Help with photo

[Bear Dale]

I had this panorama printed out yesterday at a printers and the shadows came out virtually black.

Is there anything I can do to get it to print the shadows lighter?

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8093/8561117214_0b88ef310b_b.jpg

[WhoDo]

Get the printer to give you a profile for the printer they use and adjust the image on your machine using that profile. That way what you see at home is what you'll get from the finished print. Just a suggestion. Lightroom will give you control over the shadows without losing control of the highlights, too, but that's no good if you aren't seeing what the printer is printing. Hope that helps.

[Bear Dale]

Cheers Waz

[Cage]

Jim, I don't know what PP software you have, but three tweaks of the sliders in Photoshop CS3's Camera Raw recovered most of the detail in the shadows.

[Bear Dale]

Hi Kevin,

I do use Photoshop, but must admit that I don't really ever use Camera Raw because I don't see it as I open the image(s) up by right clicking on them in Lightroom and opening them straight up in Photoshop.

Thanks for reminding me about Camera Raw, I'll see what I can manage.

Cheers,

Jim

[Mark L]

Is the photo you posted the shades you wanted printed?
Just brighten and try again, as they'll print it darker than your brightened photo (or is that to simple?).

[arthurking83]

Which shadows? all or just specific areas?

The shadowing in the foreground still has more than enough detail to display the trees/bushes, so that shoudl print up well enough, but there is some very dark shadows in the distant hillsides that may not reveal much detail.

There's not all that much 'pure black' in the image.

Is your printing service online only or do they have a walk in shop front?

Funnily enough, I've had some good prints done in A4 size at simpleton Officeworks .. which corresponded nicely(not perfect but nice) with my screen output. Basically used them to confirm my screen calibration.

After which I then used a pro printing service to print a 30" present for a friend's birthday present(different images tho) .. didn't want to waste $80 in printing and mounting a present to find it looked yuk! ;)

Looking at this image on my monitor, it should print up with a good range of tones heading into pure black, but there's not all that much of it.


What colour space have you used, and compared to that required by the printer?

ie. if you set the image to aRGB, and they printed in sRGB(and that info wasn't in the file data) .. then all sorts of weird anomalies can occur in the printing.

[Bear Dale]

See the line of trees in the gully (the whole bottom 1/5 of the photo) that whole bottom printed out virtually black as did the escarpment on the right hand side. In the photo above you can see some green pasture in amongst the forest.....it's just all black in the print.

This vista is only a minute from my house, but I just love the way the sun was lighting up my friends farmhouse. The photo enlarged on a computer screen just looks (not boasting whatsoever) really really nice, I would have really liked to have had it print the same. I was so excited to get the print, but totally bummed as soon as I saw it.


I had this photo below printed really large at A1 (23" x 33") at the same time and it came out exactly what I see on my monitors.... absolutely awesome -

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8196/8444088688_e4fd4b62db_b.jpg

[arthurking83]

OK, going with that info then .. the most likely answer then is that the printer stuffed up with the pano print!

If the bird image came out as it did on your monitor, even with very subtle differences, and the landscape image came out black where there is clearly good tone detail .. then the printer stuffed it on the pano print.

[ameerat42]

You took it to a printer's to get this? And you paid for it?
What sort of printer's are they?
(Perhaps) you should go back.
Am.

[Bear Dale]

Thanks Arthur, they are going to do it again for me.