Costco and sRGB

[msvadi]

Did anybody else notice that you have to convert your images to sRGB profile in order to get best quality prints from Costco? By best quality I mean not only a good match between what you see on your monitor and a printed photo. Some pictures in Adobe RGB that I printed at Costco turned out overexposed, oversaturated, in short, horrible. And I knew there was nothing wrong with them. Actually, I even tried the custom profile for my local Costco Lab (downloaded from drycreekphoto.com). May be I did something wrong, but I received the worst prints ever.

I think that from now on I'll stick to sRGB. I'll use it as a default workspace. I know it's best for the web and for printing at the lab I'm using. I don't even believe that my monitor can take advantage of Adobe RGB.

[Ferdinand]

Adobe RGB has a wider range of color so I work in Adobe RGB and only convert to sRGB for web and I let PS do that when I print. That is why its always a plus to have a printer of your own. I currently use the Canon I960 its awesome.

Regards,
Ferdinand

[4walls]

Check out Dry Creek Photo's Digital profiles for your Costco's printer profile. I am just experimenting with printer profiles right now, so I can't tell you anymore than that right now.

www.drycreekphoto.com

[msvadi]

I tried Dry Creek custom profiles and got very bad results. There are rumors on the web that those profiles don't work anymore. They say that Frontier machines expect your pictures to be in sRGB.

[maderito]

I tried Dry Creek custom profiles and got very bad results.

I have to second msvadi's comment. After much frustration with color management, I purchased one of Dry Creek's custom profiles for my Canon i950/Photo Paper Pro. A bad decision and waste of time. The Dry Creek profile became part of the problem and not the solution.

I don't know about their Frontier/Noritsu profiles. Never used them.

If you're serious about color management, you need to generate your own "custom" profiles for your printing environment (printer, paper, inks, etc.). The Dry Creek website makes this point - and also has some useuful color management advice.

[scottbergerphoto]

Here's just a question to stir the mix. Epson provides ICC printer profiles for its photo printers and premium papers on its web site and with its printers. Why doesn't Canon?

[maderito]

Here's just a question to stir the mix. Epson provides ICC printer profiles for its photo printers and premium papers on its web site and with its printers. Why doesn't Canon?
Scott,

You've heard me indirectly complain about this before. I think Canon regards its bubble jet printers as consumer (not professional) products. The out of the box print driver and generic profile seems to cover most conventional printing needs, and only becomes problematic when you enter the world of color management via Photoshop or similar program.

Canon does supply a profile with the printer which shows up in PS as BJ Color Printer Profile 1999 (now updated to 2000). The actual name of the Canon supplied file is "Cjpd4d00.icm" which I guess has several ICC profiles for the different camera papers (that's a pretty wild guess).

The problem for me is that I just don't know how the canon print driver and profiles interact with the image editing/viewing application - especially Photoshop. Canon's gives us a sophisticated print driver with a lot of consumer-oriented bells and whistles. But the documentation and support for a color management workflow is virtually nil. Experience -- along with wasted paper and ink -- has become the only guide. Even extensive web searches yields little useful info.

I'd be surprised if Canon changes. The printers are so inexpensive and so convenient. The general consumer market is clearly the target audience.

All of that said, I still love the product! Maybe it's brand loyalty -- I like to think its the fabulous prints. :D

[4walls]

Got my photos back from Costco. Did two prints from one file. One converted in PS to the printer profile for my Costco (from Dry Creek) and the other one just "normal" sRGB.

Turns out there was very little difference and the "normal" picture looks a little better. Oh well, it was an experiment.

[msvadi]

I think that the outcome depends on how much contrast in your picture. If there is too much contrast and the picture is in a wrong profile then troubles begin. Of course, it may change from store to store. May be the profile to our local Costco is just wrong.

[4walls]

May be the profile to our local Costco is just wrong.
Could be... but the regular sRGB shots are coming out so good,
that I am not going to mess with the printer profiles anymore.
My work is not that critical.
:eyes

[Namagemo]

I agree with 4Walls. I was flabergasted when I saw and compared our local Walgreen Pharmacy 29cent 4x6 prints (Fuji Frontier) with my calibrated (adobe) monitor (sRGB). The prints matched as well as I could have ever hoped for. Maybe not for pros but better or equal to what I was ever able to do with my printer and screwing around with profiles. Printer upgrade on hold for now. :shock:

[msvadi]

One more thing about Costco (or any other lab that uses same machines). If you don't like the prints quality check the codes on the back. If you see anything like "N-2" or "N+4" it means that (automatic) correction swhere applied to your images. Tell them to turn all corrections off and print again. The codes supposed to look like "NN N N" - no numbers.

It happend to me a couple of days ago. The technician for some reason decided to make corrections and ruined the picture (11x14 portrait). It looked really bad. Good thing I remembered to check the back of the photo. First, they denied that anything was done to the picture, so I had to show them the codes.