Problem encountered during first test prints

[Niall.P]

Hi All!

I'm new here but I thought some body might be able to help me out! I'm trying to start a photography company in Hong Kong mainly focusing on portrait pictures. I have been working on my side of the companies portfolio and decided to head down to the local photo development store (called Fotomax) and get some prints made. I went for 8x10's and thought they came off okay, but when I took them back to my house and looked at them side by side at the computer screen the prints looked like they had lost A LOT of colour and warmth compared to my photographs that were on the PC.
I asked my 'mentor' but as he was busy he simply told me that LCD monitors show colours that aren't true to life, they make things look better. I can't see how this is possible because I have seen prints that have amazing colour before.

What I am wondering is perhaps I need to go to a more professional place, rather than the 2-hour development store? As I'm fairly new to the whole printing scene, I'm not sure where to check out. I know probably no one here lives in Hong Kong, but if you have any tips or any ideas how I can make my colours brighter and warmer like they are on my PC screen from what I've told you above, please do tell me! I would be very appreciative!

Thanks a lot in advance!


Niall

[Mr. Pickles]

You need to get a monitor calibration device, and a print one too, if your going to do any serious work in this area. Once everything is calibrated correctly, you need to pretty much use the same lab (or at least the same printers), because if you switch, you will be back in the same place as you are right now.

Also, be wary of those that may "color correct" your images. If you do all your color corrections, and send it to a printer and they do an auto-adjust or similar, your dead. You need to tell them to just print them, do not color correct or anything.

As a test, open one of the images you had printed in your software and tell it to auto-adjust the colors. You might be surprised that it washes out and looks more like the print...?