[cpk]

If sending outside to a lab, ideally avoid those labs that specify sRGB or even Adobe RGB, they are paying lip service to colour management and there is no guarantee they are doing anything more than trying to provide you with an acceptable (to them) print. Instead look for a lab that provide you with a profile specific to their printers and paper combinations and expect you to provide an edited version converted to that profile

When I did my own printing I used paper profiles specific to my printer (an Epson 3880) and inks with very good results. Since my printer died a few years ago I have had to use a local lab which uses only sRGB and Adobe RGB profiles. Fortunately I have a wide gamut monitor which comes very, very close to Adobe RGB when it is calibrated, so in this case I can expect my prints from this lab to be what I see on my monitor. Your suggestion for choosing a lab is better but would add significantly to my printing costs for shipping and, probably as well, higher per-print costs.

I would prefer to do my own printing, but my volume right now cannot justify the cost. I still have a few hundred dollars of paper waiting to be sold or used at some point in the future.

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Last edited by cpk; 12-27-2020 at 09:17 AM.

[TonyW]

When I did my own printing I used paper profiles specific to my printer (an Epson 3880) and inks with very good results. Since my printer died a few years ago I have had to use a local lab which uses only sRGB and Adobe RGB profiles. Fortunately I have a wide gamut monitor which comes vey, very close to Adobe RGB when it is calibrated, so in this case I can expect my prints from this lab to be what I see on my monitor. Your suggestion for choosing a lab is better but would add significantly to my printing costs for shipping and, probably as well, higher per-print costs.

I would prefer to do my own printing, but my volume right now cannot justify the cost. I still have a few hundred dollars of paper waiting to be sold or used at some point in the future.

I appreciate what you are saying and it should be quite easy for anyone to get an acceptable print colour and density from any 'average shot' as we all have memory colours sky blue, grass green, snow white, banana yellow etc. Note acceptable rather than what is visualised and rendered in your output file. I also appreciate that a professional lab using a colour managed workflow likely to charge more per print and cost is certainly a factor for most of us.

Your lab most certainly does not use either sRGB or Adobe RGB profiles, it may ask for such but that is for its own convenience not yours. It will use a specific profile for each paper type it uses e.g. Glossy, Lustre, Matt etc repeated for each printer it uses. Without you soft proofing and editing the soft proof (correctly profiled monitor) in the paper profile space and saving that image to send to the lab including your chosen rendering intent the lab has no way to see what you see on screen.

The example below illustrate the problem. Left hand image is the view I get on my monitor (Adobe RGB Note the image on a wide gamut monitor has much greater saturation than you see here ) the right hand image is soft proofed using the Epson Ultrasmooth Fine Art Paper profile and is not what I want my print to look like - I want it to look like the left hand image

If I send the image to my printer I will get the flat image on the right side as a print as this is using the correct paper profile

If I send either an sRGB or Adobe RGB to the lab to print on this paper I will get a match to the flat right hand images as it is in the wrong colour space and once converted (as it must be) to the paper space it will print as flat as this looks on screen

If I edit the right hand image in the soft proof view I will get closer to my desired rendering, dependent on paper gamut, contrast limitations

But unless my lab has provided profiles for the paper and asked me to edit and output in that profile space including setting my rendering intent there is little hope of a match print to screen

[jatrax]

Printers don't want you to use either of those, you should be using the spaces provided by your printer and specific to the paper also.

Ian that is true if you know the paper / printer profile or it is provided. But none of the printing houses I have used provide that info and merely specify to use sRGB or AdobeRGB. Same with stock libraries, most specify sRGB jpg. A few, Alamy for example, prefer AdobeRGB.

But if the printer does provide that info, then yes of course you should use the profiles they provide.

[cpk]

Your lab most certainly does not use either sRGB or Adobe RGB profiles, it may ask for such but that is for its own convenience not yours. It will use a specific profile for each paper type it uses e.g. Glossy, Lustre, Matt etc repeated for each printer it uses.

That's a pretty strong statement suggesting the lab does things to its advantage rather than than that of the many photographers, some of them professional, in my area whom it must please to keep them as customers. My monitor is calibrated and I review my prints under a 5000K (approx.) light when comparing them to the original images on my monitor. Allowing for the differences between viewing an image with reflected light as opposed to transmitted light, I have found my lab's prints very close to the original images on my monitor.

When I had my Epson 3880 I always used the appropriate profile for the paper on which I was printing. In many cases I made my own profiles, although I found the manufacturer-supplied ones sufficiently adequate for my purposes. I would much prefer to do my own printing which would not only be much less expensive but would also allow much more scope for experimentation. Right now my volume of printing is not sufficient to justify it.

[TonyW]

Charles, bottom line first if you are happy with your lab prints most of the time and you never have complaints then fine obviously you should carry on.

I stand by my statement 100%. Ask your lab which printers they use and which papers and why they do not supply the correct ICC profiles for you to soft proof - If they are honest the answer may surprise you.

[MJKoski]

Well, as long as source material has not been rammed down into sRGB before printing, modern inks and inkjets are capable of very deep color saturation.

I always do all editing in ProPhotoRGB and send in the TIFFs. Having those paper profiles for soft proofing is important but when the printing is done on metal surface or other exotic stuff, it becomes tricky.

[Alex645]

I always do all editing in ProPhotoRGB and send in the TIFFs. Having those paper profiles for soft proofing is important...

This is great advice. And if the quality is an absolute priority, even hard proofs. So many variables include the paper, the ink, and the pre-press, printer and pressman on the other end.

[SirTomster]

I feel figuring out printing is harder than using photoshop. So many things to know and keep track of.

I think it is worth it to ensure your prints match the image in your mind, but it is so complicated.

But I guess if I wanted easy, I would just use my smartphone from 2000.

[Alex645]

I feel figuring out printing is harder than using photoshop.

Agreed. So many more variables. Printer, profiles, inks, papers. The key is experimentation, trial & error, and patience to find all the settings and media that gives you the best results. But being methodical is essential. Changing more than one setting at a time can confuse cause and effect.

[vijaykishan]

AFAIK there are 3 top level things to look out for. Your camera gamut, your processing tools gamut (graphics card, monitor, software) and the printer gamut. Carefully matching and mapping one over the other gives the best results.

[JimJohnson]

I shot RAW+ (K-3 & K-1) and separately store the two versions. I used to have my cameras set to the Adobe colorspace primarily because I use Adobe software for post-processing. I finally figured out that the colorspace really only impacts the jpeg images (and the jpeg thumbnail in the RAW file). If I print, I work from the RAW image to produce the printable image in whatever colorspace is used by the printer.

However if I am presenting from digital (web page, electronic photo frames, etc.) I typically use the jpeg image. I was frustrated by the color shift after uploading an image. Duh! The Adobe colorspace often presents with a decided magenta cast and/or dulls other colors when the website is using the sRGB colorspace to fit an image to a predefined frame. My cameras are now set to save the jpeg images as sRGB.

Not that the rest of the posts in this thread aren't valuable information - they are; but hopefully I've skimmed over that to inform the OP how to make the simple decision in the camera menu option of Adobe vs. sRGB.

Shall we segue into a discussion of PEF vs DNG for saving RAW images?