[richardstringer]

I love Adobe Photoshop but i'm never quite sure what settings to use for each photo, like how much fill in light in the raw part, or how much saturation to use etc... I haven't got a printer yet though so I guess until I get one, I won't really know if i'm adding the right amount of shadow/highlight adjustment until I get one and see the results and get the Spyder 4 calibration tool.

[JimJohnson]

I just find it annoying spending ages in Adobe Photoshop but I guess that's part of photography. I've been thinking about buying the Spyder 4 Pro monitor calibration software and hardware, it's reasonably cheap and is supposed to do a great job. About AdobeRGB and SRGB, i've tried both and couldn't tell the difference between the colour results of either. I know I need the Spyder hardware because the print outs show massively different colour from on screen.

The RAW file format for the K-30 is DNG - which happens to be Adobe's own RAW format. The K-r seems to be the last camera supporting Pentax's own RAW format, PEF (I am excepting the newer members of the K-5 series as they are a continuation of the original K-5). Since I am using Adobe's file format, and Adobe software for post processing, and I have a strong hunch that internally this software is using the Adobe colorspace and converting images as needed, I opted to minimize the number of colorspace transitions. I set my camera's colorspace to Adobe's rather than sRGB. However, whenever I save a jpeg from the processed DNG file, I do have it converted at that point to sRGB.

It may just be superstitious behavior on my part, but other than a one-time change in my camera's menu, it costs me nothing.

Calibrating your monitor is no guarantee that your prints will match what you see on the screen - however on my system it is pretty damn close. My notebook has a Nvidia 310M video card and I am outputing via HDMI/DVI to an LED backlighted LG monitor. My calibration hardware/software is an X-rite/Pantone Huey Pro. My photo printer is a six-ink color HP C7280 all-in-one. I use HP's inks and HP's Premium Photo paper.

Really, I don't think most of my photos take me more than 30 seconds to process one-by-one. So I don't even bother doing batch processing. However when I am in a mood to be creative or just plain moody because I am trying to salvage an exposure I botched, I can play for some time tweaking an image in both Adobe Camera RAW and the Photoshop Editor.

I recently invested in a X-rite ColorChecker Passport and installed the software. My plan is to build profiles specific to my most commonly used lenses on my K-30, and just nail the corrections on critical photos as I am bringing them into my system.

[richardstringer]

I don't think from what i've heard in the past that it's actually possible to get a monitor colours EXACTLY identical to what you're seeing with your eyes.

[Aux]

Monitors are calibrated into RGB colour spaces like sRGB and Adobe RGB. Meaning if you have several monitors calibrated to the same profile, then images on all of them will look absolutely indentical.

If we talk about printing, then the problem is that printing happens in CMYK world and the only way to get proper colour preview on your (calibrated) monitor is to use CMYK colour space WITH colour profile FROM printer. If you check colour profiles in Photoshop, you will see lots of them, but Photoshop is distributed with generalized profiles and anyone wanting to get proper preview should get real profile from printing device. And printer must be calibrated too.

To summarize: calibrate monitor, calibrate printer, load printer profile into Photoshop, work in CMYK with printer profile. One step missing? Wrong colours!

[richardstringer]

I tried calibrating my printer last year but it was a complete nightmare and costs me more than £50 in photo paper while I adjusted the colour in the printer settings, printed out a photo, looked at the colours of the print compared to on my monitor, adjusted the colourts again in the printer and printed out another photo and doing that repeatedly. I never got the printed colour right. If there's another way to calibrate a printer then I haven't got a clue what it is.

[JimJohnson]

I tried calibrating my printer last year but it was a complete nightmare and costs me more than £50 in photo paper while I adjusted the colour in the printer settings, printed out a photo, looked at the colours of the print compared to on my monitor, adjusted the colourts again in the printer and printed out another photo and doing that repeatedly. I never got the printed colour right. If there's another way to calibrate a printer then I haven't got a clue what it is.

Printer calibration requires building a color profile (.icc or .icm file) for each and every combination of paper brand and surface, and ink type used. Some printer drivers have rudimentary tools with which to accomplish this, some do not. In my opinion, custom printer calibration without access to the tools used by the professionals is too big a job for me to undertake. As it turns out, the major printer manufacturers have already provided fairly optimized color profiles for their photo printers - provided you also use that manufacturer's inks and papers. I have an HP Photosmart C7280 all-in-one printer. No, it isn't a top of the line photo printer. But by golly, exclusively using HP's ink for this printer (all six colors) and HP's Premium Plus Photo paper along with HP's bundled color profile for this combination, I get prints that are pretty damn close to what I see on my Huey Pro calibrated monitor. Okay, I pay more for my supplies, but I haven't paid a professional to build a custom printer profile, nor do I have much waste. (I also rarely use my HP for routine office type printing - most of that is just B&W anyhow and a home office laser printer costs me about 5¢ per page.)

I've mentioned that I stick to the Adobe colorspace until I produce my final jpeg file, where I then have Photoshop Elements convert to the sRGB colorspace. Well, most of the time I print those final jpeg files using Windows 7's built-in photo printing applet (also accessible from inside Win7's Preview tool). This applet also ties into the HP printer driver where I specifically select my paper size, brand, and surface type.

[richardstringer]

I was using cheap compatible ink cartridges before so maybe that had a lot to do with the crap colours coming out the printer. I normally use Ilford photo glossy paper because the image quality when printed on is fantastic.

[JimJohnson]

I was using cheap compatible ink cartridges before so maybe that had a lot to do with the crap colours coming out the printer. I normally use Ilford photo glossy paper because the image quality when printed on is fantastic.

ahem ... at the risk of sounding like a broken record .... while I recognize the quality of Ilford papers, unless you have a printer profile that specifically accounts for that paper brand and surface - along with the ink used - you will get sub-optimal results from your printer.

The HP Premium Plus paper and HP inks are good, but honestly that is not why I use them for photoprinting. I use them because I have a printer profile that specifically supports those supplies with my printer.

[richardstringer]

I used to use Ilford back years ago and back then I was using Canon ink cartridges for my Canon IP5000 printer and the quality was fantastic. I prefer Canon printers because generally, they use less ink, i've heard a hell of a lot of stories and reviews saying that HP and Epson both guzzle ink like it's going out of fashion. I did have a profile for the Ilford paper I was using, when I get a new printer i'll ask Ilford to give me another profile for their paper i'll be using.

[JimJohnson]

sounds good. I didn't realize Ilford would supply profiles for various printers. Glad you mentioned it. I'll have to check that out.

[richardstringer]

Yeah they emailed me one ages ago, it was last year.