Anyone care to help with with color management...Please?

I really appreciate everyone taking a look at this...

OK here is what I've got
Canon 20d>>>>Macbook Pro 15" 2GB ram 2.33MHz>>>>Dell 2007WFP calibrated with an Eye-One Display 2 from Gretag Macbeth

So I calibrated my monitor about a week ago and thought that it looked absolutely phenomenal, so many colors, great contrast, just a pleasure to look at.

I went to go make some prints at costco to see how they would turn out...Not very happy, they are quite a bit darker and have hardly any contrast.

I call up to Costco to ask what the I should do, I already have their profiles, convert to them and un check the box while saving, no auto correct, etc. The guy tells me that the pros in town use Adobe 1998 and dont even worry about the profiles. I go back up there to give it another shot and I talk to the same kid again, but there is an older man there so I ask him his opinion. He tells me to use the Dry Creek profiles.

I come home and decide to re calibrate my monitor. I use the same conditions as the first time, except now the color is out of control. On a shot of my girlfriend, she has pink blotches on her face and looks terrible. Most of the other pictures experience a slight shift in color also. So I put the old one back on.

Now I have not calibrated my LCD on the laptop, just the Dell. So the monitor profile on the laptop is just set to the standard calibrated one from apple, while the external one is calibrated.

If someone could tell me what they think of my set-up/work flow, ways to get better prints, or anything to put me on the right track it would be greatly appreciated. I have followed all the intstructions from dry creek to print at costco. I also set up an account with WHCC so we will see how those looks. I just want to get some consistency in my base so I can worry about my pictures! Oh and I shoot in RAW and edit in sRGB for the most part.

Thank you so much,

Adam

Tell us what kind of print you get after working an image on your Macbook Pro?
I am also a Macbook Pro owner and the prints I get from Costco (with the Dry Creek profiles) are right on the money.

They are darker, hardly any contrast, very flat and dull. What paper do you use, glossy of lustre? The newest batch is of a girls softball team on the luster and they look like that, I will give the glossy a shot I guess. Does turning the paper simulation on do anything when soft proofing? MAybe its the paper?

I am on a PC, not a MAC but my prints match perfectly from Costco, in fact I just picked up some yesterday.

I have my monitor calibrated with Spyder2Express. I downloaded the profiles from DryCreek and follow their procedure exactly from the downloadable PDF. I always use their glossy paper and profile, but currently have a 16 x 20 being done on Luster. I will know in a few days how that looks.

Perhaps you need to switch your rendering intent from Relative Colorimetric to Perceptual or vice versa.

And then there is this thread:

https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=296149

Excuse me? "Does turning the paper simulation on do anything when soft proofing?"
If you don't see something happening when clicking that, something is seriously off...

About the softproofing: Have a read in the link from my sig.
Also check your color settings, and check the monitor profile (a few links in there).
Start of by getting your monitor profile set up right. Otherwise it's all a guessing game...

The rendering intent might make a difference, I never thought to try that since most of the articles that I have read just say to use the relative color metric...

Rene- I didn't mean to sound ignorant. I worded that wrong. I will have a look...

adhofmann wrote in post #3369775
The rendering intent might make a difference, I never thought to try that since most of the articles that I have read just say to use the relative color metric...

Rene- I didn't mean to sound ignorant. I worded that wrong. I will have a look...

I used Relative Colorimetric but found that perceptual got me closer to what I see on screen. IIRC DryCreek says to try each and see which one works best for each store.

Cool, well I will give that a shot. On another note, a few weeks after getting my MacBook pro I started having this weird thing occur on the screen. Pixels would be either blue or yellow and appear in clusters of squares that would move with the screen. So after trying to fix the problem I decided to send it back. so after doing some thinking, maybe part of the problem is that I have a bad graphics card.

Instead of starting a new thread, I thought I would just post in here...

Since getting my computer back I am having some trouble calibrating my Dell. My laptop looks great now, but the dell looks like crap. I have done it 5 times now in a row, with 5 different results. I keep getting a profile that makes skin tones look awful, like they are over saturated and contrasted.

Any help would be great

Some more info would help: How did you calibrate? What computer/ graphics card / monitor / software?
If you used a calibrator, did you disable Adobe Gamma?

MacBook Pro 15", 2.33GHz, ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 with 256MB of GDDR3 SDRAM and a Dell 2007WFP (S-ips panel), eye-one display2. The skin tones are overly pinkish orange, I have heard of this being problem, but can't seem to get rid of it...

Did you disable Adobe Gamma?
Are you sure the right profile is used for the dell?
Where "have you heard that this can be a problem"? Related to what?

Post an image.

I'm in the same boat........I'm SOOOOOO fed up with this!! Calibrated monitor (24" dell) Spyder Suite, using Costco's profiles from Dry Creek, soft proofing......still dark & flat. Honestly I'm about ready to quit this hobby because of this fact..........thousand​s of dollars in gear, took a college PS class, I can make my photo's look great on the screen but never (well once in a while on the Epson) a great print. Pretty much the same deal (but not half as bad as Costco) on my Epson 2400.....another 800 bucks......wasted

For you people that can actually print what your sceen looks like.......I seriously hate you I'm a decent photgrapher, with a clue about processing but I just can't seem to get past this...........I am bummed out beyond belief.

But hey, at least I got published in JGP mag last month..........so I guess I'll hang myself later........LOL

adhofmann wrote in post #3387477
MacBook Pro 15", 2.33GHz, ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 with 256MB of GDDR3 SDRAM and a Dell 2007WFP (S-ips panel), eye-one display2. The skin tones are overly pinkish orange, I have heard of this being problem, but can't seem to get rid of it...

Ya know what...........I heard somewhere the ATI's give the spyders problems, and I'm starting to believe it......ATI Radeon 9500 here. That's goona get the Ax I think........Nvida is next.

I dont have the spyder, sorry to hear about what you are going through, it definitely is a pain in the butt