SteveLew wrote:
Recently, I sent two photos to a professional photo lab to have canvas prints done. This very well known and respected lab was to do some color work to balance colors in my two sent photos. I sent them edited niff photos. After receiving these photos they requested that I send them nef photos since the edited niff photos were "soft". After receiving my nef photos they requested that I either send them jpeg or pnd files which I did.
Finally, after all these different formats were sent they informed me that the best that they can do with these two photos was produce soft pixelated photos. I informed them to credit my account and charge me only for their time and effort to this point and do not continue with the originally ordered canvas prints.
For my next submittal photos they requested that I send them only unedited original raw nef prints so that they can perform their work. This is a very respected lab located on the west coast.
In working with professional labs is it your experience to send unedited photos and allow them to perform their work? I would appreciate your thoughts and experiences.
Recently, I sent two photos to a professional phot... (
show quote)
The majority of labs... pro or otherwise... want 8 bit JPEGs for printing. Many labs will not accept anything else for printing.
Only a few will accept any form of proprietary RAW (such as Nikon NEF). A few more might accepts DNG, which are a slightly more universal type of RAW (free converter available from Adobe).
"NIFF" is a music file format. I suspect you mean TIFF, which is fairly widely used 16 bit image file format. It is useful to edit images in this format, with the additional bit depth. But only pro labs are likely to be able to work with it. PSD is similar 16 bit, but a proprietary Adobe file format (Photoshop, etc.) that may or may not be workable with other software.
"PND" is a file format associated with some pension system, has nothing what-so-ever to do with images. Maybe you meant PNG? That's another 8 bit image file, fairly common though not as ubiquitous as JPEG. For image editing or priinting purposes there's almost no advantage to using PNG instead of JPEG.... any software that can save a file as PNG can certainly also save it as a JPEG. So I'd recommend JPEG instead.
8 bit (JPEG, PNG) versus 16 bit (TIFF, PSD): 8 bit has approx. 16 million color possibilities. That sounds like an awful lot... until you consider that 16 bit has 231
trillion possible colors!
When working on images... adjusting and retouching them in various ways... better results can be expected if they are "worked" in 16 bit mode. But, for many (most?) printing processes, an uncompressed, high quality 8 bit files is more than adequate, saves a lot of size and space, speeding up processing.
If you shoot RAW with your camera, likely the NEF files are 14 bit... but some Nikon can be set to shoot 12 bit for faster frame rate and to be able to store more images on a memory card. Either of those will be a proprietary NEF file, that requires specialized software to convert to a format that's usable for printing. That software will interpolate either 14 bit or 12 bit files into 16 bit, for post-processing work.
If you set your camera to shoot JPEG instead, while you can convert them to 16 bit format such as TIFF or PSD, there is little reason to do so. Once "reduced" to 8 bit, there is no getting back the data that was "thrown away".
"Soft, pixelated photos" suggests that the files you sent them were far too small... either due to your camera's native resolution or because you reduced the size of your images a lot already, before sending them. Again, a high quality 8 bit JPEG is generally what's wanted for printing, but since they were to do image editing and optimization work prior to the printing, a 16 bit TIFF might be needed in this case. The lab should be able to tell you the exact specifics they need... what color space (Adobe RGB or sRGB), what file type, and what resolution (pixels per inch). Regarding resolutionr, many printing processes can be done with 170 ppi... but a lot of people like to use 240 ppi. More doesn't gain you anything. Personally I use 300 ppi simply because the math is easier. A few printing processes need higher (one I know of uses just over 400 ppi, but it's not commonly used these days).
There are other things that can cause "soft, pixelated photos". For example, some cameras that can be set to shoot smaller size RAW files (primarily to save memory card space or speed up the camera). Some Nikon also can be set to shoot in a crop mode (D7200: 1.3X), which reduces image resolution significantly. Plus, lens quality, use of filters on lenses, shutter speeds and other factors can effect image quality a lot.
FYI, prints on canvas, in particular, typically have a lot of texture that makes them very forgiving of image quality, fine detail and sharpness. In other words, a canvas print usually doesn't need nearly as high quality an image file as, say, one that's being printed high quality, smooth, matte art paper.
Quote:
For my next submittal photos they requested that I send them only unedited original raw nef prints so that they can perform their work. In working with professional labs is it your experience to send unedited photos and allow them to perform their work?
To be brutally honest, it sounds as if you are pretty unfamiliar with digital image post-processing and are quite confused. The lab's request to send them the original, unedited NEF files (not "prints") is probably the best idea. Personally I never send unedited, unfinished photos to anyone, ever... including labs for printing. But, I've learned how and am fully set up to do my own image post-processing (as Bill describes above). You appear to have little or no experience at this, which isn't a bad thing. It's just something you haven't needed to be able to do until now. For a couple nice big canvas prints - assuming this is something you only will be doing occasionlly, I don't know that it's practical to get set up with all the computer power, software, calibrated monitor, printer profiles, etc., and then spend a year or two studying and learning how to use it all effectively. So, I'd go with the lab's suggested procedure, since they appear to be set up to handle your NEF files.