Export to JPEG & minilab printing

[marktyler]

I'm having trouble with exporting to jpeg and colour spaces. I was advised to use (and have seen posts confirming the use of) the sRGB colour space when printing at a minilab - the one in question being a Fuji Frontier 57'.
This gave me a great deal of posterisation in the sky of my photos so I took one shot from an EOS 2'D and one from a G9 (both RAW) and exported them to jpeg using sRGB, AdobeRGB, and ProPhotoRGB for comparison.

• sRGB - posterised sky, horrible. Punchy, but horrible.
• AdobeRGB - no posterisation but slightly lacking in punchiness.
• ProPhotoRGB - colour shifted in parts during the print process.

This would indicate that AdobeRGB is the space to use yet everything I've read says use sRGB for minilabs. As no shots were overprocessed what's going wrong? Is there a difference between the export to jpeg and print to jpeg that may get around this (relative/perceptual etc) or is this a fact of sRGB and the gearing of minilabs to point-click cameras?

Thanks.

 

[Denis Pagé]

I'm having trouble with exporting to jpeg and colour spaces. I was advised to use (and have seen posts confirming the use of) the sRGB colour space when printing at a minilab - the one in question being a Fuji Frontier 57'.
This gave me a great deal of posterisation in the sky of my photos so I took one shot from an EOS 2'D and one from a G9 (both RAW) and exported them to jpeg using sRGB, AdobeRGB, and ProPhotoRGB for comparison.

• sRGB - posterised sky, horrible. Punchy, but horrible.
• AdobeRGB - no posterisation but slightly lacking in punchiness.
• ProPhotoRGB - colour shifted in parts during the print process.

This would indicate that AdobeRGB is the space to use yet everything I've read says use sRGB for minilabs. As no shots were overprocessed what's going wrong? Is there a difference between the export to jpeg and print to jpeg that may get around this (relative/perceptual etc) or is this a fact of sRGB and the gearing of minilabs to point-click cameras?

Thanks.

Welcome to the forums Mark!

When I joined this forum in november 2''7, I came in with this same exact question! So, read this thread and I hope you will find your answer there. In short, it was a question on enabling or not the "Minimize Embedded Metadata" checkbox!

 

[marktyler]

Welcome to the forums Mark!

When I joined this forum in november 2''7, I came in with this same exact question! So, read this thread and I hope you will find your answer there. In short, it was a question on enabling or not the "Minimize Embedded Metadata" checkbox!

Interesting in that I did the following test: 2 different shots which gave posterisation exported using adobe RGB and sRGB and the methods: with metadata, minimise metadata, and print to jpeg(perceptual).

The results were that for either colour space the minimise metadata and print to jpeg (perceptual) shots looked essentially the same. The ones with metadata looked much worse with obvious posterisation. AdobeRGB shots were less punchy with slight colour translation from blue to mauve/purple in certain areas.

This seems problematic to me in that there must be differences in the setup of the minilabs that cause this problem with each of us getting good results with opposite metadata settings. Perhaps the print to jpeg(perceptual) option is best, but I'm not sure if it is any good for bulk output.

 

[Kiwigeoff]

Perhaps the print to jpeg(perceptual) option is best, but I'm not sure if it is any good for bulk output.

This seems to work fine for me but have not used too much.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

This seems problematic to me in that there must be differences in the setup of the minilabs that cause this problem with each of us getting good results with opposite metadata settings.

Yeah, each minilab is different, even though they shouldn't be. Many are run by people who only know 'press this button to make it work' and have no idea about how to get good results out of them. That's the difference between minilabs and pro labs, even when they're using the same machines. It's just a case of figuring out the settings that get the results you want. Also double check that they're not auto-correcting your nicely corrected files, as that's been the cause of inconsistency on many occasions in the past.