[MacGirl]

Background on what I'm using:
Monitor Calibration: Huey Pro
Computer: MacBook Pro 15"
Software: Adobe Photoshop CS3

My dilemma stems from the the fact that I'm trying to get relatively accurate prints from Shutterfly to share with family but so far my attempts have failed. Bear in mind that I don't need perfect prints just that they aren't dark and dingy and void of detail.

My working color space for RBG is set to "Monitor RGB - hueypro (D65 G2.2 A0.0)" but when I attempt to soft proof using the sRGB v4 profile I downloaded from Shutterfly, it doesn't remotely look like the print I've received. The image on screen looks natural and bright but the actual print looks much darker and almost reddish brown in tint. I understand that they will not perfectly match...i.e. paper and screen will reflect the light differently, but they should be somewhat similar, correct?

Could my problem be that I didn't assign the proper printer profile when I saved the image for output? Or should I convert to profile? ????

I believe that Shutterfly recommends using the sRGB v4 profile instead of a Fuji specific one. Any tips or tricks will be greatly appreciated. I've read Dry Creek Photo's website until my eyes have crossed and need to step back for a while.

[Wheatfield]

You defintely have a profile problem.
A lot of this stuff is made overly complicated by people who seem to make a living being obscure.
My opinion is Dry Creek Photo is one of them.
If you are having you pictures printed by a photo lab, make sure the file is converted to sRGB prior to saving.
Also, if you get a mismatch dialogue when opening the file, you need to convert it to the working profile.
Honestly, I think the best bet is to just have all your defaults set to sRGB. It really won't make all that much (if any) visual difference to your pictures.

[MacGirl]

Thank you for your comments Wheatfield. So under Edit>Color Settings I should set my working RBG space as sRGB IEC61966-2.1 instead of Monitor RGB (huey pro)? Then I don't have to worry with converting to profile for each image, correct? It'll just be sRGB all the way though the process without having to convert to profile before saving the JPEG to be printed. Or am I totally missing something? My RAW files from the DS are set to the AdobeRGB color space so once I bring them into Photoshop are they being converted or I'm I just viewing them through the sRGB profile?

I've never had any luck getting an on-screen soft proof to look remotely like the output I get by using the proper ICC profiles. I thought by at least calibrating my laptop monitor some of this would start to look right. Plus I don't want my photos color corrected by the lab but I think I'm just making it more difficult for myself. I know enough to get myself into trouble!

[Wheatfield]

Hopefuly I'll get this right for you.
It is a bit of a black art.
I'm on a PC, so my terminology may not be quite the same as what is used on a Mac, put the principles should be identical.

In Photoshop/ Edit/ Color Settngs i have my working colour space set to ProPhotoRGB as it is the widest gamut colour space.
In Color management policies, my RGB is set to Convert to working RGB, CMYK is off, Gray is off.

This converts every file I open to ProPhoto. You should get a warning dialogue about this the first time you open a file. You can shut it off with a tick box on the dialogue window.

So now, everything I open is ProPhoto. When I go to print, I tell my printer what paper it is using, but leave color management up to Photoshop. This lets Photoshop do whatever color conversion it has to do in the background.
If I am shipping something to the lab to print, I convert back to sRGB and 8 bits/channel prior to printing.

My working View is Working CMYK by default, and I just leave it there. If I decide I want to soft proof the image, I use the Prof conditions dialogue to choose the device to simulate. Turn off the preserve RGB numbers tick box, turn on the simulate paper colour tick box.
This should give you a good idea of what will roll off your printer.

Also, watch the proof colors tick box under the views menu. If it is ticked on, then you are getting the proof colors displayed, if it is off, you are getting your calibrated monitor color displayed.

At least I hope this is how it works.

[MacGirl]

Got it. You use the widest gamut profile for your working RBG space and work your way down depending on what type of output you need.

I usually don't print much from my home inkjet but I'll try using the ProRGB working space for my post processing then save it. When I'm going to get a print I'll open the file and save with a different name and convert to the sRGB v4 profile that Shutterfly suggests using (Photoshop>Edit>Convert to Profile). I'll send a few prints off and see what happens next. I was losing a lot of shadow and midtone highlights that looked fine on screen. I wish the independent camera shop I liked using was closer, it'd be a heck of lot more convenient and cheaper to do trial and error on this!

Thanks so much for your input!

Sample of the original compared to print:

[Wheatfield]

A word to the wise: The temptation when trying to pin this stuff down is to try a whole bunch of different settings at a time.
Resist doing this, and change one thing, and one thing only at a time, and then running another print.
Generally, if your screen looks good and your prints are out, it's going to turn out to be an issue with the printer profiling and one of the steps along the way.
If your screen is good, work from the print back to it.
Check to ensure that you are telling the printer what type of paper it is printing on.
Check to ensure that you have colour management set to Photoshop handling colours, and that it is turned off on the printer driver.
On Epson, this has to be done in both the printer driver and the Photoshop printer dialogue.
Note this is two different things.
If you are printing to an outside source, this would be Shutterfly, I expect, they need files that are in sRGB. They may have their own variant, but it should be safe to ignore it if you want to and just give them sRGB.
Try one with one profile and one with the other and see how much difference it makes.
All you have to do is convert to whichever profile you are needing and save the file, it's ready to go.
If you have all that right, then pretty much what rolls off your printer should match your screen.
At least that how it seems to work for me.

[jeffkrol]

Background on what I'm using:
Monitor Calibration: Huey Pro
Computer: MacBook Pro 15"
Software: Adobe Photoshop CS3

My dilemma stems from the the fact that I'm trying to get relatively accurate prints from Shutterfly to share with family but so far my attempts have failed. Bear in mind that I don't need perfect prints just that they aren't dark and dingy and void of detail.

My working color space for RBG is set to "Monitor RGB - hueypro (D65 G2.2 A0.0)" but when I attempt to soft proof using the sRGB v4 profile I downloaded from Shutterfly, it doesn't remotely look like the print I've received. The image on screen looks natural and bright but the actual print looks much darker and almost reddish brown in tint. I understand that they will not perfectly match...i.e. paper and screen will reflect the light differently, but they should be somewhat similar, correct?

Could my problem be that I didn't assign the proper printer profile when I saved the image for output? Or should I convert to profile? ????

I believe that Shutterfly recommends using the sRGB v4 profile instead of a Fuji specific one. Any tips or tricks will be greatly appreciated. I've read Dry Creek Photo's website until my eyes have crossed and need to step back for a while.

Personally, shut it all down. I've gotten soo much better matches at home by just shutting off color management and printing direct.. By doing this you will keep well within your printers gamut and monitor gamut. Only thing to usually watch for is the difference in brightness between your monitor and paper (as you can see in your above photos)..........and funny things your home printer might do, like apply a profile...and this is where the most problems come in, double profiling..
Anyways when you send photos out I'm sure if the profile isn't there they will assume sRGB. Again making things simplier...
But if you really, really want to go here I'd recommend this book:
Amazon.com: Real World Color Management: Bruce Fraser, Fred Bunting, Chris Murphy: Books
One thing is you don't (in my understanding) ever use a monitor profile as a working space....
http://www.normankoren.com/color_management_2.html

[Wheatfield]

One thing is you don't (in my understanding) ever use a monitor profile as a working space....

I probably should have stressed that. My wording in my first post looks a little vague abou it.

[SBrentnall]

Just a thought, but are you remembering to turn off VividPics on the Shutterfly end? Since most of their customers don't do any color correction, Shutterfly does an automatic correction that needs to be turned off if you've already got a perfect image.

Go to My Pictures and select all the photos in an album. Choose Edit:Apply Effect and click the box that says "Don't apply automatic corrections to picture." Then click on "Apply this effect to selected pictures" and it'll be applied to all the photos in the album.

Unfortunately, there's no way to make this your default setting so you have to remember to do it each time you upload photos.

[MacGirl]

Thanks for the great info everyone!

I'll definitely NOT use my monitor profile as my working space.

And yes, I turned off "Vivid Pics." But it probably would have been better to have left it on! I think that was one of the reason I quit using Shutterfly, their print ordering interface is horrible. But free prints are free prints and now I'm learning new things and refreshing my mind on color space.

[davemdsn]

Just wanted to second the point - don't use the monitor profile as your working color space. That profile is just for your monitor. It is what the system uses to interpret the color values on the screen. Your working space in Photoshop should be AdobeRGB or ProphotoRGB. Final export color space should usually be sRGB. I know this has already been said, but it's worth repeating as it's pretty important.

I have a mid-2007 17" MBP and I eventually sold my monitor calibrator. It could be luck of the draw, but I get better print matching when I go into System Preferences, go to displays, click on color, then go to calibrate and simply change the gamma to 2.2 instead of the default of 1.8. That one simple thing got my prints matching my display better than anything else.

[Photomy]

In addition to making sure you use a true working color space - not monitor profile - Shutterfly may require you to be using specifically sRGB working space when you use the soft proof profile that they provided. In other words, the profile might have been designed assuming that sRGB is being used for the working space and of course as the final conversion. MPIX specifially mentions this with their instructions for use of their profile. Also double check the intent options when profiling. Should be perceptual or relative colorimetric. Some sources say relative colorimetric is preferred for printing uses. Not sure why. Some of the advice in previous posts may not be too useful for preparing a file to to Shutterfly, MPIX, etc. which you mentioned in the original post. Home printing has more options to play with.

[MacGirl]

sRGB working space has been something I've been thinking about. I usually don't print to my ink jet for proofs or prints, I just rely on my monitor. So if where I'm printing relies on sRGB color space then I think it would be easiest to have my work flow in sRGB all the way around. Which begs the question, I've assumed that I should have my camera set for AdobeRGB because it captures a wider gamut but if I've got to convert to sRGB for prints, what should I set the camera too, Adobe or sRBG? I've always thought in terms of "capture the best" and work your way down, once it's no longer there you can't get it back. Let Photoshop handle the conversion from AdobeRGB to sRBG or just go with the camera and not worry with what minute details I could be losing? Compromise for sanity's sake?

[Wheatfield]

sRGB working space has been something I've been thinking about. I usually don't print to my ink jet for proofs or prints, I just rely on my monitor. So if where I'm printing relies on sRGB color space then I think it would be easiest to have my work flow in sRGB all the way around. Which begs the question, I've assumed that I should have my camera set for AdobeRGB because it captures a wider gamut but if I've got to convert to sRGB for prints, what should I set the camera too, Adobe or sRBG? I've always thought in terms of "capture the best" and work your way down, once it's no longer there you can't get it back. Let Photoshop handle the conversion from AdobeRGB to sRBG or just go with the camera and not worry with what minute details I could be losing? Compromise for sanity's sake?

If you are shooting raw, the colour space your camera is set to only affects the naming convention. (IMGP or _IGP). The colour space gets assigned during import.
In this instance, importing under the ProPhoto space is best, preferably as a 16 bit file.
If you are shooting in camera jpegs, Adobe RGB is a larger gamut than sRGB, so you should be shooting in Adobe, and then doing a final conversion to sRGB as the last step.
I wrote a simple action for converting to 8 bit/ sRGB so that converting for printing or web use is a one button process.