# How do I get my photos to look the same from Editing to Printing



## MatthewMorris

After spending time editing my photos, and getting them quickly printed at my local Costco, they never look like my Macbook's screen. They are always way dark and certain colors are more saturated, any suggestions?


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## WesternGuy

Is your MacBook's screen calibrated?  If not, then that is the first step.  Next - what colour space are you working in and what paper is Costco using to print on?  You need to be able to supply them with an image that is compatible with the paper they are printing on.  Usually, at least in my experience, the reason you get dark prints back is that your screen is too bright for your editing.
_______________
WesternGuy


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## camerateur

you need to calibrate your screen so that the colors you're seeing are the colors that are actually there. 
also on costco's photo website there is a way to download the color profile specific to the costco location (for the most part, printers have differences in how they produce a color) so that you can edit your colors how you want them and print files correctly.


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## camerateur

btw. its not as easy as going into the monitor settings, you have to purchase a separate device to calibrate.
 you might want to watch a youtube video  or something on how to calibrate a screen so you can understand it better than I can explain to you in text.


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## TCampbell

I have a Mac and use an X-Rite ColorMunki -- it calibrates my monitors, printers, and projectors (if I owned any projectors).  Essentially it installs a driver which takes control of the graphics card so that it can control the monitor settings.  You connect the calibration tool, it performs a self-diagnostic and calibrates to a built-in color reference table.  You then place it on the center of your monitor and it has the computer run through each primary color (RGB) at every brightness level and compares it accuracy.  It then builds a color profile for your monitor.  The profile appears in the "System Preferences" -> "Displays" -> "Color" -- just as any standard display profile for a Mac.  Once the profile is created, the driver and tool are no longer needed (although they do recommend you re-calibrate from time to time since the colors on a monitor can change over time.)

At this point you can be reasonably sure that your monitor is "accurate" in it's rendering of colors.  

There are calibration tools that just calibrate monitors and don't deal with printers or projectors -- these will be less expensive.  

Even if you never print at home and always send out for printing, you still want to be aware of how printer profiles work.

Printer profiles are a bit different.  It's no so much a "printer" profile as it is a "printer / ink / paper" profile because the accuracy of the profile depends on all three of those things being the same.  If I change the photo-paper from one type to another then the color accuracy of the printer will be thrown and you'd need to re-calibrate for the new paper.  Same is true of changing the type of ink you use.  

The next point of confusion is ensuring that not only does the right profile get applied, but that it only gets applied once.  When you apply a printer profile to an image file, the image is essentially using false-colors (looking at it on your display will actually look wrong.)  But this is done because calibration of the printer was performed to determine that certain colors should be tweaked a bit in order to get them to turn out correct on the printed output.  For example:  maybe the printer over-saturates yellow... so the image might actually render a weaker value of yellow knowing that the printer will over-saturate it so that when the result is produced you'll actually get the color you want.

Imagine, however, that the lab doesn't know you've already applied a profile to the image and then they also apply the printer profile.  This would mean that your already altered color values would get altered a 2nd time.  At this point, you won't get the right output.

Basically either YOU need to apply the color profile for the printer/ink/paper being used OR THEY need to apply the color profile... but not both.

I use Aperture to do my image adjustments.  It knows the profile of my printer.  I can toggle on-screen proofing on and off.  If I turn it "on" (which means it shows the version of the image it intends to print -- these colors have been falsified to compensate for the printer/ink/paper combination I'm using) then I notice that all the reds get a bit lighter and more pale.  This tells me that the calibration tool realized that my reds are printing too dark and that it needed to lighten them up a bit so that once it prints, I get the correct values.

Keep in mind that when you view your prints, you need to be viewing them with DAYLIGHT BALANCED light otherwise it may appear "wrong" to your eye... even if it's actually correct.  I have one desk lamp that I can use for checking... all my other lights don't put out a daylight-balanced spectrum.


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## DiskoJoe

Know anything that would do this for pc?


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## The_Traveler

DiskoJoe said:


> Know anything that would do this for pc?



a selection of devices


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## ann

DiskoJoe said:


> Know anything that would do this for pc?



I use colormunki with a pc


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## KmH

Here is a group of tutorials that will help - Tutorials on Color Management & Printing


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## MatthewMorris

Sorry for being so quiet, life has been keeping me busy.
Thanks so much for all of the great information. It is a lot to think about.  
Don't have a photo printer--- so I will not be printing any photos myself

Downloaded Costco  Printer profile ---check
Have to find out how to load it into PS

Saving for a calibrator--they get expensive fast 
I would like keep it around $100 or less 

Again guys Thank you so much


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## KmH

MatthewMorris said:


> Saving for a calibrator--they get expensive fast
> I would like keep it around $100 or less


Then look for a used, or left over new but now discontinued X-RITE, i1 Display 2 colorimeter and the software disc it comes with. X-Rite i1Display 2 Color Calibrator for LCD, CRT, and Laptop Displays 

But at around $100, factor in that you likely will not get good results with any calibrator (colorimeter) that is that inexpensive.


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## Ysarex

TCampbell said:


> I have a Mac and use an X-Rite ColorMunki -- it calibrates my monitors, printers, and projectors (if I owned any projectors).  Essentially it installs a driver which takes control of the graphics card so that it can control the monitor settings.  You connect the calibration tool, it performs a self-diagnostic and calibrates to a built-in color reference table.  You then place it on the center of your monitor and it has the computer run through each primary color (RGB) at every brightness level and compares it accuracy.  It then builds a color profile for your monitor.  The profile appears in the "System Preferences" -> "Displays" -> "Color" -- just as any standard display profile for a Mac.  Once the profile is created, the driver and tool are no longer needed (although they do recommend you re-calibrate from time to time since the colors on a monitor can change over time.)
> 
> At this point you can be reasonably sure that your monitor is "accurate" in it's rendering of colors.



Actually no, you can be reasonably sure that your monitor is "accurate" in it's rendering of those colors that it is physically capable of reproducing. Your photos contain a known range or gamut of colors. Computer displays come in a wide variety of quality levels from those that can actually physically reproduce all the colors contained in your photo's gamut set to those that can at best reproduce maybe 60% of those colors which sounds pretty bad, but can sound really good when we start considering laptops (Macbook included). Calibrating and profiling a display is a good idea and will certainly improve it's performance to the degree it can be improved. The catch here is that "to the degree" qualification. Let's try an analogy: You'd like to listen to a high fidelity sound recording, but the only speakers you have are the budget set you got with your $29.00 boom box purchased at WalMart. It'll help to adjust the treble and bass controls....

So to answer your original question, "How do I get my photos to look the same from Editing to Printing." You don't on a Macbook, but it will help some to calibrate and profile it.

Consider this graphic which represents a large color gamut:




I profiled a good quality Sony CRT, yep a CRT, and then used that profile to check this same graphic for out-of-gamut colors. The grey patches indicate where the CRT is struggling and can't reproduce that color; it's physically not capable. Here's the CRT:



You're first reaction might be, woah! that's a lot of missing color. Actually it's not. NOTE: Not a realistic test as your average photo won't have that kind of  intense color range which is why I'm saying the CRT isn't that bad. But compare the CRT with this: Here's a high-end laptop comparable to your Macbook (top of the line Toshiba). I've calibrated and profiled current Macbook Pro displays. They're better than the average laptop, but they're still laptops.



That's a lot of missing color! You can tweak the treble and bass controls all you want, or as they used to say back in the good old days, you can't make a silk purse out of sow's ear.

Joe


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## chuasam

blah blah blah...so much trouble. I bet it is as simple as the OP using AdobeRGB because everyone told him it is better whilst Costco uses sRGB on their machines.


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