Snapfish prints look wrong - is it my PP'ing or them?

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danski

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Name
Dan
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My better half sent some pics off to Snapfish that were taken at the youngster's birthday party last week and having received them today the colours seem to be miles off. Wanted to get people's opinions as to whether my PP'ing is off or if it's Snapfish colour profile or colour correction that might be askew.

I've uploaded onto flickr the jpegs that were sent to Snapfish for print, which were created from RAW images that were tweaked in Lightroom 3, along with a scan of the photos that have come back from them - linky

The scans seem to be fairly close to what the actual printed images look like, so can be used for comparison. For some reason, the JPEG's that I've uploaded on flickr look a lot darker on flickr than the originals do in Lightroom - not sure what's going on there. In Lightroom, the images are generally lighter and more saturated.

My monitors at home are both calibrated monthly using an i1 display 2, so at least I should be able to rule out anything to do with that.

Can anyone shed any light as to where the problem lies? Happy to email anyone the original JPEG if flickr isn't giving good enough info.

thanks as always
 
What colour space are you using.

Lightroom will use ProPhoto RGB. When you export to JPG you are given an option to what colour space you want to export to. Have you chosen sRGB as this is what most print labs will use for general prints.
 
good question - is there any way I can check on the JPEG? It will definitely have either been ProPhoto RBG or sRBG - more likely ProPhoto RBG.

Would I be best exporting images with sRBG profile if I want them printing by someone online?
 
I don't think it's a colourspace problem - it's a snapfish problem. I tried them out a little while ago and the prints were shocking. It seems that they do some crazy processing to them, almost HDRish (rather more like boosting the 'blacks' and 'fill light' together in LR). From the looks of your scans, it seems the same thing has happened.

After that I discovered http://www.dscolourlabs.co.uk/ and haven't looked back. You can even install the color profiles that their printer use into LR. Can't fault them.
 
starabo said:
I don't think it's a colourspace problem - it's a snapfish problem.

After that I discovered http://www.dscolourlabs.co.uk/ and haven't looked back. You can even install the color profiles that their printer use into LR. Can't fault them.
Click to expand...

DSCL kick the crap out of any of the consumer labs, and at extremely good prices. Never had a bad print from them.
 
starabo said:
I don't think it's a colourspace problem - it's a snapfish problem. I tried them out a little while ago and the prints were shocking. It seems that they do some crazy processing to them, almost HDRish (rather more like boosting the 'blacks' and 'fill light' together in LR). From the looks of your scans, it seems the same thing has happened.
Click to expand...


That's exactly what I thought when I looked at the Snapfish images on the op's link
 
yep I'd agree that it gives them almost an HDR look - not at all complimentary for pics of people!

Will send some off to DSCL and do a side by side comparison

thanks folks
 
Most consumer labs apply their own automatic 'PP' to the images to bring them up a bit, becuase the average person simply doesn't know what they are doing, and overall for a regular person it does improve the images.

If you are PPing your own prints and colour calibrating them then your only really choice is a pro lab. Use your local one and build up a relationship with them rather than doing things annonymously over the internet.

Paul
www.photographybyriddell.co.uk
 
quick question re: colour space when saving PP'd RAW files as JPEG - I was under the impression that ProPhoto RGB was the better one to use, but should I be using sRGB to maximise compatibility with online printers e.g. DSCL?
 
Most consumer labs apply their own automatic 'PP' to the images to bring them up a bit, becuase the average person simply doesn't know what they are doing, and overall for a regular person it does improve the images.

If you are PPing your own prints and colour calibrating them then your only really choice is a pro lab. Use your local one and build up a relationship with them rather than doing things annonymously over the internet.
Click to expand...

Let me give you a lab perspective...

Most consumer labs do have some automatic colour and density corrections running - and for the bulk of the images they print it will do a good job - it pulls data from the EXIF of the file - and will look for "memory" colours - skin, grass sky etc - as we all know the sky is blue, grass is green and so on....

If you "tweek" your files in Photoshop or whatever you will throw away this EXIF data - or change the denisty/colour and then apply the correction to the corrected files.

ALso your monitor, unless calibrated - will not be correct. Just thing about going into Dixions/Comet etc and look at all the TV's - which one is the right colour. Also a consumer lab is expecting your files to be in sRGB - so if you send in the wrong space the colour will go mental.

Now an semi pro or pro will calibrate their monitor to the ICC standard - and then hopefully will have a calibrated light to illuminate the print - and will work in a room the right brightness. Then a lab that auto corrects your file is the last thing you want.

Labs like DS, Keynasham, ProAm and Ourselves will print the file without any correction - and therefore if you have got your end right - the prints will be far better.

Now, many people assume that all printers are the same - that would be like assuming that everyone who owns a Nikon D3x or whatever will take the same quality of photo - and that's just not the case.

It's the ability of the machine operator - and the preprocessing of the file in the lab - the paper used and the settings applied to the printer that make the difference.

Assuming a colourspace will give better results is fine in theory - but if the printer doesn't know what space you've supplied it in (which as a default it won't) it will make it far worse! ALways assume that sRGB will be the default at most labs (unless they ask for something else)
 
starabo said:
After that I discovered http://www.dscolourlabs.co.uk/ and haven't looked back. You can even install the color profiles that their printer use into LR. Can't fault them.
Click to expand...

I've downloaded their colour profiles for their printers and LR3 is picking them up - question is, what do I need to do to ensure that once I've finished PP'ing my photos that they are then 'matched' (or whatever the correct terminology is) to DSCL's profiles prior to me sending them to print.

My current workflow is as follows:

1. edit RAW files to taste in LR3 and/or PS CS5
2. export as JPEG, 100% quality and sRBG colour space
3. upload to DSCL for printing

I've seen that there's an option for using the DSCL colour space when I export as JPEG - should I use this? To test this, I've just exported the same photo as both sRGB and DSCL colour space and the DSCL deeper colours/blacks look quite washed out - is this normal?

If it is normal, is there any way I can load their colour space prior to editing the RAW images so I can ensure I get the right colour depth from the offset?
 
not sure to be honest as the better half did the ordering. have ordered some copies from DSCL to do some comparison and if they're as good as people are saying on here then we'll probably just order from them going forwards
 
me again!!

I've received my pics from DSCL and the colours still seem to be off - a lot less than the ones from Snapfish though

The 'problem' now is that printed they are quite a bit darker than they are when I look at them on screen. I've compared them side by side under the same lighting conditions to make sure my mind's not playing tricks on me.

Now the strange thing is that when I look at the photos having loaded up DSCL's printer profile for glossy paper (the one I've had prints done on) it actually makes them lighter than when using my calibrated monitor profile??? :shrug:

So - can anyone think what I might be doing wrong? Or would I be better off speaking with the guys at DSCL to see what they think?

BTW - I unclicked any 'correct colour' options when ordering my pics to ensure they were printed as I saw them on screen.

thanks
 
danski said:
I've downloaded their colour profiles for their printers and LR3 is picking them up - question is, what do I need to do to ensure that once I've finished PP'ing my photos that they are then 'matched' (or whatever the correct terminology is) to DSCL's profiles prior to me sending them to print.

My current workflow is as follows:

1. edit RAW files to taste in LR3 and/or PS CS5
2. export as JPEG, 100% quality and sRBG colour space
3. upload to DSCL for printing

I've seen that there's an option for using the DSCL colour space when I export as JPEG - should I use this? To test this, I've just exported the same photo as both sRGB and DSCL colour space and the DSCL deeper colours/blacks look quite washed out - is this normal?

If it is normal, is there any way I can load their colour space prior to editing the RAW images so I can ensure I get the right colour depth from the offset?
Click to expand...

no.

lightroom works in prophoto colourspace, you can then however convert and attach whatever colourspace you want on export, including the custom ones provided by the lab.
 
danski said:
The 'problem' now is that printed they are quite a bit darker than they are when I look at them on screen. I've compared them side by side under the same lighting conditions to make sure my mind's not playing tricks on me.
Click to expand...

I'd agree with you on that from DSCL!

I don't really know why though - my shots look correct on my super-dooper expensive calibrated monitor and can look quite washed out on most crappy laptop type LCD screen so the last thing I want to do is to lighten them up for DSCL!

Funny - I was thinking about getting some large prints done this week and pondering that problem from last time too...
 
Did you end up exporting as sRGB, or as DSCL profile?

It sounds from what you've described that the printers at DSCL come up a little dark, so their colour profile compensates for this.

AFAIK (and i'm no expert, but what I've got works for me) you should do all of your editing on screen at sRGB. If you've got a calibrated monitor, all the better. When you export files specifically for printing, export them with the colour profile of the lab you are using.

If you intend to display the same photos on screen, dont use the lab's profile, export with a different colour space (i.e. sRGB).

Basically, I have a number of different presets in LR depending what I'm doing with the end result. One for printing glossy, one for matt, one for flickr (with sharpening set to low to compensate) one for email.

Syl Arena has an interesting article on colour spaces: check it out
 
If I remember right, I exported these pics as sRBG not DSCL's colour space. I've just come back from a trip abroad and there's some nice shots in there, so I will PP them and export using DSCL's colour space then send to print - will be interesting to see the results.

Strange really cos all the pics that we've printed from shots taken as JPEG's with my 450D have come out fine with Snapfish - maybe it's just my PPing of RAW - although the exported JPEGs look fine on screen!
 
This thread has been very useful in the past. I was in a panic when i tried to export from lightroom 3 and then upload pictures to snapfiah and found them washed out/greanish. In that case, simply checking sRGB worked. Thanks for you help!
I am having a similar issue however, and thought this would be the best place to come. I have recently tried to upload images to Snapfish . . .Canvas on demand . . . mixbook. . . . exported from same version of LR, only to discover my images are previewing in all of these programs similarly to when sRGB was not selected, even though it's checked. I have tried selecting other color printing options in LR (adobe rgb, photopro). But I keep getting the same results. I have 4 sessions that all preview similarly. To my knowledge I have not done anything differently in LR. Thought it was possibly my camera settings but got similar results from pictures taken with a different camera. If anyone has any ideas I would really appreciate it! It's as if lightroom is not recognizing that I have selected the RGB printing option.
 
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Well I have just installed dcsl profiles to use for exporting from LR4, to say the least I'm a bit confused...

I exported a few examples using srgb and the same shots with dcsl's profile for their pearly paper. The srgb looks exactly as it does in LR wheras the dscl boosts what looks lie saturation of say one colour. In one example the blue (sky) as well as purple (gelled flash) boosts slightly. Another a gelled flash (green) is boosted.

Any ideas? I would say I prefer the srgb version, if I sent away the dcsl image would it come back looking like the srgb? Or the boosted version?
 
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