I ordered prints and was unsatisfied since the blue sky came out pure white and

[BPT]

I am wondering if it was on my end or theirs. The link to the image is here: http://bigpointyteeth.com/galleryimgs/wolf1.jpg

The sky and the clouds are a bit blown out in the image due to taking a picture almost directly into the sun. But the clouds are still visible and the sky is still blue. The prints I received the sky was pure white, not a drop of colour.

I contacted their support and they are refunding my money. I didnt get a chance to talk to someone who actually dealt with my picture like I would have liked so I couldnt discuss what went wrong, they just went from unsatisfied to here is your money back. I would rather remedy the problem and get good prints. Dont get me wrong I am glad they were so quick to take my complaint to heart and didnt fight me on it.

So was it a problem on my end or theirs?

[Peter Zack]

It's them. The blue in the sky is light but clearly there. You can do something with it though.
I made a quick adjustment to the blue channel in Lightroom, Saturation and brightness. You could do the same before getting it reprinted. Beautiful shot Btw.



original:

[BPT]

Thank you. I hope the lab contacts me before doing reprints because your image looks better than mine. I am not so advanced at the adjustment and havent learned about adjusting single channels as of yet.

When I have tried adjusting the channels for a certain colour I normally end up making the rest of the image too blue. I am currently trying to duplicate your efforts

[Peter Zack]

Brad, I just realized you are in Canada.I would strongly suggest you get your prints done at Welcome To Technicare Imaging
These guys do excellent work and you should never have issues with their work.

Do you have a Gmail address? I can send you the full sized adjusted version if you want.

[BPT]

that would be great my gmail address is <removed>

I will be looking at the printing service you suggest, I really just started getting some of my photos printed so I havent yet found a printer I like

[Peter Zack]

Got it Brad. You can delete that from the post if you like now. I'll send it through in a few minutes. technicare are real pros and most wedding photogs use them across Canada.

[Wheatfield]

Originally Posted by Peter Zack

It's them. The blue in the sky is light but clearly there. You can do something with it though.
I made a quick adjustment to the blue channel in Lightroom, Saturation and brightness. You could do the same before getting it reprinted. Beautiful shot Btw.

It is a nice shot. I downloaded the original file, but there was no EXIF attached (at least not that irfanview found).
Before we go off and blame the lab, you want to make sure you didn't send them a colour space they couldn't define. Most labs don't do well with colour spaces that differ from sRGB.
It is, of course, also possible that they tried to lighten the foreground, which is dark, to try to pull detail.
What I've found over the few years that I've been digital printing with photo labs is that most printing problems can be traced back to the submitted file.
I'm not saying that is the case here, but too often I think people are soft sold on the realities of photography and printing, and it ends up causing more problems than it solves, since the photographer ends up laying all the blame on the lab, and not taking some of it on themselves.
A file that is in a botched colour space, or is too wide a gamut for the paper being used (photographic paper has just about the narrowest gamut there is) isn't going to print properly without the lab editing it.
Labs are paid to print, not edit, don't ask them to do something they aren't paid to do.
Simple density and colour correction is all you can ask for.