Encouragement please!

[brandeeg123]

Hi! Here's my problem. I am very new to digital scrapping but I have been a traditional scrapper for many years! I absolutely treasure my albums and I love to show them off. My husband bought me a new laptop and PSE4 and I have been scrapping away! I love digital scrapbooking. Here's the problem. I just got my pages printed back from Shiny Nickels and I am not really satisfied. Although they do a fine job, it just doesn't look as close to my traditional pages as I had hoped. The pictures look really dark. What do I do? I have sent some to whcc and I am hoping they look better but I have heard that those look rather dark too. My pages are 12x12 and I would love to be able to print 12x12 but I am willing to go to 8x8 if the quality would be better. I sent some test prints in 8x10 to walmart and they looked great. So..long story short....how do I downsize my 300ppi at 12x12 down to 8x8 and then how do I upload 8x8 into an 8x10 without the comany distorting it? Also, if anyone has another suggestion for me, I am open to suggestions! I want to continue to scrap digitally but I just have to find a way to get the print quality up to my expectations so that I can show off my pages! :) Thanks so much!

[jtaubman]

I have found you can happily send 12x12 layouts for printing 8x8 with out adjusting them at all.

The trick for avoiding cropping is to make sure the images are the correct shape so make sure you resize the canvas for your 12x12's to 12x15 leaving a white space on one edge. (Some people put a bookmark or similar in the space.

You also need to ensure you leave a little "bleed" space around your layout so that any misalignment is not critical, I always avoid putting important elements, journaling etc with in 1/4" of the edge of the canvas.

When sending for printing make sure the company does not "adjust" images. If they do not and your prints look dark then you might need to adjust your monitor calibration. I find my LCD screens are brighter than the images look on my husbands PC and its easy to adjust the brightness on the layouts before printing if need be.

[brandeeg123]

Okay...thanks Jane! It sounds like you are heading me in the right direction to solving my problem. Could you give me a little more information on "making sure the company does not adjust my images?" Do I need to contact them or are there specific places that you know of that does not adjust them? Also, can you explain the monitor calibration thing to me? It sounds like you may have really put your finger on my problem and I don't know how to fix it. To put it plain and simple, you're right, my pages look much brighter on the screen. How do I fix it so that either a printing company prints what I see or fix it so that I see on my montior what they are going to print? Does that make sense? I really would much rather stay with 12x12 so I am hoping you can help me make this work out. Thank you so much. You have already been a great help.

[jtaubman]

I am not sure I can suggest printers, as I live in the UK and I suspect you are in the US. I am sure WHCC don't adjust images.

If you search for Monitor calibration here on this site there are several threads on it already. It's a bit too much for me to do tonight as I have a crowd coming tomorrow.

If you can find a company which does not adjust the simplest way to calibrate is to once you get your print back adjust your monitor to match the print. There are soft/hard ware packages which allow you to do this, but if you are using a laptop where the screen looks brighter / darker when you look at from different angles it can be tricky. Also it can depend on ambient light, so your layouts look lighter if you work in a dark room, than they in daylight.

One thing I find can help with photos at least is to check the histogram on the levels to make sure there are pure whites and blacks on the image and to adjust the points if there are not.

There is a DSP PSE course starting in January you might like to consider, I am probably doing it to learn to do things properly, although the syllabus does not mention printing, I am guessing the tutor has met these problems before.

[Emma]

I got some prints back from shinynickels and they are also quite dark and slightly pixelated. The key is developing a relationship with your printer. Just call the place you'd like to use and discuss color management solutions and find out exactly what they need to provide you with the product you expect.

If you want to send out an 8x10, open your 12x12 and go to Image>Resize and leave the resolution high and change the dimesions to 8x8. Then Image>Resize>Canvas and change the width to 10". But call the place first and find out what they need, because many can take your order with no need for resizing first.

For adjusting, many labs have automatic color and contrast corrections, which you have already managed in your software. You do not need their auto services, but you always have to ask that be turned off. If the prints don't look good, you don't have to buy them! Especially if you use a local printer, just say reprint these according to your specificiations and shop for another hour while they run them.

Costco has the cheapest photo prints, shinynickels uses a digital laser copy machine, and Sam's Club is the next cheapest for photos. Kinko's has laser copies for a good price, but I don't know how those look. Whcc is the cheapest online after Costco. You can either upload and pick them up, or have them mailed, or take them in while shopping.

Once you try out some different places, communicate, figure out what you need to ask for, and you'll be a printing maniac!

[brandeeg123]

Thank you both very much! I have already enrolled in the PSE class for January and I am looking forward to it very much. I guess I will wait until after the holidays to contact the printers and see what can be done to lighten up my layouts. In short, my understanding of the info that you have given me is that it can be fixed! I will either fix it with the printer or fix it so that my layout is lighter before I send it to the printer. Thanks for your help!

[Karen Bowers]

i'm wondering if part of the problem is creating at 300dpi. that may be more ink than the printing machine is designed for. you could ask what dpi is best for submitting your artwork. it may be 200 or even less to end up with the right look.

[premier]

Every printer has different ICC profiles. Even without a company using any form of automatic color adjustments, your prints will looks different on different printers. The problem with using commercial places to do your printing is that you don't know their ICC profiles and how they will affect your prints. Some places will provide you with their ICC profiles so you can test out their printing profiles and make necessary adjustments to your LOs.

Even if you have two different printers at home, each will print differently. You have to know how the intended printer prints...how it interrupts color and how it reproduces it. That is why I prefer printing with my own printers as you learn any differences between your LO on the screen and when printed and can adjust accordingly.

It appears that Shiny Nickels printers print darker so the solution would be to make your LO lighter so that when printed there, the lightness/darkness will be right.

It has nothing to do with LO size or the resolution of your LOs. The only time resolution comes into play is if you use low resolution photos, etc...they will appear pixelated as they are to low in resolution for the intended size you want printed.

If you use commercial places for printing, do a test print. Print only one and see what the differences are from your LO on your computer monitor and the actual print and adjust your LO accordingly.

Monitors should be calibrated...however they are suppose to be calibrated along with your printer so that the two are displaying colors in the same manner.

[Lauren]

The photo processing store I used to use in NewZealand provided a calibration chart so you could adjust your monitor to suit their print processors . This was great if you only used their processor and it worked very well for me - ( It was an "eyeball" thing - you just matched up the colours and contrast on your monitor with the chart they sent you ) - Im sure photo processors in the US would provide the same thing on request.
For a while I used a local company that did laser printing and I wasnt that inspired by the results - the depth was lackign and the whole layout looked flatter than those printed by the photo processor or by inkjet.
I now print my own using my Canon ip3000 which is pretty much a budget printer that provides me with excellent results at a reasonable cost- Ive calibrated my monitor to suit that printer