Rainbow... Gamut Issues

I'm trying to get this image to print correctly. As I understand it, it will not print correctly because many of the tones are outside of the printing gamut even if my image fits within the sRGB colour gamut.

To help you understand, look at the original (a) bellow, and the print itself (b). The greens coming out of the Noritsu 3111 are clearly not even near the wide spectrum in the picture itself. Just as an FYI, this is only a tight crop of the picture, where the problem is most apparent.

Other than going around town and paying for a print at every photo lab, is there anything I can do?

Overall, it seems like photos lose a lot of vibrancy once printed.

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You need to get an accurate print profile from your lab, and soft-proof to that. Any colours that fall outside the gamut, you need to desaturate them until they "fit".

The problem with desaturating until they 'fit' is a result not worth a penny, or in other words the picture isn't worth printing at that point.

Maybe it's because I'm young, but it almost seems unthinkable to me that the colour pigmentations aren't up to par with what cameras can capture and what monitors can display. I guess that's another topic altogether!Ha

Some colours are ok, but others, as you've seen, aren't.

You have two choices - find a printer with a capable gamut, or desaturate the oog colours until they fit inside the available print gamut. Your age has nothing to do with it.

I just figured this problem is very dated, beginning with the first printers.

What color space is the original file in? And what rendering intent are you using? Perceptual? Relative?

What rendering intent are they printing with? I doubt that youth is a factor here.

oreca wrote in post #9185063
Maybe it's because I'm young, but it almost seems unthinkable to me that the colour pigmentations aren't up to par with what cameras can capture and what monitors can display.

Not at all unthinkable. I work in the printing industry and the limitations of past, present and future printing methods are a daily pain. You have chosen an image that will really emphasise the shortcomings of a CMYK + process though. Are you using that as a test or do you really need that printed accurately? You may get a wider gamut with a different paper. Otherwise wait for Opaltone Inkjet systems to come onto the market.

ChasP505 wrote in post #9187487
What color space is the original file in? And what rendering intent are you using? Perceptual? Relative?

What rendering intent are they printing with? I doubt that youth is a factor here.

The original file is in sRGB, and to be honest I didn't make a modification to the rendering intent. Instead I simply got the file printed as-is. Playing with the rendering intent settings, it seems like my picture came out exactly how proofed with 'preserve RGB numbers' enabled.

Reading up on it, it sounds like relative colorimetric is my best bet, even if all the colours appear washed out.

HankScorpio wrote in post #9187518
Not at all unthinkable. I work in the printing industry and the limitations of past, present and future printing methods are a daily pain. You have chosen an image that will really emphasise the shortcomings of a CMYK + process though. Are you using that as a test or do you really need that printed accurately? You may get a wider gamut with a different paper. Otherwise wait for Opaltone Inkjet systems to come onto the market.

Yeah, I was hoping to get the picture printed accurately, but I was also using it as a test because I knew I would encounter gamut issues.

So are you saying the gamut is changed through using different papers? I had a feeling it was mostly dependent on the ink itself. I just checked the Opaltone website and it sure sounds like an interesting concept.

oreca wrote in post #9189235
Playing with the rendering intent settings, it seems like my picture came out exactly how proofed with 'preserve RGB numbers' enabled.

If you are talking about softproofing in PS for the correct printer / paper profile here, and the printed image looks as the softproofed sRGB with the "preserve RGB numbers" box ticked, somebody at the lab goofed up. (they assigned the printer profile to the file. I.e. no color management.)

Looks like it, by what's happening in the greens.

Yeah, they look exactly the same. Very harsh transition between green and yellow. So what exactly might have gone wrong, and is there something I might be able to do to avoid this?

This was printed at Costco, and I did specify 'no corrections' and all the N's printed on the back had no + or -.

Looks like they disabled auto correction, but also didn't convert the image to their printer profile.
So the image would have gotten the printer profile assigned. (Easy enough to check).

Same happened to me once. I then stopped using that lab after a long discussion with them.
Unfortunately, now it's the only local lab left, so now, if I have to use them, I convert to their profile.

Damo77 wrote in post #9185018
You need to get an accurate print profile from your lab, and soft-proof to that.

Here's a section cropped from a common print test image viewed under 2 different softproof conditions. (Profiles created for my HP B8350 by Eric Chan). On the left is Relative rendering intent and on the right is Perceptual. Notice the color shift.

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