W
Wolf Kirchmeir
On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 20:35:00 -0800, Ray R wrote:
=>Yes, but having the ability to produce good clean primary
=>colors is a good starting point. The photofinishers I tried
=>could not. Have you tried my experiment?
No, but I have a different one, which IMO is just as good.
The local photofinisher let me photograph his Kodak
calibrating card (colour bars and gray scales) so I could
test my then new camera and film. So I got a nice print,
which was compared to the original - I could see no
difference, but I'm sure a colorimeter could have seen
some.
The printers I have (Epson Colour 740, HP660C) both do
acceptable printing on glossy photo paper, but neither does
as well as the local photofinisher who does my films. Both
printers produce nice clean CMYK and red, yellow, blue when
I run the printer test built into their drivers.
I don't have Photoshop, so I can't do what you did. OTOH, I
have used a scan of the Kodak calibrating card to calibrate
my monitors, so pictures look good on screen; I can get
pretty close, but not as good as the photograph. I've tried
several variations in gamma, RGB balance, etc from image
proc programs, but no printout of the calibration card is
as good as the photofinisher's print. I am looking for a
closer to professional quality printer, and expect to
acquire one by summer next year. But this will be used
primarily to print digitally composed images, not scanned
photos (although I will use scans as the raw material.) The
photofinisher charges about 50% more than Wally does, but
is obviously worth every penny.
BTW, the majority of pictures posted to the web (websites
and newsgroups) have inaccurate colours, as measured by
that Kodak calibrating card. Scanned pictures are worst,
but even many digital camera images are off. Besides a
general tendency towards being too dark (easily corrected
by shifting the gamma upwards), the most common faults are
high contrast, with loss of detail in the shadows (hard to
correct); and a red, green, or blue cast - which varies
from photographer to photographer, so I suspect differences
in photographers' vision systems, not cameras etc. RGB
balance is the hardest to correct, since it also affects
gamma.
HTH
=>Yes, but having the ability to produce good clean primary
=>colors is a good starting point. The photofinishers I tried
=>could not. Have you tried my experiment?
No, but I have a different one, which IMO is just as good.
The local photofinisher let me photograph his Kodak
calibrating card (colour bars and gray scales) so I could
test my then new camera and film. So I got a nice print,
which was compared to the original - I could see no
difference, but I'm sure a colorimeter could have seen
some.
The printers I have (Epson Colour 740, HP660C) both do
acceptable printing on glossy photo paper, but neither does
as well as the local photofinisher who does my films. Both
printers produce nice clean CMYK and red, yellow, blue when
I run the printer test built into their drivers.
I don't have Photoshop, so I can't do what you did. OTOH, I
have used a scan of the Kodak calibrating card to calibrate
my monitors, so pictures look good on screen; I can get
pretty close, but not as good as the photograph. I've tried
several variations in gamma, RGB balance, etc from image
proc programs, but no printout of the calibration card is
as good as the photofinisher's print. I am looking for a
closer to professional quality printer, and expect to
acquire one by summer next year. But this will be used
primarily to print digitally composed images, not scanned
photos (although I will use scans as the raw material.) The
photofinisher charges about 50% more than Wally does, but
is obviously worth every penny.
BTW, the majority of pictures posted to the web (websites
and newsgroups) have inaccurate colours, as measured by
that Kodak calibrating card. Scanned pictures are worst,
but even many digital camera images are off. Besides a
general tendency towards being too dark (easily corrected
by shifting the gamma upwards), the most common faults are
high contrast, with loss of detail in the shadows (hard to
correct); and a red, green, or blue cast - which varies
from photographer to photographer, so I suspect differences
in photographers' vision systems, not cameras etc. RGB
balance is the hardest to correct, since it also affects
gamma.
HTH