scottgraham's Posts

No, and if you don’t want to edit your pictures, and of course to have carefully calibrated your monitor, you shouldn’t expect to be happy with anything printed.

and if you do do the above two things, book prints, test prints you make, and monitor images will still be somewhat different. They are using different technologies. For example to put it simply: your monitor has a (colored) light bulb in it and prints don’t.

I would guess that if you are ideally calibrated, etc, a Blurb book would be darker than your proof printed “at home”. I could be wrong though.

All of this printing stuff can drive you crazy when you know a fair bit about it. If you don’t, it gets worse.

Scott

I initially (last summer) had real problems with color cast on B&W but all is fine now with the HP press (Indigo I think).

I did do a test with 3 different “darknesses” of several images and found as expected that the press print was darker than the inkjet tests, so for the real book I adjusted all of the images to the values of the lighter test and am very happy.

This is of course not offset quality, but quite nice.

Scott

Scott here

sorry for the lack of clarity—-first of all, even in a color managed environment monitors, printers, etc don’t match exactly. Second I am doing only B&W and even a LITTLE green looks green. I imagine that in a color image one wouldn’t even notice as it would be very subtle. Thirdly, the interior of the book goes from greenish (scientific description heh what :) to very nearly (or completely) neutral with time, rather than vice versa. The cover goes from perfect to VERY SLIGHTLY reddish is the higher tones. The cover becomes “not objectonable” I am told. This is all with 2 day shipping and then a wait of maybe 5-7 days. So if we forbid fast shipping to an online buyer…

Anyway, I am pretty happy after time. BUT I’d hate to have someone order a book on line and find it green before they “waited a while”.

and a couple of finallies: a friend and print customer (I do giclees for other artists) says that he finds it hard to imagine me being happy with someone else’s print of one of my images :)

No, it was not the different lighting; first thing that I checked. The ‘greeness’ is objectionable indoors (warm light) and worse outdoors, initially. Not bad later.

And on grayscale vs desat RGB: it shouldn’t make any difference in theory, and doesn’t for sure on an Epson. A color value is a color value.

and my question, with less confusion, still stands: is it safe to presume that the book look will change with press change? almost has to; I really am being foolish to ask. Was going to do a neutral/warm/warmer test book next, but will also include light/normal/darker test again.

Blurb works so well that I hope to be able to make it work for me too.

Someone mentioned half toning and print quality, etc in another thread: the answer that said of course you get that as you do in all press prints and it is normal, to be expected, and still looks fine was right on. I think that the Blurb image quality is quite good.

Thanks
Scott

This question probably only applies to people printing B&W (it is a subtle shift that stands out in B&W) and to people paying for fast shipping (1 day/2 day).

Has anyone other than me noticed color shifts as the days pass?

On my B&W book, shipped 2 day, the cover came out great and the pictures inside were noticeably green. This is true either in outdoor light or indoor light.

So I thought: keep the cover procedure and make all of the interior images a bit red in PS before uploading >>> happiness, right?

But now a week later, the inside images look about right and the cover has a magenta cast in the mid-higher values.

At first I thought that it might be exposure to air, but an unopened book and the “week old opened” book look the same on the cover. And when I open the second one (after a week) the inside looks basically neutral as does the one that has been open a week..

Any one else? any suggestions?

If the inks shift with time, I can live with that and adjust to it IF I KNOW. But I can’t let Blurb sell the books online cuz who know what the customer would think on delivery.

Thanks
Scott

I am happy in every way, except that my black and white images come out green. This is the second time that it has happened. If they can’t do something about it, I will have to go elsewhere. Oh, and the color seems to change over the first few days, getting better? or I get used to it? no, it is too bad to get used to.

Oh, and it appears that the printer is so hot to claim quick service that they may be telling us it shipped when it really hasn’t for another day. Or else UPS has goofed twice in a row. This is a shame cuz the printing turnaround time is OUTSTANDING without padding the tale.

Scott