Ok I am getting ready to send in my 5 8x10 prints to WHCC for printing! WooHoo!!
But I have a few questions that maybe you can help me with:
Am I safe with my true 8x10's or will they crop them a little? Should I leave a little more room around my subjects for safe measure?
On the text prints which type of paper do they print them on, Luster?
Do they send any samples of their special photo papers? Linen and such?
Does anyone use the Deluxe package where you get more choices for your photo's?
Does anyone use the printing software (Labprints) that they have on their site where apparently it looks like it is easier to order your prints?
For someone with hands on experience, which would be the preferred choice of finish on wedding photo's, linen on the larger photos? Luster Paper for the rest?
Any suggestions or recommendations for me?
I am also going to attach my post (*edited to add the veggie wonderful comments, if you ever think anyone in this fourm is condencending and arrogant, blunt and to the point with no regards to your emotions, visit the newsgroups! LOL Notice how the veggie doesn't really answer my questions point blank but beats around the bush for two hours instead telling/asking me all sorts or things I really didn't ask for.) from the corels newsgroup here, it is more geared towards PSP questions and saving files the best way for printing. But possibly thought someone here could also shed some light on my questions.
">
> Hi,
>
> I hope this is the right place to ask this question about the settings used
> when saving a photo for professional printing.
What, in your mind, is "professional printing"?
> Ok I have wedding photo's that I have fixed up in PSP and saved as
> ..pspimages. I am now trying to save them as .jpg's for printing and am a
> little confused on which exact setting I should be using to save the best
> copy possible.
Stop right there. Why are you saving them as JPEGs? JPEG
compression is lossy. Every time you save an edited image as
JPEG the stuff in the file is not the same as the image you
save. Some of the image information is permanently thrown away
to make the file smaller. The image you get by re-opening the
JPEG file is no longer exactly the same as the image before
you saved it. Depending on what level of compression you used
this difference many be barely noticeable or thoroughly
destructive. You could save in a losslessly compressed format.
TIFF is widely supported for instance.
> 1) Should I use Save or Save As? It has never been saved as a .jpg before
> this so I don't think I am in any danger of degrading the pixels by choosing
> either save option right?
*Every time* you save a JPEG image you destroy image information.
In fact if you save the same file repeatedly at the same settings
you will have destroyed so much information that no significant
amount more is being lost. This is the exact opposite of what
you think happens. You should use neither Save nor Save As.
Instead you should use File > Export > JPEG Optimizer. Here you
can preview the effect of your settings on the image.
> 2) Option Button: Encoding should I use Standard or Lossless encoding? I
> looked in the help file but it doesn't give much insight to what this does.
Don't use Lossless encoding. First, it is stupid to try to defeat
loss in in a compression method deliberately designed to be
lossy, especially when there are already other losslessly compressed
formats in widespread use. There are at least three flavors
of lossless JPEG and nobody agrees about them. If you save lossless
JPEG from PSP pretty much no other program anywhere will be able
to read it.
> 3) Should I save the EXIF info, does this make a difference in how the
> professional print company's printers deal with my photo's information?
The EXIF will most likely be ignored. It refers to camera settings
that no longer describe your image correctly because you have
"fixed it up". However, the printer may or may not make use of an
embedded color management profile. You should look into whether
you have enabled color management and how you have configured it.
> 4) Compression Factor set to 1 right?
> Chroma Subsampling: YCbCr 1x1 1x1 1x1 (None) ?
The easiest thing to do is to use YCbCr 1x1 1x1 1x1 (None) for
all of your images. It might make some files bigger than they
need to be but you will avoid having to think about whether
your images have small vividly colored dots, lines or stripes
that might become desaturated at other settings. As for the
compression level, you probably won't see any effect on your
image if you use compression levels up to 10.
> 5) Embed ICC Profile (sRGB Color Space Profile) Is not checked but should it
> be? This is the only color profile I have on my computer I am assuming and
> if I had other ones installed they would be listed here to choose from?
You haven't given enough information for an intelligent answer.
If you have kept color management off or you have correctly
configured it and used sRGB as your working space then you
don't really need the profile. The printer will assume sRGB.
However, if your image is in some color space like Adobe RGB
you will need a profile and the printer must respect it and
use it or else your images will come out undersaturated. Only
you can know what you've done with color management. I can't
tell you.
> 6) Should I click the Run Optimizer and if I click it to see what the
> compression is set at, I should click CANCEL so it doesn't compress my image
> right and then start the save process again?
No, you should just use File > Export > JPEG Optimizer (or
better still not use JPEG at all unless compelled to). You
should zoom to 200% and look carefully at the image in the
right preview for any signs of degradation at the compression
settings you are using. Bear in mind that images with large
uniform color regions (e.g. sky) will compress much better
(i.e. to a smaller file size) than images with lots of texture
(e.g. grass or foliage or gravel).
> (I hate it when we click cancel it totally remove the ability to save the
> photo without going through the whole save process again but I do use this
> option for other things and I never know where the compression is set at
> without looking.)
If it hurts, don't do it. Get in the habit of using the
Optimizer directly.
> But perhaps if I never click the Run Optimizer button the
> compression amount selected in that area is NOT used on the photo being
> saved?
If you use the Optimizer the setting in the Optimizer is used.
If you use the Save or Save As dialog the last used setting is
used until you change it.
> Is that correct and it just saves it as a uncompressed image?
JPEGs are *never ever* uncompressed. If you want an uncompressed
or losslessly compressed image use a different format. LZW
compressed or uncompressed TIFF is a good choice. 24-bit PNG
may be another good choice.
> I am sending into WHCC
WHCC = West Houston Country Club? Something else?
> for my test 8x10 prints to check my Monitors/PSP
> color profile to theirs. I have sent in photo's to Shutterfly before and the
> prints were almost identical to what I see on my montior but I am more
> worried about these photo's since they are of my daughters wedding and I did
> quite a bit of photo fixing for skin tones and adjustment levels.
It depends on how you have color management set up. You are
keeping that information to yourself I'm afraid so there is
little useful one can say.
> Then if I could ask someone nicely to do the math for me to see if I cropped
> to a perfect 8x10 image I would be forever grateful!! The original image
> info is this:
> 2912x4368 Pixels
> 9.707x14.560 Inches
> 300 Pixels Per Inch
> Pixels depth/color RGB - 8 bits/channel
>
> My cropped image info is this:
> 2912x3640 Pixels
> 8.000x10.000 Inches
> 364 Pixels Per Inch
>
> I have no clue how my PPI changed from 300 to 364 by doing just a simple
> crop to my image!!!
It's very simple. You told the program to do so. Most likely
you checked Specify Print Size in the tool options. When you
cropped, not only was the aspect ratio set to 8:10 but also
the print resolution was changed so that the number of pixels
in the width would map to exactly 8 inches of paper and the
height to exactly 10 inches of paper. The printer most likely
will pay no attention to the resolution and simply print the
image at the inch size you specify by making his own resolution
setting (which will turn out to be identical to yours if he
does it right
> Is this a problem or is this normal and I have never
> seen this happen before. I swear all I did was enter in my dimensions for
> the crop and clicked apply.
What you have set in the Tool Options makes a difference. If
it didn't then there wouldn't be any settings for you to set.
You have to look at the screen and think about what this
stuff means before you click apply. None of us was there when
you did whatever you did so we can only guess at your behavior.
It is best to have the largest possible number of pixels for
every inch of paper you print on (at least when you are not
very familiar with how printing works) and in that respect
you have done the right thing. Pixels are related to a printed
inch size through a conversion factor called resolution so:
Inches = Pixels / Resolution_in_pixels_per_inch
Digital images have sizes in pixels, and inches are just an
artificial number formed by using a conversion factor. By
setting the conversion factor to anything you want, one pixel
can end up being any number of inches. Originally, before
cropping, your image was 2912 pixels wide and had a resolution
of 300 pixels per inch. It's width in inches would thus be
2912 / 300 or 9.707 inches, exactly as you reported. However,
after cropping the width was still 2192 pixels but you wanted
that width to mean 8.000 inches and not 9.707 inches. The only
way to make this be so is to change the resolution because you
aren't allowing the number of pixels to change. Since:
Resolution_in_pixels_per_inch = Pixels / Inches
the resolution has to change from 300 ppi to 2912 / 8.000 ppi
or 364 ppi, which is exactly what you report. (You can't change
something and leave it unchanged at the same time
> Again Thank You All, for any info and advice you can offer me!
> Tracey
It's confusing that you sign yourself Tracey yet your sender's
name is Haley. It's as if I claimed to be a fruit and a vegetable
at the same time
"