Help - Help! With color issues!
Sharingene Apr 8, 2011 11:35 AMLet me start by saying I calibrate my monitor with an X-Rite eye-one display 2. I also soft proof my images with the output color profile. But I will admit to being fairly new to printing and wonder if I am missing some basic step in the process that is resulting in the awful print I just received from an online canvas printing company.
Here's what happened. I downloaded the color profile for this company and soft proofed using their profile. When viewing my image with their profile--some of the colors looked horrible--the tropical greens and yellows look horrendous compared to how the image normally looks on my monitor. I realize a monitor produces more colors than printed material so I expected some color shifts, but this is pretty dramatic. It completely reminded me of CMYK issues I've dealt with when producing color brochures, but in the end, I've always been able to compensate for these color shifts with some adjustments. Typically, I make some selective color and levels adjustments to these specific areas. With this company's particular color profile, it was difficult to get the colors closer to the original image, but still, I felt fairly satisfied with my attempt. After making adjustments, I converted the image to their color profile and saved this copy to upload to their service.
I received my 30 x 45 canvas yesterday and--ugh--what an utter waste of money! Immediately, I pulled the image back into PS to see if what I'd sent them could have looked as awful as what I received. But here's the really weird part that totally confounds me... I saved one version of the image without the color conversion, and one with the color conversion. When the "Open" dialogue box in Photoshop came up, I could see these two thumbnails side by side. The one with the color conversion definitely looked odd and in fact it pretty much resembled the ugly result they to sent me, BUT after clicking on it and opening it in Photoshop--it looked different. The strange color cast I could see in the small thumbnail (and on the huge canvas print) were not apparent. I am completely mystified as to what is going on here. When I first saw that thumbnail looking just like the ugly print, I felt at fault. Yet once the image opened in PS it didn't look that way anymore. I am at an utter, frustated loss! What I DO know is I can't afford another trial-and-error result like this again on large canvas! I'm wondering if I'd be better off not using their profile at all, doing no conversions, and no color adjustments.
Can anyone see where I might be going wrong in the soft-proofing/ conversion process? And secondly--why in the world would the thumbnail in the open dialogue box be showing an exact replica of the ugly canvas I received, but once fully open in Photoshop this color cast disappears? PLEASE HELP!!! Any insights would be so very appreciated!



