As probably some of you I print every year family pictures to give to my parent and my wife’s and all is well and they’re very happy and proudly displays them in their living rooms, replacing last year’s pictures as their grand kids grow.
This could stop here but the one not being so happy is me :
I almost never print photos/pictures so I just own a laser B/W printer thus I have to rely on online printing services, photos shops or even worse (in my experience) photo printing booth. The results varies a lot, the best but slower and more costly being the photo shop where a qualified person with a calibrated hardware review my files a get the best of it, and the worse being generally the photo printing machine. So in some cases I end up doing 1 or 2 reprint on some pictures not to get theses perfect but rather to avoid disaster.
I have a calibrated monitor and files displayed on my monitor look rather similar when displayed on other devices (my samsung phone, iphones …)
In darktable, I set the output intent to perceptual and the only tool I found useful to avoid extreme color drift is the gamut check warning, but other than that I’m printing blind.
Would there be some general advises to get more consistent results ?
Hello, go for that photo shop with the qualified person, and stay there. I suppose you’re not printing hundreds of photos, just some or some more. You pay more but you get the best results and you have (normally) more papers to choose from, like matte, brilliant and pearl, and the fine-art series.
My background is that I run analogue film photolabs for decades and regardless of film or digital having a qualified person printing your photos is the only good option I can recommend. You can do everything right on your computer, but that will not translate on someone else’s system perfectly. They need to review the file and make adjustments for their equipment.
Find a good lab and ask them the questions and follow their recommendations. Some labs will even supply an ICC profile and/or calibrate your monitor to match their system. That may be rare but is not unheard of.
Not sure where you are located but as @Terry mentioned - decent labs provide .ICC
For me - this was the most consistent result that I achieved. Strangely enough - even when the picture did not look that good with the .ICC profile from the print shop - on my screen - when printed it was close enough for most cases.
Another item is that print shops may not be consistent from run to run. Even when I specify not to alter my images - one and the same image - no modifications from my side - on the same paper (not switching matte to gloss) looks different.
If however you want to print bigger and more artistic prints - then yes - what @paulmatth says is true. It would be well worth it to work hand in hand with the printer.
Thanks for your answers, as you probably guessed from my 1st post, there wasn’t much to convince me the photo lab is the best way to go ^^
I’ll try prepare ahead on my next run so I ask a shop for prints on time !
