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I have a eos rebel t5 shots of a dark red car the prints are lighter red ??? Thank you

chujo
Apprentice

I shoot a ruby red Mustang Coupe in front of a building for posters they are printed by a pro. The posters are all a lighter color 

more of a red than the richness of the true color . What do you suggest??? Thank you

4 REPLIES 4

Waddizzle
Legend
Legend

@chujo wrote:

I shoot a ruby red Mustang Coupe in front of a building for posters they are printed by a pro. The posters are all a lighter color 

more of a red than the richness of the true color . What do you suggest??? Thank you


Somewhere in the workflow there could be a color calibration error. It could be a white balance issue.  There could be a problem with your post processing  There could be an issue with the printing process.  It could be none or all of the above.

 

There is no way to make a determination with the little information that you have provided

 

But, you need to make sure everything is good at your end before you begin questioning your "pro" who does the printing.  You need to make sure you have the correct color temperature in your photos.  Your monitor needs to be properly calibrated.  It would be great if you had a printer of your own to check your work, too.

--------------------------------------------------------
"The right mouse button is your friend."

TCampbell
Elite
Elite

Color management is tricky and there are several places where the color can go wrong.   But as a start, you'll need to learn about using a color-managed workflow.

 

This starts with being able to establish accurate color balance (white balance) when you shoot your subject.

 

Few lights that illuiminate a subject are actually "white" -- so any color cast created by the color of the light will change the color of your subject.  Incandescant lights tend to make things look more yellow/orange than they really are... florescent lights might make a subject look more green then they really are.  

 

The camera has a number of white balanace settings that can be set to indicate what type of light source is used (sunny day, cloudy day, tungsten light, florescent light, etc.) but if you really want ACCURATE color, you wont use any of those... you'll use something called a "gray card".

 

This is simply a piece of material colored gray, but the particular gray is guaranteed to be perfecty color-neutral.  

 

What does that mean?  It means that the camera has a color-filter-array (CFA) called a "bayer mask" in front of the image sensor.  It records your image as a set of red, green, and blue points and then does some in-camera analysis to convert these to combined color values for the image.  If you shoot with the camera in RAW mode then these colored points (called photo-sites) are not converted in-camera... they're written to the memory card as-is (hence "raw") and computer software converts the data to a full color image.    But if something is truely NEUTRAL gray then if you were to inspect a pixel in your image then the amount of red, green, and blue value on that pixel should all match.   e.g. maybe I hold the mouse over a pixel in Photoshop and it shows me that the pixel's RGB value is Red: 85, Green:  86:, Blue: 96... this would mean that there's a slightly "blue" color cast on the subject because we know for a fact that the pixel should have had identical values for Reg, Green, and Blue if the color was "balanced".  

 

So the camera (if shooting JPEG) or the computer (if shooting RAW) can EASILY fix this problem by (in my example above) realizing that there's just a tiny bit too much "blue" in a pixel that should have had the same value as the Red and Green components... so all it has to do is subtract some "blue" from every pixel (to match) and you've balanced the color. 

 

This sounds complicated, but it's easy to do.

 

If shooting RAW, just hold the gray-card in front of your subject and take a photo of the subject (which includes that card) in the IDENTICAL LIGHT you plan to use for the rest of the shoot.  

 

Now you have a bunch of photos of your car... including one photo that has a gray card in front of your car.  In computer software (such as Lightroom) you go into the white balance tool, click the "eye dropper", and then click on the part of the image on the center of your gray card and just like magic the image is now color corrected.  Of course that just fixed the image with the card... the rest of the images of the mustang don't have the card.  No worries... pick the image that you just fixed (in Lightroom) and then pick the rest of the images in the shoot (provided they were taken in identical lighting conditions) and then click "sync" in Lightroom... and just like magic... the white balance adjustment used for the gray card image will have the same correction applied to every other image you selected.

 

You can also do this in-camera IF you shoot JPEG (I almost never shoot JPEG because RAW provides much more control when I work on the images on the computer).   But in JPEG mode you move in and take a photo of the gray card (in the identical lighting) so that the gray card is in the center of the frame and mostly fills the frame.  BTW... it is not actually necessary to focus and it's almost better if it's not focused.  The gray card doesn't have to fill the full frame but it does need to dominate the center of the frame.  Now go into the camera menu for white balance, pick "custom" white balance (CWB) and it'll prompt you to select a reference frame... pick the image you just shot using the gray card.  The camera will now set the color balance based on the data analyzed using the gray card.  Now every image you shoot in JPEG mode will be color corrected based on that white balance setting.  IMPORTANT:  If the lighting changes, you have to re-shoot the gray-card in the new lighting.  And don't forget to turn off custom white balance at the end of your shoot or you'll be wondering why your other images have wonky color.

 

All of this (yes it's long) is JUST going to correct the white balance for the camera.  But there's more.

 

First... it is technically possible for a camera (even though white balanced) to read either more or less color on each channel than it should.  For example... suppose the camera isn't as sensitive to reds as you think it should be ... even though the images are color-balanced.  You can get something called a color-checker.  This is another card but it has lots of color tiles on it.  Each colored square (tile) is a well-known color.  The computer software knows precisely what color that tile SHOULD be if the camera is accurate.  You can ONLY use this choice if you correct the color using computer software.  X-Rite makes something called the "Color Checker **bleep**" -- that's just one example of one of these cards.  The card both "white balances" and also corrects for any error in hue or saturation across the color spectrum -- so it's a bit more accurate than just using a simple "gray card".

 

And there's STILL more...

 

Your computer monitor might be displaying incorrect colors and you might not even notice it.  This means you sit at your computer screen and adjust the color until you think it's right... but the problem is that anybody who is not using YOUR computer monitor will see a different color hue than you see.  

 

You can get a device to calibrate your monitor.  X-Rite makes these devices as does Datacolor  (e.g. X-Rite ColorMunki Photo, or Datacolor Spyder).

 

So now you can make sure your camera is recording colors accurate AND you can make sure your monitor is displaying colors accurately (which makes adjustments easier when you work on your images.)  

 

But there's still more...

 

Printers can also be color calibrated and that's even more complicated because each print media (type of paper used) will absorb the ink differently... and also each type of INK can be different.  So a printer "profile" is actually a combined profile of each unique printer/paper/ink combination.  Change any of those three and you have to re-profile the printer.  Some print shops calibrate the printers for you can provide you with the printer profile.  When you create the file you plan to send to the printer, you're supposed to apply the printer profile to it (Photoshop and Lightroom can do this) and this will cause Photoshop (just for example) to basically lie about the color... suppose the reds aren't as saturated as they should be... Photoshop can compensate by telling the printer to over-saturate those pixels (based on an amount it determined via the printer calibration file you used) so that when the print job is produced it ends up being correct.

 

It can be a little more complex because the printer/paper/ink combination also has something called "gamut" -- you should think of that as a color range.  Each unique color is a "hue"... I can have thousands of variations of "greens" each with their own hue, saturation, and brightness.  But a printer/paper/ink combination cannot necessarily just produce any of those unique colors.  Some of them will be beyond the range of the printer's capabilities.  So the profile can allow you to determine if your shot has colors which are beyond the color gamut of the printer (based on the profile).  

 

There's no single best printer/paper/ink combination.  People choose these things for their attributes.  I might want something with soft pastel-like tones to display a gentle beauty and for that maybe I want desaturated color and a matte finish.  Or I might want something high-energy with bold, saturated color and an edgy look... so I might go for a high-gloss finish.

 

Also note that there is no "white" ink... that's just the paper itself that's white.  But if you've ever seen a car with a "pearlescant white" paint (you see "white" but it has a reflective, specular ingredient in the paint to make it shimmer) it turns out you can get photographic paper with that quality (e.g. Kodak Endura Metallic paper is like that).  

 

And as if that wasn't enough... now you've got your poster, accurately produced, and you hang it on the wall.  

 

What light source do you plan to use to illuminate that print?  Because that light can put a color cast on the entire image.

 

So now you know why artists rip their hair out trying to achieve the color results they really want.

 

 

In summary:

 

You would minimally want to do these three things:

1)  get a gray-card and learn to use it (even if you don't go for the full color-checker type solution)

2)  color-calibrate your monitor (get an X-Rite ColorMunki or a Datacolor Sypder device.)

3)  find a printer (lab) who can either provide you with the color profile of their printer or can accurately apply the profile to your job before it is printed (and this is why many photographers are fussy about which lab they use.)

 

Tim Campbell
5D III, 5D IV, 60Da

Maybe it's just a monitor set at 100% brightness. My monitor is set to 5% and the colors & brightness level are right on when I print using either of my photo printers. People need to take the time to learn about the work flow & color management side of prining when looking for better than average results.

"A skill is developed through constant practice with a passion to improve, not bought."

ebiggs1
Legend
Legend

Tim Campbell has the detailed answer as usual.  I will give you the short hand version.  In printing photos from a monitor there are really only three things that need to be correct.  They are,...

Contrast/brightness

Gamma

Grayscale

Get these in order and the print will be spot on most of the time.  A point to keep in mind is all these settings effect each other.

 

EB
EOS 1DX and 1D Mk IV and less lenses then before!
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