Who printed their renders?

Hi everybody,

I'm trying to make a "photo"booklet with some of my renders and from previous printing experience I find that they tend to be too dark.

By know I understand that the renders come in the RGB colourprofile but the print needs CMYG colourprofile. So for those who were successful whith their prints, how did you convert?

I want it to look as nice and bright as on the screen, please. It works for photos, but I guess they are saved in CMYG colourprofile from the start.

Thanks a lot for your help!

Comments

  • The underlying technology is CMYK, but unless you have a Postscript printer the device itself wants RGB data (which it will then convert). If you have profiles for your printer/paper combo and your monitor is profiled and your software supports it you may be able to do a print preview, though even with all three elements I've not found those terrible accurate (to my highly inaccurate eyes).

    It isn't actually true to say that renders use an RGB profile - they don't have any profile at all attached to them as they leave DS, though if you adjusted them by eye to get the look you want theya er effectively using the monitor profile. Most things will assume sRGB for an untagged image.

  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 5,780

    You are right, the print previews rarely give me what I get. If I wanted to print on my homeprinter, I'd be testing around until it works, but I want to give it to a print shop, and at least one I looked up specificall asked for CMYG profile. Maybe the others are fine with sRGB but I don't want to invest 30€ and then have it all too dark as I had with my one testprint.

    Plus I thought I could safe a lot of time not adjusting each single render but just shove them all through some conversion process ;)

  • KitsumoKitsumo Posts: 1,210

    You could try printing a color calibration page:

    color calibration page

    Not necessarily this one, but something similar just to see what adjustments you need to make. Or create a primitive plane in your render and apply the color calibration texture to it. Then you can see if your lighting is off or maybe you need to adjust exposure, gamma, or whatever.

  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 5,780

    That is a good start, will certainly be quicker that guessing around which colours to change or gamma or whatever.

    I like the idea to render it to compare as well. Too late now for the renders I already made but for the future this might be helpful.

  • PaintboxPaintbox Posts: 1,633

    A good printer will look out of for you, however if this is a big on-line printer, with no customer contact, you need to do that work yourself. If you have your own printer (or a friend) first do a photoprint and see if there are any obvious oversights.

    Also most printers *don't* want CMYK (Cyan Magenta Yellow Key) as they do the conversion themselves. I almost never do it with my printers. Especially with photoprints, which doesnt use tradional CMYK, but can use up to 8 colors or sometimes more!

    The best thing is to look at the histogram curve in your image program, it tells you exactly how tint distribution is over the whole line, and those numbers don't lie. If its overly dark or bright, the histogram will tell you. It is your best friend if you learn how to read it, find some tutorials that can help you in this.

  • fastbike1fastbike1 Posts: 4,074
    edited October 2018

    If your prints are too dark and you have the proper print profiles for your printer and media, then your monitor is probably too bright (a common problem with uncalibrated monitors)..

    sRBG or CYMK have nothing to do with how dark your image prints.

    Post edited by fastbike1 on
  • BeeMKayBeeMKay Posts: 6,982

    I've tried printing out images in a drugstore photo´printer (the ones where you plug in a USB-drive or your smart phone, and print out images). Only after those test images turned out okay, I uploaded them to the photobook. But of course, that doesn't mean they will turn out the same in the photobook.

  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 5,780
    Paintbox said:

    A good printer will look out of for you, however if this is a big on-line printer, with no customer contact, you need to do that work yourself. If you have your own printer (or a friend) first do a photoprint and see if there are any obvious oversights.

    Also most printers *don't* want CMYK (Cyan Magenta Yellow Key) as they do the conversion themselves. I almost never do it with my printers. Especially with photoprints, which doesnt use tradional CMYK, but can use up to 8 colors or sometimes more!

    The best thing is to look at the histogram curve in your image program, it tells you exactly how tint distribution is over the whole line, and those numbers don't lie. If its overly dark or bright, the histogram will tell you. It is your best friend if you learn how to read it, find some tutorials that can help you in this.

    ahh, dang always more to learn.. but you are right of course. I hope I will get this all done in time. Thanks for the pointer

     

    fastbike1 said:

    If your prints are too dark and you have the proper print profiles for your printer and media, then your monitor is probably too bright (a common problem with uncalibrated monitors)..

     

    hm, valid point, I did an internal calibration of the screen though. The problem with the proper print profiles is more that one needs to know how to use them. That is where I came across the CMYK versus the RGB and that printer wanted the CMYK but my Gimp told me that I coudln't just apply that profile to an RGB image.

    "sRBG or CYMK have nothing to do with how dark your image prints."

    OK, I didn't know that. I was convinced that it's the obstacle that makes my life difficult

     

    BeeMKay said:

    I've tried printing out images in a drugstore photo´printer (the ones where you plug in a USB-drive or your smart phone, and print out images). Only after those test images turned out okay, I uploaded them to the photobook. But of course, that doesn't mean they will turn out the same in the photobook.

    I might ending up doing the whole booklet in the store, if I don't get my backside in swing soon LOL. I remember that they have the option to adapt images on the spot.

     

    Maybe someone has a nice link for me 101 of printing for dummies ;) or somethign of the sort.

    Thanks for all the feedback so far!

  • rono64rono64 Posts: 55

    I have done pre-press for so long, I honestly can't remember a time without it, in today's POD world, I find the only way to tell what your work will look like is to get a test or proof made.

    Too many printers use such a different criteria it can drive you mad, some want RGB, some demand CMYK conversions, work with them and flat out ask the printer what they need tips and tricks etc.

  • colinmac2colinmac2 Posts: 407

    I don't have a decent printer, so when I could afford it -- like around Christmas -- I put my best stuff on a dvd-ROM and took it to Office Max, for printing 8x10 glossies.  This has a LOT of disadvantages-- Price, obviously, and the fact that printing companies won't do even "tasteful" nudes -- but until I can get a decent printer, it's all I can do.

  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 5,780

    @colinmac2 Are the colours of your prints as you want them, or do you prepare them in a special way for the print?

     

    rono64 said:

    I have done pre-press for so long, I honestly can't remember a time without it, in today's POD world, I find the only way to tell what your work will look like is to get a test or proof made.

    Too many printers use such a different criteria it can drive you mad, some want RGB, some demand CMYK conversions, work with them and flat out ask the printer what they need tips and tricks etc.

    asking them works whn they are round the corner, but having to get everything send to look at it is time consuming, but I guess in the end that is the only way.

  • Linwelly said:
    rono64 said:

    I have done pre-press for so long, I honestly can't remember a time without it, in today's POD world, I find the only way to tell what your work will look like is to get a test or proof made.

    Too many printers use such a different criteria it can drive you mad, some want RGB, some demand CMYK conversions, work with them and flat out ask the printer what they need tips and tricks etc.

    asking them works whn they are round the corner, but having to get everything send to look at it is time consuming, but I guess in the end that is the only way.

    A remote service should still have some kind of submission guidance.

  • rono64rono64 Posts: 55
    Linwelly said:

    @colinmac2 Are the colours of your prints as you want them, or do you prepare them in a special way for the print?

     

    rono64 said:

    I have done pre-press for so long, I honestly can't remember a time without it, in today's POD world, I find the only way to tell what your work will look like is to get a test or proof made.

    Too many printers use such a different criteria it can drive you mad, some want RGB, some demand CMYK conversions, work with them and flat out ask the printer what they need tips and tricks etc.

    asking them works whn they are round the corner, but having to get everything send to look at it is time consuming, but I guess in the end that is the only way.

    Yes, it takes time, but anything in publishing usually takes twice as long as planned.

  • wizwiz Posts: 1,100
    Linwelly said:

    Hi everybody,

     Hi

    Linwelly said:

    I'm trying to make a "photo"booklet with some of my renders and from previous printing experience I find that they tend to be too dark.

    Your own monitior and workflow profiling are probably too light. How do you calibrate and profile?

    Linwelly said:

    By know I understand that the renders come in the RGB colourprofile but the print needs CMYG colourprofile. So for those who were successful whith their prints, how did you convert?

    I don't. You don't do your own RGB to CMYK (what's up with "CMYG"?) conversion, unless you're an experienced printer. Every CMKY job is different, every printer and RIP are different, and it's the printer's responsiblity to make that all happen, not yours.

    DAZ isn't adequately "color managed", you should have a simple color managed image prep program (aka "prepress program") before you send stuff off to printers. Do you have Photoshop? If so, just read up on its "color management" and prepress features, and find a basic monitor calibration tutorial.

    If you have a real computer, Qimage is a pretty decent way to go. I've run most of my prints through Qimage for the last 15 years. If you're saddled with a Mac, there's some sort of weird "Qimage clone" that DDI licenses called "Qimage One" that I've heard both good and bad things about. There's also JMG Photo Printer, but I know litle about that. Really, if you're working heavy DAZ, you should be using a computer, not a Mac.

  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 5,780
    wiz said:
    Linwelly said:

    Hi everybody,

     Hi

    Linwelly said:

    I'm trying to make a "photo"booklet with some of my renders and from previous printing experience I find that they tend to be too dark.

    Your own monitior and workflow profiling are probably too light. How do you calibrate and profile?

    Linwelly said:

    By know I understand that the renders come in the RGB colourprofile but the print needs CMYG colourprofile. So for those who were successful whith their prints, how did you convert?

    I don't. You don't do your own RGB to CMYK (what's up with "CMYG"?) conversion, unless you're an experienced printer. Every CMKY job is different, every printer and RIP are different, and it's the printer's responsiblity to make that all happen, not yours.

    DAZ isn't adequately "color managed", you should have a simple color managed image prep program (aka "prepress program") before you send stuff off to printers. Do you have Photoshop? If so, just read up on its "color management" and prepress features, and find a basic monitor calibration tutorial.

    If you have a real computer, Qimage is a pretty decent way to go. I've run most of my prints through Qimage for the last 15 years. If you're saddled with a Mac, there's some sort of weird "Qimage clone" that DDI licenses called "Qimage One" that I've heard both good and bad things about. There's also JMG Photo Printer, but I know litle about that. Really, if you're working heavy DAZ, you should be using a computer, not a Mac.

    Thanks a lot for more feedback!

    After all the information I now did have a look at calibration and surprise my screen has an sRGB setting, (and jup its a good deal less bright than what I had before), so now what I see and what i get seems much claser together already.

    The g instead of k in CMYK was just my wrong memory, sorry ;)

    Some prepring software seems what i was lacking mostly, i guess as i was doing everythign with gimp. Its probably possible with gimp but if its easier with a preprint software. This qimage seems to be free shareware. It says Windows XP as requirement on a german download site, that might be a bit outdated? So I expect it to work on Win7 as well. I'll be sure to have a closer look at that.

    And I actually went to the drugstore and make some instant tests, seems all my fears had been for naught, the images look just as brilliant as I want them. Now I can rest my worries and go to put my booklet toegther :D

    So thanks a lot for all the help!

     

     

  • tkdroberttkdrobert Posts: 3,532

    The 1st time I printed my art, I went to Office Depot.  When they came out too dark, I asked the guy to make them brighter and he did.  They were still a little dark, but looked very good.  The 2nd time, I printed from my home computer.  I used Photoshop to brighten the pics before I printed and the image came out great.  Experiementing on the home printer can be costly in ink though.  My home printer is also several years old as is my monitor.

  • TaslaqTaslaq Posts: 78

    I might have a good resource for printing the renders also I can offer 3D Printing :) but paper based prints are available with a good resource that I know 

  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 5,780
    Taslaq said:

    I might have a good resource for printing the renders also I can offer 3D Printing :) but paper based prints are available with a good resource that I know 

    Thats cool, thanks! I guess though, that would be mostly for people in the US? Shipping to Europe usually doesn't really make sense, I guess

  • MarcCCTxMarcCCTx Posts: 909

    I consider my renders to be camera raw when processing for print.

  • BeeMKayBeeMKay Posts: 6,982
    edited October 2018

    A short update from the flyer printing... The shipment of the flyers and namecards printed through Vistaprint.de arrived today. I still have to see the result under daylight conditions. Under lamplight conditions, the image got a bit darker than the screen version, and while it was very close to the original on the namecard version, it was obvious on the flyer (website URL has no content at the moment, going to work on it this weekend).

    Here's what I sent in:

    Here's what I got:

    whatIgot.jpg
    900 x 1600 - 138K
    thedesign.jpg
    800 x 1680 - 402K
    Visitefront.jpg
    1039 x 685 - 339K
    Post edited by BeeMKay on
  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 40,517
    edited October 2018

    ...I used to work in my compeny's digital print department where we had two Xerox I-Gen digital printers (each about as long as a city bus with all the trays and attachments).  Every time we got a new job with different specs it meant having to totally recalibrate the machines which could be an all day affair in some cases.  I remember watching the operators run colour test after colour test, as well as print quality tests (full sheets with one single colour each of the separations to check for banding)  If issues arose that the operators could not solve, we had a company tech under contract who would come in and perform more in depth trouble shooting (I would often joke to him that he should just bring a cot or sleeping bag and take up residence in the digital print room with how frequently he was called in).  No two jobs on these machines used the exact same setups as image quality, paper stock, and even humidity/temperature would affect the outcome. (the room was climate controlled but had two double doors leading to the warehouse on a pivot hinge like restaurants use that did not have a seal).  Pretty much everything done on those printers was CMYK and the two weren't even consistent in quality or colour balance between each other even though they were across the same room from each other.

    In contrast out in the imprints department we had an old three colour Super Jet offset press (that literally was held together with bailing wire) and two Heidleberg "windmills" (so named for the arms that gabbed and placed paper on the platen) one of which was nearly 100 years old.   We rarely had any downtime with these machines (particularly the Heidlebergs) compared to the I-Gens which were decades younger than the presses out in the warehouse. Our press operators kept them running smoothly and even could perform complex "double pass" imprinting with tight registration for 4 and 5 colour imprinting (the most colours we did was 6 which involved a triple pass and it looked great).  Yeah, you couldn't print a digital image on them but they were far less cantankerous and sensitive (I used to tell people, "don't look at the I-Gens cross eyed or we'll have to call the tech in to recalibrate them").

    In our old location we also had a couple of the big AB Dick Web presses which, like the Hedielbergs and Super Jet, were far more reliable and consistent than those two 1$ million Xerox colour "laser printers".  Noisy, yes, but they always did a fantastic job and rarely needed a technician to come in.to fix things.

    We actually had more customer/client satisfaction with the old style printing than with the digital stuff we did.

    Yeah for me the jury is still out on digital printing if you want high quality and good image accuracy unless you go with a fine art print house, but be prepared to dig deep.

    Post edited by kyoto kid on
  • BeeMKayBeeMKay Posts: 6,982
    edited October 2018

    That reminds me of the good old days in the mid-90's when I was still doing data entry, and everyone at the place I work with did the accounting manually... Today, we are scanning in everything, use print recognition, employ a load of people who manually fill up what the recognition doesn't recognize... and then we have some "black box" processes that will pay the money.

    It's when you set up these processes that you realize just how versatile a human really is, because the machine is stupid and needs everything in detailed "yes" and "no" decisions, and you sometimes get so complicated and need so many parameters set, that it's more efficient to let the human do as they did before...

    Here's the sunlight version of the flyer&card. It really looks a little bit darker than on the smartphone photo, but I guess I could do worse. Now that I have put things together, I'll maybe go and scout a local print shop to see if they can top the large online store with the flyers.

    whatIgotsunlight.jpg
    900 x 1600 - 126K
    Post edited by BeeMKay on
  • LinwellyLinwelly Posts: 5,780

    Hi Bee, That looks really good! I should make a photo of my flyer as well

    It was the same though with my flyer, it turned out darker than expected but still ok. now the printed "photos" turned out nice and bright. So the difference might be with using offsetprint, when making multiple copies. I hope it stays true with the "photo"booklet.

    @Kyoto Kid , I can well imagine. Ain't that true for dishwasher, washingmashines and televisions just the same ( not starting with cars now) The reliability of basically mechanic things is far higher that that using lots of refined electronics ... I still love most of that electronic stuff, though. I cherished being able to do most simple repairs on my car by myself now its pretty almost going to the garage. Or the old copymashine in the hospital library where I worked as Biologist (years ago) I have put that to pieces and back together so many times. Now they are very touchy about their interals

  • BeeMKayBeeMKay Posts: 6,982

    @Linwelly yes, I'm not 100% happy, but it isn't as bad as I feared. I did the photobook print at a different place than the flyers, and will have to see how they do things.

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