displays vs print

Hi all,

im curious as to how far out are display monitiors from apple from a print so what you see on screen vs what is printed ( mac book entry level )

i ask this cause i did some pictures of my boss and sent them to the printer, mind you i edited it how i wanted it. then the printer rings up and says its so dark my photoshop guy had to lighten it up. Now for a start they shouldnt of made any touch ups on my original pictures! 2nd it looked fine on my laptop and saffari, but yet dark on on fire fox ( further reading tells me firefox doesnt respect color profiles) he said it looked dark on his windows pc that he does printing from, and it look dark on my works machine but its a old toshiba with not so great screen, so is it my computer and editing or is it his machine?

cheers i know its a lil confusing just hope you can answer!

No monitor out of the box is going to be perfect. A colorimeter is a good idea if your going to be sending work to a printer. I like the Spyder2.
Maybe he is using a different color profile than you are. I would figure out profiles he uses so you can match his setup. If you're doing your own thing without thinking profiles, color spaces, etc... chances are your prints are off. The glossy screen from the MacBook could also throw off results. Really, it could be any number of things.

hmm i said to him what color space /profile are you using he said it didnt matter he would use mine as its embeded in the image

ive never quite understood how a screen clabration tool works? how can you figure if its the right shade of red, for example it shows you a red box and say does this look right you cant say yes cause you dont no whatit should be or am i been stupid?

To do it perfectly with your eyes can be difficult, that's why I suggested a colorimeter. It does all for you with accuracy.

Plus the newish, non lcd macs have a noterity in the world of photos and graphics for being horrible out of the box as far as calibration goes, with some being seemingly impossible to calibrate.

Plus the gamma on the screens are generally way too high. Anything I edited on my MBP generally looked dark on any other computer as the MBP's screen was incredibly bright. I had to do a little tweaking to help the problem. The newer LCD back light screens are supposed to be easier to calibrate, but still very inaccurate out of the box. Try doing two things. Turn off the auto brightness adjust if it's on and try turning the gamma down a bit.

You can get calibration devices starting at about $70ish, I think.

thanks guys ill try bry advice first as its a lot of money to fork out so soon after buying my mac!

bryphotoguy said:

No monitor out of the box is going to be perfect. A colorimeter is a good idea if your going to be sending work to a printer. I like the Spyder2.
Maybe he is using a different color profile than you are. I would figure out profiles he uses so you can match his setup. If you're doing your own thing without thinking profiles, color spaces, etc... chances are your prints are off. The glossy screen from the MacBook could also throw off results. Really, it could be any number of things.

Click to expand...

He did say the printer was using his profile, so it's probably the embedded profile in the image.

wow it looks so dark now! ive lowered the brightness and use apples calabrater ive taken it to the tv photo option and then d50 i think then thats it and it looks darker so i guess its better its not as bright as it was befofer

Village Idiot said:

He did say the printer was using his profile, so it's probably the embedded profile in the image.

Click to expand...

True. My post came before his reply. You read them out of sequence. I wouldn't make such a silly remark otherwise.

Make sure Photoshop is also using the right profile (Edit > Color settings)

In photoshops preferences I would set the CMYK profile to

Euroscale coated v2 (Europe)

US web Coated (SWOP)v2 - USA _ WEb refers to web offset Litho, not The Web

Also calibrate your screen the best you can and make sure the monitors Gamma is 1.8 (it should be anyway)

The best way is to get a USB hardware calibrator (get work to pay for it). No calibration will be perfect but the aim is to get as near as a standard Litho press as possible.

If you are working in RGB, convert to CMYK at the end to see if there are any large color shifts (usually loosing zingy blues, greens and oranges)

bryphotoguy said:

True. My post came before his reply. You read them out of sequence. I wouldn't make such a silly remark otherwise.

Click to expand...

Dude. Shut up and check out my ring light post
;D

No monitor / display is going to accurately imitate the colours you get in print because it depends on the output device you use. For example an inkjet will generally print 8-10% lighter than a Xerox. An offset (commercial printer) will render reds and magentas better than a Xerox etc etc. FIRST make sure your monitor is not faced towards any external light or esp. under a fluoro light. Then talk to the printer and check if they want it printed as an RGB or CMYK, what colour settings they want, and change them in pshop. Next in Pshop Go view>colour proof>working cmyk OR mac RGB which will preview how the image will look in the monitor (its shows up as darker as a cmyk image.
BTW colour problems are not the monitor's or mac moniytor's fault.. the problem is in the way monitors read colour vs reflected colour in print. Two totally different systems.