Help! My photography prints don't look like what I see in Photoshop
Alaina recently asked for help with a technical challenge that has hurt her confidence to go pro:
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When I edit in Photoshop CC, I save my RAW images as JPEG. When I went to print images from a print shop, the color looked terrible... I have been having to convert every photo’s profile from Pro Photo to SRGB before saving it, and every edit I make to the photo after saving it, I have to do the conversion all over again. It’s affecting my confidence moving forward into a business. I've asked many people about this, and found no one who knows what I’m talking about.
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Ahh, color calibration - one of the more technical and frustrating of challenges we professional photographers face, as we try to get the prints we deliver to our clients to look like what we showed them on the laptop or tablet.
Early in my career, I shot sports photos for the Bandera Bulletin newspaper. The school colors were blue and white, but what looked right on my monitor came out orange and just nasty in print. It took me YEARS to upgrade my monitor and get it calibrated so that what I saw on my screen was close to what came out of my printer.
This can get complicated.
But let’s keep it simple, by working backwards from the end.
There are three ‘filters’ that can affect how your images look on the screen versus in print or on other devices:
- Your Printer’s color profile.
- Your monitor, video card, and computer’s color profiles.
- Your monitor’s calibration.
Do your prints come out looking like the images on your monitor?
Do your images on other devices (laptops, tablets, smartphones) look the same as the images on your monitor?
If the answer is NO to both these questions, it’s a safe bet the problem is either:
- Your monitor isn’t color calibrated, and what you see visually are not the ‘true colors’ you’re working with when editing. What you see is not what you’re going to get; or
- Your color profile settings have been changed to some obscure setup that looks good on your monitor, but not to anyone else who isn’t viewing the images in that same color space.
If your images look good on your monitor and on other devices, but your prints aren’t coming out right, the problem may be that your Printer needs you to export your files into their custom color profile.
To fix that problem:
- Go to your Printer’s web site and seek out their custom color profile. If you can’t find one, ask them for it. If they don’t have one, they’re probably not a very good printer. Tell them the problem you’re having: your images look consistent across digital devices, but the prints are coming out [warm, cool, color-shifted, etc.].
- If they do offer a color profile, download and install it into Photoshop per their instructions. Export some test photos using the new profile, and send them off for test prints. When you get them back, see if this fixed the problem. Consider grabbing a color chart online and having this printed as well - if the chart comes back perfect but your photos don’t, the problem may still lie on your end. If the chart and prints both come back off-color, send this info to your printer and ask for their guidance.
If your images only look right on your monitor and nowhere else - not in print, not on other digital devices - your monitor is probably not showing you true colors.
If your monitor, video card, and/or Photoshop are set to a color space other than good old SRGB, change it back. I know... I know what you read about Adobe RGB and Pro Photo and other fancy color spaces...gamuts and raw data and such. Let it go. If your prints look like dookie, none of that other stuff matters.
Reset everything back to SRGB? Very good. Process some test photos (and a color chart), look at them on other devices, and see if you’re getting consistent results.
[Due to the prevalence of Apple products among consumers, you may as well use someone’s iPhone or iPad as your standard against which to measure your calibration results. If your photos don’t look right on those devices, they won’t look right on most devices used by your potential clients.]
Still look wrong?
Odds are good your monitor isn’t calibrated - it isn’t showing true colors. Monitors can display warm or cool, color shifted, too bright, too dark, highlights too light or dark, shadows too light or dark, compared to ‘true.’]
If this is the case, you’ve got three options:
- Expensive: Buy a new monitor well-reviewed for its trueness of color.
- Less Expensive: Buy a monitor color calibration tool like a Spyder, with the caveat that if your monitor is too old or worn out or cheap to display true colors, no tool can fix that (although it may get you closer to true).
- Cheap: Eyeball it. Manually adjust your monitor settings (color temperature, brightness, contrast) until what you’re seeing on other devices is what you see on your monitor. Edit and export some test images and see if you’re getting closer to true. Repeat until you’re as close as you can get without a calibration tool.
What’s your favorite process to get consistent results across print and digital mediums? Share in the comments below, or drop me an e-mail at james@banderaoutlaw.com.
Of Dungeons and Dragons and Professional Photography
Don’t worry.
Whatever you’re doing right now to make better art and be a better professional, even if it feels like you're spinning your wheels, is forward momentum.
Steve Arensberg and I were talking recently about that hard, frustrating, slow “grind work” when you’re slogging through a motivational dip, and compared it to “killing rats for experience points in Dungeons and Dragons.”
Keep that in mind when you’re clumsily playing with Manual settings, practicing depth of field work, and photographing your kid/friend/cat for the 316th time.
You’re killing rats for experience points.
It all adds up.
What's the biggest challenge holding you back today? E-mail me and let me know.
- James Michael
Winning as a pro photographer looks like Work + Busyness + Farming
Here’s how to win:
* Do great work
* Stay busy
* Harvest social capital
* Deploy social capital
Some clarity:
Do Great Work
Early on, this is going to look like 20% art and 80% how you treat people (or, for most, 5% art and 95% how you treat people).
(I know your immediate reaction is to ask me if your art is ‘good enough,’ and if that's what's holding you back right now, please e-mail me and let's talk about it. I can tell you for a dozen different reasons that if you’re reading these words, the answer is yes: your art is good enough.)
Stay Busy
Be shooting as often as you can with any mix of clients: free or paid.
Every client you work is the catalyst to let you…
Harvest Social Capital
Farming is not a passive employ. To reap the social capital you’re earning, you have to work for it; you have to ask for it.
1. Don’t wait for a client to decide to write you a testimonial out of the blue. After your proofing or sales session, ask your client if you can ask them some questions and put together an honest testimonial. Ask questions about their experience with you and your art, write the testimonial for them, and ask them to approve it. (Absolutely ask questions that lead your client to talk about what is unique about the art and experience you crafted for them.)
2. Don’t pray a client shares your shots on social media, or writes you a nice review on Google or Facebook. Provide them a nice one-sheet one the ways they can help support your business, and what that support means for you, your family, the charities you support, etc. Then ask if they would be willing to support you in this way.
3. Don’t hope a client refers you to their friends. After helping write their testimonial, ask who they know who they think would be blessed by a photo shoot like theirs. Ask for an introduction over lunch or coffee, your treat. (This is part of the powerful concept of slowing down to speed up; get human-to-human interactions out of the too-fast, too faceless digital realm as much as possible.)
Deploy Social Capital
Get your client’s photos and testimonials in front of other people like them. Nothing you can say about yourself will ever compare to the influence of what your clients say about you.
Train your brain to see every potential opportunity to get your art, message, and social capital in front of your target market, and test every opportunity. Don’t overthink it; all marketing is just experimentation and feedback.
What questions do you have about this process? E-mail me and let's get a system going that works for you.
- James Michael
The only 'should' you should worry about
Of all the "shoulds" I have in my life, the one that stands above all is that I should be more grateful.
When I walk in a state of gratitude, my actions, thoughts, and focus align with what's most important in my life: my kids, my friends, my health, my art; the beauty of the people, places, and ideas around me.
What are the things you're most grateful for in your life?
(Gut check: are you approaching your professional photography work as a creative blessing or a chore?)
What can you do to get more of that good stuff into your days?
What choices are you (not) making each day that put distance between you and what you’re most grateful for?
E-mail me and let me know.
- James Michael
NEXT STEPS
1. Check in with yourself. Ensure how you're feeling about your photography is how you WANT to feel. If it isn't, how do you want to feel? What perspective change do you need?
2. Write that perspective change on a sticky note, and put it where you'll run into it every morning. Learn to cheat: stop holding all your goals and dreams and intentions in your head, and surround yourself with reminders of the person you want to be and the life you want to live.
Photography burnout happens when you deny your nature
Are you scared that if you go too deep in the weeds with the business, marketing, and sales side of professional photography, that you’ll lose your love for making art?
It’s a valid concern.
I get so wound up about my work - both day job and coaching photographers.
I sometimes catch a bad case of the “shoulds” - I “should” make more sales calls, I “should” work on that magazine project, I “should” offer a small team coaching program, I “should” start doing YouTube videos, I “should” be on social media, I “should” blog daily, I “should” plan a new photography project…
Here’s what I’ve learned, through all of my creative work in newspaper, business, photography, writing, and coaching:
Burnout happens when you deny your nature.
You try to make art that isn’t yours.
You try to adopt business models and prices and philosophies you don’t believe in.
You try to be the photographer you think other people think you should be.
Instead of standing on the solid foundation of your natural strengths, you drift further and further away from your dream, your vision, your values for your art and business. You teeter on the edge, and the constant stress of being out of balance makes you want to call it quits.
If you’re scared of this burnout, check in with yourself often. Call a time-out, stop long enough to look and listen, and make sure you’re building your art and business on your natural strengths.
(daily journaling - I’m partial to bullet journaling - keeps you honest here)
If you’re already burning out, break down the scaffolding you’ve built away from those strengths, take the recovered materials of what you’ve learned, and rebuild from your strengths up.
Not sure what your strengths are? E-mail me and let me know.
- James Michael
NEXT STEPS
Journal on these questions:
1. What are you doing with your art and business that is stressing you out? What feels out of alignment?
2. What if you could ditch the stuff you hate and focus on the parts of professional photography you love?
3. If you had to, how would you make this work?
Starting your photography journey with the end (the real end) in mind
"NONE said they wished they'd watched more TV. NONE said they should've spent more time on Face Book. NONE said they enjoyed fighting with others. NONE enjoyed hospital." - Alastair McAlpine, pediatrician to terminally-ill children
This thread of tweets is one of the most powerful things I've read in months:
https://twitter.com/AlastairMcA30/status/958992792004579328
In it, Alastair shares what his patients, terminally-ill children, told him they wish they had more time to enjoy with their lives.
Pets.
Kindness.
Books.
Ice cream.
I'm a single father of three kids ages 7 to 13, so this just put my heart in a vice.
I immediately went to my journal to ask myself hard questions:
- Am I investing my life into the people and projects that truly make a difference? Would I die tomorrow - or in 10 years - with regrets?
- What would my days look like if I just hit the big Reset button and lived life by the wisdom of these young people?
- What am I grateful for right now? (and every day) How do I get more of that into my life?
If you are an artist - if you feel a gut-level need to create and impact and serve with your photography - you need to give that reality the space it deserves in your life. Becoming or being a professional photographer isn't just a hobby or project or scheme to make money for you.
You're an artist.
Making photos, getting better, affecting people with your work - is as much a part of your base needs as eating, sleeping, and breathing.
One day you'll be on your own deathbed, no time left to procrastinate or put off until 'someday' or 'the right time.'
Are you living your life - and honoring your artistic creativity - today, and every day, in a way that you'll look back without regret?
Choose. Commit. And act.
What's the biggest challenge holding you back today? E-mail me and let me know.
- James Michael
NEXT STEPS
1. Journal (write out your thoughts, digitally or on paper) on this question: "Am I living every day in a way that I could die tomorrow, or in 10 years, with no regrets?"
2. Open your calendar. Block an hour to work on your photography this week. The sooner the better. When you commit to and then honor that time, look at your calendar again; find another hour, and block it off. Repeat until photography is once again a consistent part of your life.
3. Meditate on "memento mori" - remember death. "Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day. … The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time." - Seneca. Remembering that you could die at any time instills a healthy and powerful mindset that time is precious, and fleeting. Do what's most important today - and every day.
Does money matter to a professional photographer?
Money matters.
Other things matter more - love, health, service.
But money matters.
Money can’t buy you happiness, true, but it’s hard to see the happiness through the collections calls and tax liens and tears in your kids’ eyes when you can barely afford beans and rice for supper, much less Chuck E. Cheese.
Money matters when you’re so busy and stressed figuring out how to pay the bills, that you’re not present - much less emotionally available - for your spouse and kids and friends.
Money matters when money stress creates a downward spiral in your health, self confidence, and relationships.
Money matters when you begin to look at people with more money - not even a lot, just more - with anger, frustration, and envy...maybe jealousy. “I work just as hard if not harder than him, but he just bought a new car, and I can’t even pay my electric bill this month. What the hell?”
Money matters when you can't get by each month without the charity of others.
Money matters when you’re stealing out of the kids’ piggy bank to pay for groceries.
Money matters when you can’t live a peaceful, humble, grateful life through the shame, and fear.
I have lived every one of these experiences, some during my childhood and some since I became an adult. I have felt this pain intimately. And can we just be real for a minute and say out loud, "It sucks."
They say what got you here won't get you there.
It's true of taking the next steps in your photography business. Whether you need to get to launch so you can start getting paid for your art, or you need to put more clients on the books, if what you're doing now isn't getting you to the place you need to be, you need to change the game.
The two big questions:
"WHAT do I change?"
and, of course,
"HOW do I do it?"
That's different for every photographer. Maybe you need some help being brave. Maybe you need to rewrite internal stories of low self-worth. Maybe you need a purposeful sales funnel and, for now, a free way to fill it. Just to get some momentum. Maybe you need some help overcoming fear, stagnation, and procrastination. Maybe you need a 30-day plan. Maybe you need to ask yourself some hard questions.
What's the biggest challenge holding you back today? Drop me an e-mail and let me know.
- James Michael