Printing

[William Dickson]

Hi All

I have recently printed a few images for friends, and I find that the images are a little on the dark side. What would be the best way to compensate for this?

The images are very sharp, but, a little dark and I would like them to be a bit lighter if possible.

Anyone got any tips on how to achieve this.

I dont think I can change the brightness on my laptop screen, the images I see on the screen appear to be lighter than the darker ones the being printed, the printer is a Canon ix6850

Thanks in advance for any advice given

[Diane Miller]

For many years the conventional wisdom has been that dark prints are the result of a screen that is too bright -- a common situation with consumer monitors and ones that are not properly calibrated. Laptops are a problem in that often they can't be calibrated properly, and if they are, the brightness usually changes with viewing angle.

If you are printing with the correct settings (very important), the prints will be more accurate than the laptop screen. When correcting / adjusting an image, the histogram is a vital guide, but it really only gives useful information at the white and black ends (as in don't block up either). If your prints are showing blocked-up dark tones, careful attention to the histogram as you process should fix the problem.

But it sounds like you are describing the more common and frustrating issue of them being darker overall because of a screen that is too bright. The few laptops I'm familiar with do have a screen brightness control -- lowering it might help, although it is a poor fix for the real problem. Another fix is to experiment by putting a Curves (or Levels) adjustment layer on each image you will print, and adjust it by trial and error until the print is more to your liking. Just change the mid-point. Once you find the right curve it should work on all images. You might experiment with a solid gray 50% mid-tone fill.

Of course, the real problem is that if the screen brightness is the culprit, and not the print settings, then all your images have been adjusted to be too dark.

It is possible to run a real monitor off a laptop -- if I were working only an a laptop I would look into getting a decent monitor and calibrating and profiling it. (Assuming the laptop video system will allow that.)

The best monitors are $1500 to $3000. David Brooks (recently-retired Shutterbug columnist) has recommended a couple of $500-range monitors in recent years: the Dell Ultrasharp (whatever the current version is) and the Asus PA249Q.

These aren't competitive with the high end graphics monitors, but for "serious enthusiast" use I have a feeling they're quite good, and better than a laptop.

[William Dickson]

Thanks for that Diane, I will try the curves remedy first and see how I get on with that.

[Ulli Hoeger]

If the off-set between screen and print is consistent, i.e. 1 f-stop difference, then LR offers the option in its print module to add (or substract) a preset value to tweak the print output (to printer of exported print file).

UH

[Don Lacy]

Hi William, While Diane has given you some good advice in my opinion the screens on laptops are not good enough for the critical processing work needed to prepare an image for print on a consistent basis and if you can afford I would recommend getting a monitor to hook your laptop up to.

[Diane Miller]

I completely agree. A monitor is so much more than just a bigger screen. Printing is really not that different from preparing an image for web display and the same limitations generally apply to both. How important is is to any one person is part of the learning curve, along with the quality of camera and lens, technique in both photographing and processing, and the quality of the printer. Lots of places to make improvements, some more expensive than others.