I am in the process of printing an exhibition for a client - 36 prints - 12 each on A4, A3+ and A2.
The photos come from various photographers but, unfortunately, they are all in JPEG with all the concomitant problems that brings of noise, compression artefacts and 8-bit files with limited dynamic range.
Although some of the photographers have submitted reasonably printable files, it has still taken me around 10-15 mins per file to try and tidy them up in PhotoLab and export them to 16-bit TIFF files for resizing and final noise reduction in Topaz Photo AI.
The results are stupendous, given the files I was given.
I just want to give a shout out to the WGCS and Soft Proofing tool. It has enabled me to master over-saturated colours from stage lighting and gives a lovely tonal range. Whereas, in the past, I would simply tune out over and under-exposure, this meant I could tune out only the saturation and exposure problems that I would not otherwise have seen by having the printer profile to match.
⊠whilst struggling to get rid of out of gamut colours in the Classic space. @StevenL does this need looking at?
Stenis
(Sten-Ă ke SĂ€ndh (Sony, Win 11, PL 6, CO 16, PM Plus 6, XnView))
6
Are you talking about professional photographers and/or enthusiasts that ought to know how to create usable JPEG-files for printing or images straight out of system cameras or novices taking pictures with phones??
⊠or is the case that very few print today and of that reason lacks the competence to provide you with usable JPEG-files.
I hope you will be able to charge them for your work. That is the only thing that will get them to put in more effort to create usable files.
From what I can gather these are enthusiasts who are used to providing pictures for the organisationâs website, but this may be the first time they have been asked to submit pictures for printing.
Some of them have produced amazing images but, instead of submitting RAW files or a fully adjusted TIFF export, they were only asked to provide JPEGs.
I would say that sums it up. Also the organisers had left it far too late for asking the participants to rework them if necessary. Things would have been better if they had been asked for 16-bit TIFF exports and I gather that next year things will be a little more organised.
I charge a reasonable rate for printing and mounting on foam board but, next time, I will definitely mention the time it took to adjust the images before printing. At the moment, I am happy with the results and hope that they will be as well.
Now that they are printed, comes the next stage of mounting them.
1 Like
Stenis
(Sten-Ă ke SĂ€ndh (Sony, Win 11, PL 6, CO 16, PM Plus 6, XnView))
8
Iâve been loving the protect details option in the PL6. I have been experimenting with shooting saturated flowers (spring time) and other similar saturated scenes, to test it and Iâm very pleased how its able to squeeze wide gamut, highly saturated scene into a smaller color space and preserve the subtle details.
If you were a politician, you would be accused of âflip-floppingâ.
But seriously, itâs great that this complicated and misunderstood feature has found a niche for you.
Iâve not seen many specifications for submission of photographs, but the few I have seen are usually not well thought out at all. Requirements like âmust be 300dpiâ but no mention of dimensions.
Presumably that is for screen profiles because the slider is disabled for paper profiles.
Indeed. For one, they use dpi instead of ppi and second, they keep referring to 300 when 240ppi is perfectly adequate for normal viewing distance.
I can print up to A2 and so, to avoid any interpolation, I would prefer an image size of at least 3969px x 5613px for that size print.
This can easily be satisfied by an 18Mpx sensor but, unfortunately, some folks insist on taking pictures from far too far away and then cropping. I have one that is only 2852px x 3803px, which is more than likely taken with a 10Mpx compact or cropped and would only print (without interpolation) to 16cm x 40cm (roughly A3).
Fortunately, I use Topaz Photo AI and can easily double an imageâs pixel size, improving things like noise reduction and compression artefacts on the way. But there are still some things that are just too difficult. Take this 100% (crop) screenshot of an 18Mpx image that has been exported as JPEG from Photoshop 24.0âŠ
Yes. I usually export is sRGB for compatibility reasons of various devices on which the images might be seen. So if I feel there are potentially problematic colors in the scene, I use softproofing for sRGB and protect details slider to dial in the acceptable compromise between saturation and details/texture.
And than when I export the image, I use the same settings as softproffing or I simply leave the âprotect detailsâ option on. So far it give me very good pleasing results.
Thank you @Wolfgang. I will bear that in mind next time I get something like that. Unfortunately, I printed it yesterday, having warned the client it, along with a few other prints, might not be perfect. I donât know DFine, and Iâm not prepared to waste a sheet of A2 paper to reprint it.
But, once again, thank you for adding to my knowledge bank.
