I’ve noticed my printed images are dull or faded in colour compared to what’s seen on a display. The brightness and black point seem to be about the same as the display.
How does one rectify this?
The print shop doesn’t have the icc file of the printer for soft-proofing.
CMYK cannot reproduce the same vibrant colors you see on the display, this image (to my best knowledge) should illustrate the difference to expect:
Also, found this thread, might be useful: print shop asks for CMYK, any options?
Thanks Pizzacutter, that’s very helpful!
Armed with that info, I tried trying something different. I downloaded the ICC profiles from the Adobe website and installed them within Darktable for use as softproofing.
From The CMYK folder I chose the profile that most closely matched the actual test print I received from the printer visually. Then I added some colour enhancements in DT, along with some additional exposure and sharpening and then exported that as a separate test strip to take to the printer again. Out of curiosity, I exported the same image as both ProPhoto and AdobeRGB to see what the difference might be once printed, between the two strips.
It turned out that the one with the ProPhoto profile came out with better colours printed, much better than the original yesterday. The AdobeRGB test strip also came out better but not as colourful as the ProPhoto profile.
The end result is a much more colourful, sharp and acceptable print version.
The other thing is the image had been up-scaled to A3 due to a severe crop to centre in on the subject, and I feel the upscale worked, leaving a nice, clean print free of artefacts.
All of this was done using a laptop without the ability to be colour calibrated and a TV to compare with. The PC at the printer was calibrated and showed me I was on track. One day I’ll get my colour calibrated monitor and usual work station back (they’re in storage in another town).
