Commercial photo printers

[overthepass]

I'm no doubt outing myself as a dinosaur in posting this, but I still get a fair number of photos printed each year. Not quite sure why - probably a combination of (1) insurance policy in case everything stored electronically gets frazzled by a giant solar flare, (2) a desire to be able to look at at least some photos without the time and energy consumption of booting up the PC and/or accessing cloud storage, and (3) sheer force of habit. I normally have printing done by a retail printer because I find home printing too time-consuming and (given the price of ink cartridges and the rate at which printers guzzle it) costly.

Until now, in recent years I've used two of the big high street printers, and have generally found their product quite satisfactory, although my standards aren't very demanding. Then a couple of years ago or so I had a batch done by Printer 1 and found that a proportion (but only a fairly small proportion) of the photos seemed to be really badly done. In short, the effect was a bit similar to what you get if you turn the contrast up too high in Photoshop or similar - colours oversaturated, dark bits too dark, light bits bleached out with loss of detail and so on. I should add that these defects were not apparent in the files I'd uploaded at the printers - my photos aren't brilliant but they weren't that bad, and the files as displayed on my PC monitor looked reasonably OK for contrast, saturation, detail in highlights etc.

So I started using Printer 2 more - they're pricier, but in my experience had always been pretty reliable in producing prints which bore an accurate likeness to the files as viewed on my PC. Until now. I've just been sorting out a batch of prints from them, and it's just the same issues again. Some prints are fine, some look like you've turned up the contrast too high, and some are just dreadful, with the colour balance all wrong as well - think the sort of result you can get if you unthinkingly apply Auto Contrast and Auto Colours in Photoshop (or at least my very old version of it).

Two questions arise from this. First, can anyone explain how two commercial printers (both ones of decent reputation and, in my experience, generally decent service) can manage to do this? I'm just giving them the files to print, not asking them to edit them, and the files are standard jpegs taken on standard cameras and processed with standard software. Therefore provided that their printers are properly calibrated to produce a standard result from a standard file, there should be no problem. I find it difficult to believe that they don't pay reasonable attention to keeping their printers properly calibrated, because that's their stock-in-trade, and I've not had problems with either firm before. Yet the results in the cases I mention above are so much worse than the occasional photos I print on my bog-standard cheap home printer, which just prints what I send it and doesn't seem to require any calibration at all. So it it that the printers are now incorporating some kind of auto-edit function in their processes and doing it rather badly? It's also puzzling that only some photos seem to be badly affected. The worst affected (although not the only) ones are mostly those with some strong highlights like white fringes or Brown Hairstreak eggs.

Secondly, does anyone have recommendations as to how and where I might get photos printed (at non-astronomical cost) without the mishaps mentioned above?

[jonhd]

Questions that spring to mind:
- Is the problem related to photos from a specific camera?
- You mention that you use editing software - any chance you might be unwittingly changing the colour space (e.g. to/from Adobe RGB), for the affected images only? Similarly, do you play around with White Balance (e.g. from "In camera" to some custom setting) - again, for the affected images, only?

The above questions, just for starters.

BR, Jon

[overthepass]

Thanks John, all very relevant questions. I don't think the problem's related to a specific camera - the great majority of my photos are taken with the same DSLR so the issue arises most obviously with those, but I also occasionally use a bridge camera and there are one or two rather lurid-looking prints from that one.

Although it's entirely possible I'm unwittingly changing the colour space when editing, I rather doubt I'd be managing to do that for the affected images only. Likewise, I don't think there's any variation to the white balance settings, either in the images as taken or as edited, relevant to the affected images only. I typically shoot with AWB, and although I sometimes use other settings I'm pretty sure all bar one or two of the affected images were taken with AWB. Similarly, although I sometimes use Image>Adjustments>Variations to correct the colour balance when editing, that's something I rarely find it necessary to do on butterfly photos taken in natural light, and I don't think there's any obvious correlation between any colour balance adjustments and the dud prints.

I have indeed wondered whether it's something I'm doing in the editing that produces the issues, but can't identify anything I'd be likely to have done in relation to the affected images only. For a lot of them, the only editing is cropping, and even for those where I've made other adjustments, the kind of tweaks I've made would be of the same kind as I've made on other images where the prints have come out OK.

There's one thing which rather strengthens my hunch that the issue is with the printers rather than anything I've done. I had some of the images for which I'd received unsatisfactory prints from Printer 1 reprinted by Printer 2, using the exact same files as I'd uploaded to Printer 1. The prints I got back from Printer 2 for those files were absolutely fine. Obviously I could test things further by running some of the files for which I got unsatisfactory prints from Printer 2 through my home printer, but as my ink supplies are running a bit low I haven't done that yet.

[SolomonGilbert]

Hello!

Hopefully I'm not too late to this one, and can answer the question for others if they have similar issues.

The short answer to this question is that colour is hard. Think about it - how does your computer display know that it's displaying the same colour that your camera captured? How does your printer know it's printing the same colour as what's shown on your screen? The colour a screen can produce is often a tiny proportion of what your eyes can see - and each screen can differ from manufacturer and model. What comes out in a printed photo may be a totally different representation of what you saw, and your camera often captures more colour information than your screen can show back to you.

The practical upshot of this is that unless you're willing to go to some expense to get a colour calibration tool, and a monitor able to display a lot of colour information, you're going to sadly be stuck with approximating.

Many high street brand printers about here in the UK are actually relatively good at approximating things, but really it's no use having a calibrated machine if what you're feeding into it is from an uncalibrated source. These printers also often use inks that don't provide as much of an ability to recreate colour from an image.

I've found Digital Lab's non-trade arm River and Coast to be excellent - https://riverandcoast.co.uk/ - and their customer service team will be able to help you extensively with what you need, and I've had good results from Digital Lab in the past. If that doesn't suit, however, then the best thing you can do is ensure the colour space fits your monitor (keep in sRGB to stay safe with it, but potentially DCI-P3 if you have a Mac or newer monitor), export as JPEG, check your output, and submit.

It is, of course, entirely possible that I'm wrong and something weird has happened to your editing workflow. That would be unlikely though, if your output JPEG looks fine, as usually you'd be seeing editing problems there.

[overthepass]

Very belatedly, many thanks for this. I did eventually get around to sending some photos to River and Coast for printing, and am very pleased with the results. Their website was also easy to use and the service was prompt and efficient. So thanks for the recommendation, and I intend to use them again. Yes, the intricacies of understanding colour are something I'd like to get to grips with but probably never will.