Are you making use of the color management profiles for your devices?

There's a company in Melbourne who offer a full scanner to printer calibration service at various price points. I think if you want seriously accurate color reproduction this is what you need to do.

http://www.ausmedia.com.au/

Of course if you're emailing files for someone else to view / print then all bets are off. Reputable print shops should know exactly what to do with color wedges etc.

Bob.

The classic way to photograph paintings is:
1. Light sources on either side at a 35 degree angle to the far edge of the painting.
2. Polaroid filters on the lights
3. Polaroid filter on the camera
4. Bracket exposures, adjust the polarizer to get tooth or texture in the painting if desired. ( Does she use a palette knife?)

Ralph

what a wonderful bunch you all are, many thanks.......

musicvid:

1) I can't speak for your printer, however you say it is working well for other stuff.
the original was jpg from cropped raw, the other two scanned canon 5600...

td

Are you making use of the color management profiles for your devices?
as above, i'm rather at a loss where to begin with this whole area. i intend to start doing some homework right now!

bob

hi there, will check them out. we usually use vision graphics for all our serious work, eg, trannie prints, etc., unfortunately a number of galleries are now asking for hardcopy to back up digital so they have some idea where the colours should fall!!!!

ralph

thanks for that - yes i use a pol on camera, though not on lights (i ordered some gel about 8 months ago and am still waiting).

lighting set up is fine (all our trannies / photo's) turn out fine. fourtunately my wifes paints are physically very, very flat....

if anyone want's to see more of her work (and in so doing, the problems i'm faced with!) she's at http:\\www.hannakay.com

again, thank you all for giving me some meat to chew on - i only hope it doesn't give me indigestion!!!

leslie

Leslie,

Not sure if you are shooting as jpeg or raw , but there is a good explanation here as to why raw would be better, even though Nikon cameras use a slightly lossy compression algorithm when saving raw files.

John

Speaking as a former inkjet printer designer...

Consumer level inkjet printers mostly will ignore ICC profiles even if you create them and properly use them. Not all, but most.

They will auto correct skin tones, sharpen, and increase saturation and "vividness". Consumer photo printer customers do not want accurate color, they want pleasing color so these printers try to give it to them. Accurate color actually looks somewhat dull and lifeless as that is how the real world is but your memory of it is not. The customer is not happy with accurate color and will buy the competing product which does punch it up.

Newer models will also do a bunch of other photo processing to try and improve the customer's perception of the output.

Deep in the driver setup you may be able to turn most of this stuff off. It varies greatly with which printer you have. ICC profiles will likely still be ignored.

The best results will be if you set everything in the workflow that you can to use the sRGB color space as this is the best most consumer printers can do and the designers expected it to be used that way. You will also get the best screen to print matching you can get without spending days running experiments (and documenting them carefully so you can reproduce it). Don't expect a high level of screen to print matching. You may get it sometimes but not consistently depending on the colors in your print.

If accurate color (within the limits of the gamut of the printer) is required, you must get a printer intended for it. I personally have an hp B9180 which is a B/A3 sized prosumer printer that comes with ICC profiles for a lot of hp media and hp has profiles for a lot of 3rd party art media that you can download. My testing (with a calibrated screen) is that I cannot tell the difference between a ITG target on screen and printed - the matching was that good. Using a good light source (~D65).

Rocky

Accurate color actually looks dull and lifeless? Not by my eyes.
JJK

Seems like we've ferreted out three main areas to look at here. There are others but let's focus (pun intended) on the biggies:

1) The levels in your D70 images. Open them in PS, and adjust the levels so they just include the image data. You will see near-flatlines to the right and left if your image was properly exposed. Set your in-out points to where they just begin to take off. Don't touch the gamma yet. Wait until you've seen a print. Then you can back off a bit on the levels if you need to. Screen-to-print gamma matching is one of the trickiest things to do, and even with custom profiles often has to be done individually. Once that's done, tweak the color balance ever so slightly. Nikons tend a bit to the cold side in my observations.

Probably successfully completing step 1) will take care of 90% of your problem in my experience.

2) Indeed learn about creating ICC profiles. The best place to start is in Photoshop and with any of several excellent tutorials. When adjusting Adobe Gamma, do so in a room lit with average, consistent lighting, not in the dark, and with no screen reflections. Then use a chart (I've used Macbeth Color Checker for forty years) to match your screen to printer as closely as possible. If your printer does not accept custom profiles, and you are stuck with sRGB (which is perfectly good for noncritical consumer work), then look at the reviews and recommendations and get a new printer that will give you better reproduction.

3) Lighting the originals correctly is essential, as is correct white balance. I didn't see what kind of lights you are using, but don't skimp here. Again, refer to the advice offered above.


ADDENDUM: Now that I've seen more of her wonderful paintings (and the error of my lame attempt at classifying them), I can say that I am glad that it is a labor of love, because there is going to be a lot of labor involved. Those very subtle tonal variations inside a confined range are the very hardest to reproduce from a technical standpoint, and as I mentioned previously, will come down to a choice between compromises. Creating the best choices possible will become the goal of your learning curve.

Yes, accurate color is dull compared to how you remember the scene. Take a photo outside, run inside and process it the way you normally do and print it the way you like and run outside and compare it to reality. You will be surprised. We always remember things with more vivid color than they really have.

Rocky

"i have a ip4200 canon (used for cd /dvd's as well), which prints great happy snaps - fresh, vibrant and good colour rendition.
unfortunately, it doesn't do anywhere near as good when it comes to printing my wife's paintings - which are very tonal and subtle painted.
a. if i print from viewer / file i get very dark images
b. through ps i get pretty much the right colours, but a very 'brittle' looking print."
---

FWIW, realizing that what I'm going to say might not be popular... millions & millions of folks happily print their photos without ever bothering with anything outside the bundled app that came with their (more often than not) budget camera & printer -- we photogs on the other hand really dig in & quite frankly enjoy something akin to a masochistic experience over-thinking & over-working what's really normally a fairly simple & straightforward task. If it wasn't, they'd never sell all those millions & millions of cameras, printers, & ink cartridges. So, in case it helps, Leslie...

1) Step one is your monitor, because above all you need to be able to see what the image file really looks like.If you're using an LCD type, chances are it's off (the nature of the beasts), but, you don't want to go nuts setting up color matching profiles in your software (like P/Shop) because that will more often throw everything off. If you're doing commercial printing & need an exact color match to an ink that's one thing, but with your setup it usually causes more harm than good -- many (most?) printers are tuned to most users, & out & out recommend leaving the ICM matching off in favor of their default set-up, which auto compensates for how the printer works. Find/use software that lets you set up a LUT curve for your particular monitor in repeatable lighting conditions. Then you're set whether doing stills or video or whatever in any software you run.

2) Run a few tests to get to know your printer. Now that your monitor's set up, you can of course use color matching gear or whatever, but I prefer a good eye. It's the difference between a lifeless dummy/manikin, that matches a person perfectly, but still looks dead. It's especially important with artwork like paintings, because the art of printing is a bit like acting -- you have to very subtly oversell. Now your printer may be a large hunk of mostly plastic, but it's life blood is the ink, & the paper, it's canvas. If an ink is off, consider replacing it -- not as much available with color as there is with blacks & grays, but if the factory formula is off [which according to reviews your Canon may be], might be worth a shot seeing what's available for refilling. And run through a sample pack or two of different papers -- not the local Staples, but papers for art prints. When the ink hits the paper's fibers (think microscopic shag carpet with photo types), all sorts of physics & chemistry interplay.

3) Play with your image in P/Shop or whatever. In theory you might not have to, but as above you want to subtly oversell, & now that you know your printer, ink, & paper, you can compensate more where you want to give it a boost... the perceptions of those viewing the prints are MUCH more important than absolute, technically perfect accuracy -- that is after all the reason for painting as opposed to photography in the 1st place. Perception is what you want to be accurate, to reflect the real painting from what you've posted, Leslie -- & your problem is your prints reflecting the reality as your printer sees it.

Very generally, not having the original file to look at, most images have some unavoidable noise & pixelation that just isn't there in real life -- accounting for it is perhaps the single most important step you'll take in making your prints less mechanical. 2nd I'd say is probably enhancing, emphasizing tonal ranges, while 3rd is adding a boost where your printer is weakest. 4th, with everything else done, is adding some *life* -- exaggerating just a tiny bit to make the sale.

While P/Shop has it's built-in noise filtering, check out the GREYCstoration work, now a plugin for Gimp (I keep a portable copy of The Gimp on-hand just for this filter). The ASF filter can work well, & there are a few well regarded alternatives. If nothing else, try Robert Mizerek's method of hefty Gaussian blur (up to 10%) on a duplicate layer combined using Color. For enhancing overall, I like P/Shop's Shadows/Highlights advanced, but there're more tuts & tips out there for P/Shop than I could ever read, let alone note, so I'll stop now. ;-)

Producing earth tones, like the examples you posted, Are harder -- you can get lifeless mud mixing the colors needed (which is what happens with many inks on photo paper -- the wet inks actually flow together). If after all of the above you're still having problems, or as a quick shortcut to try if you prefer, there is printing software.

Well, I saw I had missed the link to the dng file, & I needed to check whether Gimp portable worked in 7 64, as well as needing to get some ink thru the heads on the Canon MP170 my wife uses. Without any idea what the original Painting (not image) looked like -- please forgive if I blasphemed it's original spirit or intent -- I gave it a *very* quick shot... it's taken much longer to write this than I spent on the image.

As proof of concept, took the dng posted, got a look in CS4, saved as tif, opened in The Gimp portable version... There opened & created 2 duplicate layers. Using the GrayCstoration plugin, G'MIC for Gimp, used Anisotrpic smoothing on 1, & duplicated that layer for a total = 3. I used Inverse Diffusion on the top layer 3, combined it with the 2nd, using Grain merge, then set the layer mode to soft light with ~33% opacity, flattening & saving the image.

Back in CS4, opened the highlight dialog I'd mentioned, put shadows to 0, upped the midrange ~6, & lowered contrast slightly. By now Levels were pretty good, so just slightly dropped top end for red & blue, adding a slight bit of warmth. Reduced the size by ~50% @ 300 ppi, saved for web as jpg on an USB stick & gave the 4 color printer a whirl, using plain paper & std auto settings. For such quick, minimal work the result was pretty close. It's lower end was a bit darker, but that could be monitor -- without LEDs real black is rare. At any rate, a minor adjustment assuming I knew what it was supposed to look like. :-)

Figure the Canon might be a better test, because besides needing to get ink through it, it uses Canon 4 color ink -- otherwise it's a cheap reman we paid ~$20 for 'cause it was cheaper than the ink that came with it [currently have 4 I got that way -- 2 on desks & 2 still in the boxes]. So anyway totally FWIW... The monitors are calibrated, but didn't use any ICM other than whatever defaults in the Canon MP170 drivers -- just std RGB in Gimp & P/Shop on this rig, Corelwith ICM off on the one with the Canon.

first, let me thank you all for your time and advice, it was most welcome, though rather more 'serious' than i hoped for (i'd wished for a, oh yeah, press this, then that and voila!).

at the moment i've got a rather large project on and in between searching for illustrations of a spine, seriously diving into protitle for the first time (not waving, drowning), catching up on students work, i'm having a hard time devoting enough energy into sorting this print mess out. as i wrote earlier, we've come close to divorce over this, so to temper the whole thing, we've decided to send off the pic to our local grahics house, who know hanna's work, and her intolerance (NEVER marry an artist!).

meanwhile, musicvid and mpm, thanks very much for all your suggestions, and mpm, especially your test run with the file. i'm going to sit down and literally work my way through your steps and see what i come up with......

i've learnt a lot from all of you, unfortunately, i'm of an age where i make a lousy student (i want to know it all NOW! think judy collins and marat sade - we want a revolution, and we want it....). it's obviously going to be a much steeper learning curve than i expected.....

again, thanks

leslie

"i'm of an age where i make a lousy student (i want to know it all NOW! think judy collins and marat sade - we want a revolution, and we want it....). it's obviously going to be a much steeper learning curve than i expected....."

No prob -- just play more -- think less. ;?P
Then when you need what experience offers, you've got it. It also keeps you younger.

"in between searching for illustrations of a spine"

I thought there was one rather large on-line database for you edu types.

"seriously diving into protitle for the first time"

Not to overload, definitely, but if something seems too hard, or the process illogical, spend a few minutes & look at what's available outside the traditional vid communities.

An example of sorts -- My brain doesn't work the way it needs to for serious 3D work. Not an uncommon prob for video-centric folk, a bunch of solutions were developed to shield editors & FX people from the likes of Lightwave & 3DS etc. Over the years they've grown in capability, but, they've also grown enough in complexity that they've lost whatever edge they had in usability.

In a nutshell, just because it's there, & just because it's popular, doesn't make something automatically the best solution or tool.