Photos printed using online companies Snapfish & Photobox not the same as on my calibrated macbook?

[Jonathan28296559cjt8]

Trying to understand why the photos i process from RAW in Lightroom Classic & Photoshop look great on my (Spyder calibrated) monitor and Mac Book look washed out and devoid of colour when i upload and print using Snapfish and Photobox in the UK? I have tried looking for answers online but have not been successful at fiding a solution. Any help for a non tech savy amateur photographer would be greatly appreciated.

[NB, colourmanagement]

@Jonathan28296559cjt8 are you following the relevant print services instructions on image colour space (i.e. ICC profile) to be used and are you embedding the ICC profile on saving the print file? 

Your Spyder device COULD be faulty, it has happened

- or perhaps your display calibration parameters (the calibration targets you select ) could be off, e.g. if your screen was real bright, this would mean prints are going to be dark. Or the opposite if your display target setting were too low.

What is your luminance / brightness target set to? What is your display white point target setting? 

How does this linked Adobe RGB testimage look on your screen? are densities and colours looking reasonable? 

please go here and download the Adobe RGB testimage: https://www.colourmanagement.net/downloads_listing/

I hope this helps

neil barstow colourmanagement - adobe forum volunteer,

colourmanagement consultant & co-author of 'getting colour right'

See my free articles on colourmanagement online

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[Conrad_C]

The place to start is knowing that today’s computer displays can show a much wider range of color and tone than any printing process can. A printer can reproduce only the range of colors and tones that is possible with the combination of ink and paper that it uses, and that range is much smaller than what can be reproduced on screen. 

Therefore, it’s actually not realistic to expect that pictures that look perfect on the screen will look the same in print, because print is so limited. So the way experienced pros do this is the opposite way: Edit the photos in a way that anticipates or can simulate the limitations of the specific printing process that will be used.

There are basic and advanced ways to do this.

Basic way. If you’re using a recent 14"/16" MacBook Pro, its Liquid Retina XDR display can reproduce a range of color and tones that’s vastly superior to any printing process because of its wide gamut color and HDR-capable luminance. No printing process can come close to matching either of those capabilities. But you can sort of constrain the display by setting the (Reference Mode) Preset for the Built-In Display to something that more closely resembles print conditions. For example, you could choose the built-in Preset named Design & Print (P3-D50). You can change the reference mode Preset using macOS Control Center or System Settings / Displays.

Slightly advanced. I created my own reference mode preset because I wanted to limit the Maximum Luminance to 110 nits to better match that of paper. You could make a preset that also limits the Color Gamut to sRGB depending on the printing process; this might be reasonable for a service like Snapfish but I haven’t looked into it.

Advanced. If your editing software has a soft-proofing feature, and your display is calibrated, and you have an ICC profile that represents the intended printing process, learn how to set up soft-proofing to simulate print colors on screen.

In Lightroom Classic, you’ll find soft-proofing in the Develop module under the submenu View > Soft Proofing, but it needs to be set up properly using the setup options under the histogram when soft proofing is enabled.

In Photoshop, soft-proofing is toggled using the View > Proof Setup command, but it needs to first be set up properly using the command View > Proof Setup > Custom. In Adobe InDesign and Illustrator, soft-proofing works similarly to Photoshop.

[Biggs47]

It could be a number if things. As a 20 year print industry veteran i'll talk about some print color management items that might help. As mentioned in the other comments, any backlit monitor is going to produce color more vibrantly than a printed piece of material. We can't compare additive and substractive color models, so let's put that aside for now. 

First and formost, what's your working color space? Maybe we're working in Adobe RGB or sRGB? Is a conversion being made on your end to a CMYK print space like Gracol or Fogra? Or are the RGB images being converted on the printers end (likely with the Press' rendering intent, and not a human in the graphics department). Depending on the printer's press profile, rendering intent could be rather decent, or if RGB images arent being converted or converted with a colorimetric rendering intent, these RGB images will look.. well.. horrible - whatever color is out of gamut simply wont print at all.

What I can suggest trying is converting these images to CMYK yourself before submiting them. If it's in the UK maybe try Coated Fogra as a working space. Adjust the images while in this CMYK until you're happy with them. Make sure there's no further conversion before you submit them - This could happen if you're making a PDF for print submission. Make sure you're not downsampling, use 'No Color Conversion'. and include your named source profiles.

See if this produces better results.  In the meantime, i'l try to see if i can get more information on what kind of presses they're using to make these photo books.

[NB, colourmanagement]

@Biggs47 I think the services the OP mentioned are basically "RGB" print (inkjet I expect), not offset, so converting to CMYK would not seem relevant.

I hope @Jonathan28296559cjt8 may have found a solution by now with earlier advice since his question

neil barstow colourmanagement - adobe forum volunteer,

colourmanagement consultant & co-author of 'getting colour right'

See my free articles on colourmanagement online

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