpretation of the color space at the lab, then the RGB information may not actually be (or print as) monotone. The most typical issue is that the lab's software/process does not actually recognize/use color profiles. Instead the printer is calibrated assuming images will be in the sRGB color space; and if it's not it will print incorrectly (this sounds like DSCL). In this case they often recommend renaming the file/saving a copy and converting it to the softproofing profile... the profile/conversion is irrelevant because it isn't used, but it tells you that the colors in the image are only correct for that particular printer/paper. It will also render correctly *on your machine with a color managed program* because you have the profile installed.

The other case is that the lab's software has installed, and does recognize/use, a few color spaces (usually AdobeRGB/sRGB, and sometimes ProPhoto); and if an image comes in without a recognized color space (or incorrectly tagged), then it is assumed to be sRGB (or printed using the wrong color space as tagged). This is the "better" system, but it is more problematic... because it relies on absolutely correct color management/tagging of the images by the customer, otherwise it's no better than the previous system.
This is why most labs want jpegs in their native/correct color space (sRGB). Then color management is a non-issue on their end as long as you didn't do something abnormal (i.e. assign/convert to some other color space).
 
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Byker28i said:
For DSCL I use their paper profiles if there is one to use for the medium I've chosen. I found it made a difference with some of the specialist papers

Here at DS COLOUR Labs Ltd we use Fuji Frontier 570 printers. All images should be supplied as sRGB or with our own profiles as JPEG files at 300 dpi and sized to the correct output size required. If your files are not sized we will scale your Image to fill the paper selected only on option 1 & 2. We have our own profiles which can be downloaded above. Prints are available in glossy, lustre or Pearl (Fuji Metallic). Please note all files should be set as sRGB not as CMYK.
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It does say at the end that the file should be in sRGB colour space, if you convert the file to their own profile and they then print using a profile the print will then be double profiled giving an incorrect result. One can only assume they have a way around this... However the big secret is a calibrated and profiled monitor with luminance set to match as closely as possible a print viewed in your standard lighting and using soft proofing.
 
PhilH04 said:
One can only assume they have a way around this...
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They don't color manage images... they calibrate their printers assuming an sRGB source. And their printer profiles are sRGB, only with a slight offset for the type of paper used. In this case softproofing and conversion do the same thing... change the color information (in sRGB) based upon the printer/paper that will be used.
 
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I replied to their email saying that the image I attached had been exported using their printer profile instead of sRGB (in the way Steven showed above). They requested I let them know when the replacement print arrived.

Now we'll have to wait.
 
sk66 said:
They don't color manage images... they calibrate their printers assuming an sRGB source. And their printer profiles are sRGB, only with a slight offset for the type of paper used. In this case softproofing and conversion do the same thing... change the color information (in sRGB) based upon the printer/paper that will be used.
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It's worth bearing in mind that the Fuji Frontier printer is an optical printer.
No inks are involved.
It works like a slide projector and the paper is processed like a colour print.

There is a technical brochure here.

One of the reasons DSCL offer such low prices is because they want you, the customer, to do all the print preparation yourself, so they can just load the image file and make the print with no further intervention.
 
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Brian G said:
It's worth bearing in mind that the Fuji Frontier printer is an optical printer.
No inks are involved.
It works like a slide projector and the paper is processed like a colour print.

There is a http://www.fujifilmusa.com/shared/bin/Frontier_550&570_Brochure.pdf.
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Doesn't make much difference... it's just that instead of the printer converting the RGB input into a CMYK output (ink print) it's kept as RGB output (RGB lasers), much like a monitor does.
 
sk66 said:
Doesn't make much difference... it's just that instead of the printer converting the RGB input into a CMYK output (ink print) it's kept as RGB output (RGB lasers), much like a monitor does.
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It's just that a couple of posts have made reference to "paper and ink" profiles, so I thought I'd clear that up.
 
Brian G said:
It's just that a couple of posts have made reference to "paper and ink" profiles, so I thought I'd clear that up.
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Yes... it is just common terminology, for ink read optical laser, can see it could confuse.
 
The test print they sent arrived today, and the profile fixed the muddy shadow areas. In daylight* the image is almost neutral, but there's a hint of maroon almost like chromatic aberration in the fine detail areas. I need to think carefully about whther to go with DSCL or not.

*I first examined the print under fluorescent lighting, where it looked a little sepia, and I had to go outside to be sure how it really looked.
 
droj said:
Many or most labs for this size / type of print will use similar printers, so what might be gained?

That seems an odd thing to do ...
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Apart from a couple of years back when I had lightroom set up to use a different colour space internally and that carried over to the images even when apparently exported in sRGB, I have not had a problem with odd colour casts in prints. My experience is that other printers I have used produce neutral prints.

The package was first opened in the office, and that has fluorescent lighting.
 
I must've been lucky - my first adventures with digital used a hybrid workflow - colour images taken on film, home-scanned (first with a Minolta, then later a Nikon scanner), adjusted & dust-spotted in PS4 using a CRT (that's cathode ray tube for any youngsters watching) display, then sent on a writeable cd as tiffs for printing. I was pleased to have the control that was previously lacking in automated lab machine prints straight from film. Along with the tiffs on cd I sent an instruction to the lab - 'do not adjust'. And that worked.

But I've never yet, still having one foot stuck in the mud, sent files to print from Lr - I still even from digital originals send from Ps. But never yet an issue. So I'm not much help. Wish I could be.

ancient_mariner said:
a hint of maroon almost like chromatic aberration in the fine detail areas
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Are you, in visual terms, pixel-peeping? I wonder how you check your images before exporting for print. I can't imagine what the print machine might add to a sent file. Of course you can't predict a printed image entirely on a computer screen, but my experience is that the digital print process is a fairly neutral interpreter of the file sent. Thus in such a circumstance I would hesitate to blame the lab, and after taking a breather I'd patiently examine my workflow (and originals).
 
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droj said:
Of course you can't predict a printed image entirely on a computer screen, but my experience is that the digital print process is a fairly neutral interpreter of the file sent. Thus in such a circumstance I would hesitate to blame the lab, and after taking a breather I'd patiently examine my workflow (and originals).
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I think the OP's original expectation, and the point to the thread, was that if your image file is purely monochromatic (i.e. each pixel has identical R/G/B values) then you'd expect the print to be purely monochromatic. That's what I'd expect too, and despite the patient explanations in this thread I still don't understand why it isn't true. Of course, if you have a discrepancy in colour profiles then all bets are off. But if I've read this thread correctly, the OP was sending an sRGB image to a printer which was expecting an sRGB image. So unless he's made a gross error somewhere, it's not obvious (to me, at least) what tweaks he could make to his workflow which might correct this. (If I've understood properly, which I might not have.)
 
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