To start, I’m mostly just a hobbyist (I mean I have a website with a store but no traffic and I don’t really bother to advertise, but that’s not the topic for today), so I don’t print often and mostly share my photos online. I use my laptop, which like most devices has a pretty bright screen. I usually then double-check images on my phone screen, which is a little darker and shows colors a little differently so that I can have an idea of how my images look on two different screens.
But anyways, I’m planning to print a few calendars soon and recently got a stack of 4x6s printed off just for fun. I noticed that most of my images were darker in print than online. I’ve now read that this is common and makes sense, as the screens are backlit to be very bright. But I guess I’m wondering about the best way to “fix” images for print, and if there’s any good way to know that they’ll look right before actually printing. I know about calibrators, probably should get one, etc etc but honestly was hoping to print the calendars with a black Friday deal so I’m not going to have a calibrator before then.
Should I simply just up the exposure settings? Any tips on what’s a good amount? Do other settings need to be adjusted for print, too?
Also just wondering how other people manage this in general. I’d probably still prefer to edit for screens in the future, as that is primarily how I share my photos. So should I just keep two versions of photos that I want to print? Or adjust my whole editing style to be a bit brighter (which tbh I didn’t think it was very dark to begin with) in case I print something?
As I said, I don’t print often, so this is a new issue for me that I hadn’t thought much about before. I’d like to print more in the future and am just curious about others’ thoughts, editing processes, and any tips on not running into this issue next time.
First color calibrate your monitors get something like a Spider X color calibration unit. That will help ensure your colors are consistent and closer to print.
For bright/dark prints look at your histogram and do a few test prints either at home on cheap 4x6 photo paper or through a local/online vendor. I would also check what color space you are using for your JPEG files.
I exported a number of images in Adobe RBG once by mistake and my local print shops results were very dark. But when I had submitted the same photo with a different crop for an 8x10 print and used sRBG the brightness was exactly what I expected which led to some confusion at first. Since then I only export in sRBG and have never had an issue with my prints looking unexpectedly dark.
If you are looking to do larger prints I.E. 20x30 I would also suggest getting a test print at 8x10 done first. I found that images that looked great at 4x6/5x7 clearly started showing their flaws at 8x10 and it saved me a lot of money vs. throwing away a 20x30 print. It also helped me to spot issues in my images that I had been overlooking.