My workflow with DigitalSilverImaging.com which is nothing new – I’m sure they have this on their site – but I’ll add a few details they might not get into.
THIS IS FOR LUSTRE PRINTS THROUGH ROES
The same workflow is used for black and white as well as color prints.
Make sure image files are at least 240 DPI. 300 DPI is better.
They should ALL HAVE THE ADOBE COLOR 1998 PROFILE ATTACHED and all be in ADOBE RGB (yes, especially the black and white images).
Epson printers use all eight or nine cartridges to make a very rich b&w image. Do not send up greyscale images.
Sharpening is one of the tricky things with all uploads. The trick is that you want to always upload the exact size for the print, and have them sharpened for that size.
I have a different size file for each sized print. When I am printing an 8 x 12 inch print, I upload an 8 x 12 300 DPI file that has been sharpened as the last step. In other words, you don’t want to sharpen a giant file and then have it down sampled by the printer driver. You may cause artifacts and frankly – it just makes sense to give the exact file you want printed.
Here’s how I do the workflow. I have a large 16 bit file in Adobe Color 98 as a tiff or a Photoshop file. When someone orders a print, if I don’t have it in the correct size as a jpg, I change the size of the original TIFF FILE (without saving it), change it to 8 BIT without saving it, and then sharpen the file if necessary, and then save it as a HIGH LEVEL JPG AT THE NEW SIZE.
That’s how I’d go from say a 16 x 24 TIFF to an 8 x 12 JPG.
I save them at level 12 JPGS and make sure they have the Adobe Color 98 profile attached. You can get by with saving them at level 10 if you have a slow upload – but I simply don’t take any chances.
As a general rule, for b&w, if you have NIK Silver Efex – it’s best to run the original TIF through that first.
For color, you’d use your normal workflow on the original color TIF.
I’ve used a lot of ROES UPLOAD systems, and the only thing I’ve noticed that’s different is whether the file should be in sRGB or Adobe RGB. Adobe RGB is a wider gamut – but basically you want to use whatever profile they recommend.
DSI (is currently using Ilford Smooth Pearl) for their Lustre choice. If you happen to be have an Epson that uses K3 inks at home – you can do a proof before you send up a new image. And ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL is that you use a monitor that’s been calibrated.
I think that’s about it. The prints I get back are exactly the same as prints that I do on my Epson 7800.
I have the prints from DSI sent to me so that I can sign them, approve them, and add Certificates of Authenticity for each print. It’s a good system. When you have things worked out – you can often re-use the DSI packaging. And they do a fantastic job packaging. Best I’ve run into yet.
Got the same four photos today that were done on the lustre paper.
They have a little more snap. Also like the feel and look of the paper.
I will use them when I want exhibition quality prints.
Will try some color soon.
I will also look at the workflow that you posted.
Dave, it is so great to see that you are starting to take off. And that finally, you are able to free yourself from the yoke of print production and fulfillment. THAT didn’t take too long! : )
I’m about to go down the path of print file preparation myself and I think my biggest problem is going to be monitor calibration, WYSIWYG from my monitor to print output. If I wan’t at my printer watching the first proofs come off his Epson and making adjustments on the fly, my first order would have been crap.
Can I upgrade my crummy PC monitor (low end Samsung) to a calibrated one with software. If so what would you suggest or, how would you approach this challenge in general?
Thanks Dave, Bob
Hi Bob,
Yeah, it only took me about 12 years to figure out how the pieces of the puzzle went together :) It takes a very stubborn obstinate personality to go through what I’ve gone through since 1999.
But okay – things are good.
Your question is an interesting one since I can’t tell you much about monitors. I was on a PC for years and now I’m on a Mac but I always had pretty good monitors. At any rate, think of it as two closed circles. One circle is your printer and your monitor. I’ve been using a Gretagmacbeth Eye-One for years. I don’t even know if they are made anymore. It’s a funny thing. I never had much of a problem syncing my printer output with screen output.
Yes, calibration is important. But just as important is really understanding profiles and to some extent what gamuts each device is capable and after a while sort of forgetting all that. What I mean is that once it’s set up so that your screen and print are close (I think color is much more difficult than b&w) you should be set.
And then hopefully, if your files are being prepared the same way, and you do some tests with the same paper that your outsourcer is using – and you both use the same profile – then in theory you should get a match. Of course, this is in theory since there are a lot of variations in terms of how you’ve set up your print drivers. At any rate – my results from DigitalSilverImaging.com (as I’ve mentioned) are identical to my own prints (so long as we’re using the same paper of course).
Write more about your settings etc. if you like. Are you doing color? B&W? Are you using the Advanced B&W Driver? What profile do you use in your workspace… blah blah blah… But with all that being said – I don’t see why you’d have a problem calibrating a monitor, even a cheap one. The PC has a driver which is used to control the monitor, and your hardware calibration, the thing is stuck to your screen, reads it and can control the driver, in face create a new one for use with that monitor. Once that’s done, and the monitor is calibrated via the hardware (you stick to the screen) while it does its thing – then if print driver settings are correct etc… you should be getting a close match.
Never the same as the gamut isn’t the same, and obviously the screen emits light and the paper reflects light (hopefully). But you’ll have to start with monitor calibration.
If you go to my site you’ll get an idea of the b&w I do. Since I’m just getting started in outsourced print, maybe even DSI (thanks for that) I don’t have a color space. My main files are unsharpened 16bit tifs in sRGB because that’s all I know now but willing to adjust to a better way. I’ll be doing some color too but the first thing is b&w. So if I calibrate my monitor I still don’t know what the output of a given print vendor is, correct? How do you coordinate with them to know what their output is going to be? I guess the whole idea is not to do endless test prints (some, yes, but the goal should be to ‘zero’ it in so my printed highlights and shadows of the reflective print medium magically match the backlit highlights and shadows of my monitor. Same for color later on.
Thanks Dave, Bob
I don’t know if this can be explained in comments but by color space I mean – for example aren’t you viewing your images in some program, such as Photoshop? Photoshop has a working view, which in my case is RGB ADOBE.
There’s no reason to save files as sRGBs since that is a smaller color gamut than Adobe RGB. So first of all if you are going to use DSI, you’ll see that they want their stuff uploaded in RGB.
Other companies will want sRGB.
If you calibrate your monitor, and they are using the same printer and paper as you, and the same setup — then it makes sense that they would get the same results as you.
It’s as if you took your PC and Printer and moved it to another state. You will get the same results.
But, that is only true if a) you are both calibrated about the same and b) the closer they get to your own workflow the better.
But read through the post I wrote recently about sharpening.
I would always save files as RGB not sRGB because you can always go from one to the other, i.e. from a larger gamut such as RGB to a smaller one such as sRGB, but not the other way around.
It may be time to recommend a good book on digital processing.