Magenta/Green Color Cast
Hello everyone, I just printed my first book, and considering that we’re talking about sRGB JPEG’s, with the exception of the cover (awful color cast!) the quality was pretty good. Except that many images had either a magenta or green color cast in the shadows. I am wondering if this is a common issue and if there is someone who could offer a suggestion on how to approach this…... Perhaps I should paraphrase my question; how consistent is Blurb – i.e. if I print this book again, perhaps in a different size, should I expect to get the same result? Or could I expect a different cast, no cast etc. Thanks for your help!
Djordje
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Hi Djordje, I know from my chemistry and basic photography that getting off colors can sometimes be due to lighting. For example, regular incandescent bulbs produce a yellow-ish tint while fluorescent bulbs give a green hue. As for the magenta, that could be your equipment (monitor, scanner, camera, etc, etc, etc). You can try to adjust your color profiles using photoshop to see if you can rectify this issue or adjust the photos too. If you change the ‘color curves’ or ‘color balance’ you should be able to down play the green, etc in your photos. Hope it helps, Oaxacamatt
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Djordje,
You know, this issue has been discussed in many forum discussion – very similar to your situation.
If you conduct search queries to learn more, research and find some possible remedies to your situation. Try search queries such as Color Profile, Calibrated monitor profiles, ICC print profile, soft proof and few other links based on search results.
As for book getting published, I have no how many pages in that book you worked on. Always a good idea to test and proof book with first twenty pages. So that way you have a better idea how the book should looks like. If you find some casts or some kind of problem you discovered, you can go back to step one and do the process of image editing process all over again. Plus with help of correct calibrated device set up in your computer/monitor, gone through soft proof in Photoshop app and few other things.
This might be of an interest and useful resource for you to look at, some research and some possible remedies, here:
Bonsai Photography link
http://www.bonsai-photography.com/
At that external link, this itself is a good and reliable source of soft proof and how to work with Blurb’s POD printer and how your book should look like. THe idea of soft proof is to give you a better idea how your book looks like once printed. If you think you find some cast problem while you are soft proofing the process, you can go back to editing process to correct the cast problem. Yes, it is time consuming. But it is well worth the effort, time and money along the way.
Most importantly of all, calibrated monitor IS most important tool. Without it, the entire book project could be done wrong due to bad color profile.
Hope that helps.
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My typo error…
When I say “As for book getting published, I have [no idea about…]
My apologies.
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99 times out of 100 monitors have not been calibrated, and until you do, what you see is not necessarily what you get. David Latimer
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