How do photo labs calibrate your prints?

I have my own Epson photo printer but I don't print much so I'm thinking of sending my work off to a print lab like Bayphoto. But I'm affraid I won't get the results I make myself. I've calibrated my printer and monitor with my Xrite ColorMunki.

Does anyone use printer labs? How do these labs calibrate their printers so what you see on your monitor matches what they print themselves and what you print yourself? They obviously don't use a ColorMunki.

If they do it right, they calibrated their printer & can provide you their printer profile.

They might use (something like) a colormunki if they use a big inkjet for instance. No idea how something like a Frontier is calibrated, but that doesn't matter, as long as it works well…

Mos t print labs have profiles they will provide to you so you can soft proof your images before you send them to the lab. Softproofing will help you visualize the relationship between what you are seeing on your calibrated and profiled display and what you should expect from the print lab as print output. Then you send some test prints off to the lab, have them printed (sometimes you must specify NO COLOR CORRECTION or whatever other automatic things labs might do to "enhance" your images) and compare the prints to the softproof. Just like you would do with your printer, but it takes a little longer to get the prints back to your viewing area.

If your display is calibrated and profiled in a way that matches the conditions the labs target values, then the soft proof and the print should match, within the tolerances of your display's capability and your calibration and profiling equipment.

You may want to contact the lab and tell them you want to profile your display according to their suggested target values. Also ask them if they suggest a specific viewing condition - in other words, all of the things you you would typically control in your workflow must now be specified by the lab.

good luck!

kirk

Once you have a printer's color profile, how do you use it in Lightroom to see what you're getting?

Also is there any free software out there to calibrate your monitors?

1) See http://www.imagescienc​e.com.au …Using+ICC+Outpu​t+Profiles
or http://www.redrivercat​alog.com …anon-desktop-windows.html
Lightroom doesn't do softproofing, so there might be no exact WYSIWYG, depending on image.
2) Argyll / Dispcal.