Hi All, well I've just had my early Christmas, I got a heap of my photos printed some up to 12x18 inches. There is nothing like a good print in the hand, I'm hooked now!! Now to buy some frames!!

They were done by a professional printer that comes highly recommended around the traps, I won't name them at this point. I will contact them about my issue but they have just closed for the Christmas break, so I thought I'd bounce it out here first for some ideas.

This was somewhat of a test as I had many different styles of print done to see the various results. Unwrapping the prints, I was very happy with them for the most part, but on closer inspection I'm not happy with the colour reproduction. But all of them have a slight colour cast about them when compared to my monitor. They all appear slightly warm like the white balance is off, the whites are not white and the greens show an apparent change in hue/temperature that is quite noticeable. In brightness terms they are pretty much as I expected, not quite as bright as the monitor, but generally very good.

My workflow and tech specs:
  • Dell Ultrasharp U2711 IPS Monitor
  • Monitor calibrated to sRGB with Spyder3 Elite (long story in another thread about why I don't use aRGB)
  • Target brightness 120, White point the recommended 6500K, Gamma 2.2 (I check my calibration regularly and did again tonight and it was perfect)
  • Photos processed in Lightroom 3.5 and exported as sRGB
  • Files sent to printer via their desktop ordering software
  • Printer specifies files are to be sRGB
Could it be that 6500K isn't the right temperature to have my monitor calibrated to? Could it be the printer isn't quite on the money? Could it be something else about profiling over my head??! I'd love to hear your suggestions.


PS I tried to take a photo of the print next to the monitor to demonstrate, but my camera won't take a photo of my screen for some reason, it just comes out dark, something technical going wrong there.