# How much to brighten for printing?



## rob211 (May 9, 2017)

I recently started doing some printing at Costco; I've been soft proofing using the Dry Creek profiles for my local shop. But stuff is turning out too dark, especially on the poster printer.

It's kind of hard to keep doing trial and error, so I'm hoping someone else has done this before and established a baseline or default to use.

And I'm also wondering if I could use my trusty laser printer as a guide. It's kind of unsharp and unsaturated, which tends to fool my eye. But what about if I turned them BW? would that work as a rough guide?

I've been working with displays exclusively for so long now that it's kinda odd adjusting back to printed stuff. Even my selection of photos to print was too skewed to darker images. I remember sort of having this same problem when I did a lot of slides and switched back to printing. aargh.


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## happycranker (May 9, 2017)

More than likely your monitor is too bright, do you use a colour calibrator for your setup? There are many resources for this subject of matching screen to print.


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## davidedric (May 9, 2017)

This seems to crop up from time to time.  Here's my pragmatic but heretical response.

The monitor brightness is obviously a major factor, but in my case I do not have a monitor  dedicated to photography.  The majority of use the my monitor gets, by myself and my wife, is for non-photographic use.  I can't be alone in this.  So I want a monitor (it is calibrated and profiled) and room that is set for general purpose use, and that includes, for example, being able to read a document next to the monitor.

Second, since a print is viewed by reflected, usually ambient, light, the amount of brightness it needs is to some extent dependent on where the print will be viewed: well lit on a wall, in a book, in a darker place, wherever.

So my pragmatic answer, for home printing, has been to do some trial and error.  In my case I find, in Print, that an added brightness of +30 and contrast +20 is a good general setting (obviously, everyone can have a different idea of what looks right).  For the record I am using Permajet Oyster (a pearl type of finish) with a custom profile.

Dave


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## rob211 (May 9, 2017)

Thanks. Yes, my monitor is adjusted for brightness and color corrected. But as Dave notes, reflected vs display makes a big difference IMHO even if the monitor is dim. And I've got a lot of variation in light where the prints hang. So I'll try those boosts and see.

A lot of this also has to do with the selection of images to print for a given display location. And even distance to print. I'm at least glad I'm starting out with a cheap printing service, cuz this is looking more and more like just a lot of trial and error. Thanks guys.


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## Tony Jay (May 9, 2017)

Rob, when you say that your monitor is adjusted for brightness and colour what exactly does that mean?
Even if your monitor is calibrated appropriately, ie it represents colour accurately, this alone will not solve your problem.
Simply put, your monitor luminance (the correct technical term) is set too high for the room environment in which you edit images.

It is crucially important to know that the factory settings (especially for luminance) on consumer-level monitors are adjusted to produce an uber bright and colourful display (this drives up sales no end) that is completely inappropriate for a print-orientated photographic workflow.
I would drop the luminance about 30-40 cd/m2 for a start. Each time one changes the monitor luminance a re-calibration is required to ensure colour accuracy.
Some consumer-grade monitors cannot be accurately adjusted to a luminance that is appropriate for a photographic editing workflow. Many monitors will lose colour accuracy when the luminance is dropped but newer generation flat-screen monitors are much less problematic.

I know that you are currently using Costco do to your actual printing but what are your ultimate goals here?
If your only goal is to do occasional prints that are small, my advice, going forward, will be different to an alternative goal of regular printing of large prints to a high standard.
Either way it would be helpful to know exactly what monitor model you are currently using and exactly how you are calibrating your monitor.

Tony Jay


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## rob211 (May 10, 2017)

I have tried numerous luminance settings, including those set with Xrite calibration but it doesn't solve the problem. A luminant screen is just not a reflective print, so unless you are perhaps in a perfect room, or even the room where the images are displayed, what you see on the screen isn't enough like what is hanging on the wall, at least in terms of brightness. If I had a matte screen it might help, but mine's very glossy. I'm on a different computer now, but I think my starting luminance was about 30-40.

The monitor is a 5k retina iMac. But I'm gonna switch to my second monitor, since it's got a flatter surface, and try turning it down. Or maybe my laptop in the actual room. These prints aren't that critical, and the room has horrid light, so I'm trying not to put too much into this, esp since I don't do very much printing.

In another forum some gave me tips on getting some reference images I could print at Costco and then use right next to the monitor and with my Colorchecker to give me a better reference. Seems like it would be pretty easy, so I'll be trying that too.

Thanks.


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## Tony Jay (May 10, 2017)

Hi Rob, if your monitor's luminance was set as low as 30-40 cd/m2 you would barely see anything at all on your monitor because it would be so dim.
As for the issue of comparing an image on a transmissive medium (a monitor) versus a reflective medium (a print) the prime problem there is the dynamic range of each respective medium. This refers to the difference between the darkest blacks to the lightest whites. Reflective media will have a dynamic range that is much less than any transmissve medium. However this problem is overcome by using ICC printer/paper profiles when soft-proofing.
The bottom line is that it is possible to get images to a point where the print does, to all intents and purposes, match the projected image on the monitor.
In truth your commentary is betraying a lot of knowledge gaps about colour management and soft-proofing - without this knowledge one will simply not be able to print images to a consistent degree of quality.
My earnest recommendation is a formal introduction to these topics - Jeff Schewe's two books "The Digital Image" and "The Digital Print" would be my current recommendation if you like a book-based approach or if you are a multimedia type then the video tutorial series "Camera to Print and Screen" available from the Luminous Landscape website would be my other recommendation.

Tony Jay


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## rob211 (May 11, 2017)

Thanks. Actually I should know most of this,...or did, having printed in the darkroom myself and through services. It's coming back gradually (I did more with spot than process). But I solved my immediate problem by switching monitors, using a computer generated colorchecker with the Costco printing profiles and a recalibration.

But my immediate problem isn't solving my big problem, which is that the images just aren't meant for print, no matter how correct they are. Even the aspect ratio and framing and matte options are irking me, since I'm having to either re-crop or custom matte. But thanks for the help.


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