mkurtich Loc: Pennsylvania

I have been enjoying the Q&A on this site for some time. Hoping I can get some needed direction on a photo printing issue that is frustrating me. Typically I use Costco for printing after I do edition in LightRoom. Lately, my photos are printing with a whitish haze that is dulling the photos. They look bright on my laptop. Wondering if I am over-editing as I expand the number of tinkerings in LR. Or, if Costco printing might be the issue. Because I do edit, I turn off the adjustments option on the Costco site. Any help in narrowing my search for the root cause will be appreciated. Thank you.

twowindsbear

What do the Costco folks say anout the results you're getting?

PAR4DCR Loc: A Sunny Place

Do you calibrate your monitor???

Don

MichaelH Loc: NorCal via Lansing, MI

And Costco has icc printing profiles available from DryCreekPhoto with a how to for using them in Lightroom. To simulate Costco printing and paper you install the profile and in the Develop module you check Soft Proofing. A dropdown appears in the upper right and you choose the Costco profile for a particular printer/paper combo at your local Costco.
Google DryCreekPhoto and you will find the icc profiles and a how-to.

There might be more help for this issue in the Printers and Color Printing Forum section @ http://www.uglyhedgehog.com/s-120-1.html

mkurtich Loc: Pennsylvania

Thank you all. The Costco folks were not as helpful as I hoped. Maybe I caught the wrong person. Good thought re the monitor. And, I will follow-up on the icc profiles. Cheers

The Watcher

For the the OP. To get the most from a profile you will need a calibrated monitor.

https://www.drycreekphoto.com/icc/Profiles/Pennsylvania_profiles.htm

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

Why don't you post images here, with "store original" checked, so we can see what they look like to us? People here love to speculate, but right now that is all people are doing.

JCam Loc: MD Eastern Shore

Do you perhaps have the laptop screen set too bright? A lot of us tend to do that as we get older and our vision acuteness diminishes.

peterg Loc: Santa Rosa, CA

A common problem is that prints are too dark. The cause is often having the monitor too bright. Include a brightness adjustment when calibrating.
Bay Photo ( http://bayphoto.com) has complimentary Evaluation Prints through the Bay ROES > Misc to see how accurate your monitor output is compared to the raw print output. Other printers may have the same.

jlsphoto Loc: Chcago SubBurbs

Lots of good advice above by other posters. Here are my thoughts.

Are you using a calibrated monitor? If the prints are too light then you need to set your monitor brightness lighter. The opposite if the prints are too dark. Even if you do not calibrate the monitor this will make a difference.Also how are outputting your files from light room. To send to the lab you should be outputting from the print module. In the print job section set the "print to" file. There is a printer profile in the same section which I use with my ink jet printer. I am going to look into if you can use the Costco profiles from dry creek in light room. I normally use them from photo shop. I will let you know what I find out.

I have found one Costco that does a better job of printing than another one I use. I think the lab manager does a better job of maintaining their equipment.

For best results always use a pro lab.

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

Problems with prints are usually due to an uncalibrated computer screen, which causes you to incorrectly adjust your images.

Computer monitors tend to shift over time... losing brightness and changing color rendition. For that reason, for accurate printing it's necessary to re-calibrate periodically (how often is up to you... I do it every other month, but some people do it more often, others less often). I've been using the same monitor for around 7 years and when it was new, after calibration I found I needed to set the brightness to "20" (I forget what the default was, but it was way, way too bright, causing my to make my images way, way too dark for printing or even online display). Now after the years of regular use, it's gradually shifted so that the last time I calibrated I had to set to about "50". That's just the natural loss of brightness that occurs, but will be different for every computer monitor. Color rendition also shifts gradually over time. Eventually a monitor's useful life will end, when it is no longer bright enough or it's color rendition falls outside the range that can be corrected by calibration.

Another very likely part of your problem is that you're using a laptop to edit your images. Laptops are particularly difficult to calibrate and keep calibrated, primarily because they get moved around into different ambient lighting conditions and open and closed to slightly different angles, both of which effect the appearance of images on the screen. Technically, a laptop should be re-calibrated every time it's moved or every time it's been closed and re-opened. There are devices that can insure you always set it open to the same angle, as well as "tents" to work within to shade a laptop from ambient light conditions, and even calibration devices that work "real time" to constantly adjust color rendition (but not brightness). The best way to use a laptop for image editing is with an external monitor that's set up and kept in one location.... so calibration can be maintained. Not all laptops are up to the task though, of using an external monitor.



This has nothing to do with the user's age. Actually most computer screens are way too bright for proper image editing by design. This isn't done to make photographers' lives more difficult, but because for gaming and office work and watching cat videos online most people want and need a brighter monitor. All good for that... but bad for photo editing. Hence the need for calibration.

bamfordr Loc: Campbell CA

Just discovered FedEx Office with Sony Picture Station kiosks. DIY, but I can fine tune (and see more or less what it will look like). Prices are reasonable. Dye sub holds promise for durability. And I don't print enough to justify a home photo printer.

charles tabb Loc: Richmond VA.

Look into the Spyder 5 PRO.

bamfordr Loc: Campbell CA

Duplicate post

BullMoose Loc: Southwest Michigan

And how would posting an image here (hi-rez or not) help with what a print from Costco looks like?
Unless you could see the actual printed image, I don't see a benefit of looking at his digital image on your digital monitor.
Who knows if the two monitors are even closely calibrated to each other.