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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
Handling Out of Gamet Colors
Randy Abrams, Photographer
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Bath | NY | US | Posted: 11:13 AM on 05.09.11 |
->> It seems these days that every league I shoot T&I for has bright, neon colored red, pink, green, orange and yellow shirts. It is virtually impossible to get a correct exposure for the faces without blowing out the shirt colors. With a correct exposure and then checking the gamet warning and using a spot proof in PS with my printers profile the shirt colors turn to some ugly muted, flat color. So question is is there any trick to still get a bright vibrant color but within the gamet ability of my printers?
I found one thread on the net discussing the problem, but no one had any answers. I've tried playing with combination of saturation and such in PS, but can't seem to recreate the colors without clipping it. |
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David A. Cantor, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Randy Abrams, Photographer
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Bath | NY | US | Posted: 2:05 PM on 05.09.11 |
| ->> Thanks David, but that link didn't really help. I know how to show the gamut (misspelled that earlier) warning and also know how to soft proof (said that wrong earlier also...must be a Monday) the images. The problem is how to get these neon colors to still be vibrant, but within the printers (not my own... commercial lab) gamut abilities. I can get the colors fairly close on my home printer, but it has a wider gamut than the commercial lab. I emailed the lab as well so I'll see if they come back with anything. |
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David A. Cantor, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Matthew Hinton, Photographer, Assistant
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New Orleans | LA | USA | Posted: 2:30 PM on 05.09.11 |
->> Find out the paper and printer and printer quality setting your lab uses then download an icc profile for that combination. Then use the proof setup and proof preview in Photoshop with the ICC profile and this will show you what you colors should like, assuming you have a decently calibrated monitor. Then you can adjust colors in the preview and send that file to the lab. Ask the lab if you should convert to this icc profile or leave it in Adobe RGB or whatever.
Also you can shoot raw to start with and that will allow you more of an exposure latitude to start with so you don't blow out the colors. |
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Randy Abrams, Photographer
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Bath | NY | US | Posted: 2:54 PM on 05.09.11 |
| ->> Thanks Matt. I use the lab's ICC profile to soft proof the pictures. This is how I know the colors turn into mush (note, no problems with most colors, just these neon, ultra bright ones). Even using RAW (which I do for T&I) I can't get the colors of the shirts as bright and vibrant as they actually are without the soft proof turning them into mush. The prints if I send them through the lab will come back with a flatter color than what the shirts actually were. I thought maybe there was a PS trick or two that would help. |
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Eric Canha, Photographer
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Brockton | MA | United States | Posted: 4:55 PM on 05.09.11 |
->> Randy what colorspace is the lab using? sRGB tends to muddy the waters although I have to admit that most of my T&I goes through a lab working in sRGB and I haven't had any issues.
Have you contacted the lab and had a talk with their QC person? If you get the right person on the phone usually you can get most of these things shaken out. |
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Randy Abrams, Photographer
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Bath | NY | US | Posted: 10:21 PM on 05.09.11 |
| ->> Eric, my lab using sRGB. I have contacted them and even sent them a sample picture. Waiting for them to reply. |
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David Harpe, Photographer
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Denver | CO | USA | Posted: 12:49 AM on 05.10.11 |
->> Check to make sure your lab is not dropping your file to CMYK somewhere in the process. CMYK is death to color - just try producing a saturated purple in standard CMYK. Really difficult.
Another thing to check is to make sure you're embedding the color profile in your output files. That can sometimes cause issues.
Another quick test you could do is to send a test image consisting of totally synthetic colors to your printer and see what you get back. This would help eliminate subjectivity in your testing. You could do the easy ones like 255,0,0, 0,255,0, etc. or you could run a bunch of swatches using RGB values from a Macbeth chart or something. I would advise against downloading a test image from the Internet and instead create your own using your own workflow and color conversion procedures. That way you don't have to worry about the file being munged when you get it. |
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Darren Whitley, Photographer
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Northwest Missouri | MO | USA | Posted: 9:37 AM on 05.10.11 |
| ->> If you're soft proofing, be sure you're soft proofing is set up for sRGB and not for CMYK. You can softproof an RGB image as CMYK prior to conversion. I suspect your soft proof setup is in CMYK mode and that's why your colors look flat. |
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