Expert: Glen Demers - 12/16/2009

Question
have a question about printing.  It seem that the dark areas/shadows render completely black when printed, so my images come out over the top contrasty and even muddy sometimes.  I use CS4 for all my post editing (except exposure) and use the LR2 print module with sRGB color space, 300 dpi, select matte paper and perceptual- exports as a JPEG.  For example the wrinkles and/or the shadows under peoples eyes look way too dark.  Also, I photograph newborns and the skin comes back muddy.  Any ideas on how to remedy?  Should I do a little more skin softening to get rid of that mottled look?  Plus the reds come back with a lot more black in them too.  I do calibrate my monitor with the huey pro.

Answer
Hi Emily,

First, I would look into calibrating your printer, most are set to produce bright colorful photos of your snapshots, out of the box and achieve this through saturating the inks. The blacks run heavy to produce good looking business documents. Check the documentation that came with your printer and printer software and see if you can make adjustments to the shadows/black inks.

A second alternative would be to convert your images to a less color intense profile in Photoshop. Try converting to Apple RGB or Colormatch RGB to tone down the color a bit in the shadows.

Hope this helps,
Glen Demers
Adobe Certified Expert, Photoshop 7
Prepress Technician, Best Printing Online
www.bestprintingonline.com

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