How to match colors on monitor and print?

Well i'm trying to make a handmade album of me and my girlfriend with diferrent color pages.
For example if the page is red the photo on that page would be only of red tones so it fits nicely.

I'm going to develop prints at the local photo lab (or whatever you call it) but i'm not so sure the color will match...

Is there anything i could do to make sure the prints are going to look like on my monitor?
Or is it just the metter of monitor, which in my case is a gaming samsung 931bw and probably is nowhere
near a real color representation...?

Blahhh printed today and as i feared the red ones came up looking like washed out pink :-(

Sorry, I have no idea!

You could try looking at something like Spyder2 which calibrates monitor/printer

Yorkie's correct you need to calibrate your monitor and match it to your printer, there have been several discussion on the forum about tools. The most effective is hardware based calibration but for most purposes there are software ways to do it.

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Well i'm trying to make a handmade album of me and my girlfriend with diferrent color pages.
For example if the page is red the photo on that page would be only of red tones so it fits nicely.

I'm going to develop prints at the local photo lab (or whatever you call it) but i'm not so sure the color will match...

Is there anything i could do to make sure the prints are going to look like on my monitor?
Or is it just the metter of monitor, which in my case is a gaming samsung 931bw and probably is nowhere
near a real color representation...?

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AHHHH the age old question..

I agree; a calibrator will definitely help. And a good Monitor as well. Also it helps if you make friends with the technician that is running the machine(developer). Some will not know, but ask if they are using sRGB or Reg. Adobe as the color profiles to print. Match your images with whatever their profile is and this will sometimes help to get your colors to match a little bit closer.

If not. I recommend using a professional color lab for your prints. They will normally give you their ICC Profiles so you can download to your Color driver and embed into the image before you take it to them for printing. This will 9 times out of 10; do the trick..

Hope this helps..

Hi qunatums,

The bottomline is: If your complete workflow (camera, monitor, printer) aren't calibrated, the chances of you receiving a print that matches your monitor images is virtually zero. This is true whether you make your own prints or send your corrected digital files to an outside photo lab.

I've written several articles for photographers who are new to color management and looking for answers. You might want to take a look at four of these articles. Beginning with part one of four at: http://hubsidarkroom.blogspot.com/2008/08/...g-color-in.html

You might also want to consider investing in Harald Johnson's "Mastering Digital Printing" book as a reference book that you can sit next to your computer.

Although camera, software, printer and computer manufacturers have done their best to provide technically accurate digital imaging products, EACH manufacturer works from the assumption that you understand at least the basics of color management and that your system is color managed.

Hope these articles help in your basic understanding of color management.

Good luck.

Hub
www.hubbardcamera.com

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Originally Posted by Hub

Hi qunatums,

The bottomline is: If your complete workflow (camera, monitor, printer) aren't calibrated, the chances of you receiving a print that matches your monitor images is virtually zero. This is true whether you make your own prints or send your corrected digital files to an outside photo lab.

I've written several articles for photographers who are new to color management and looking for answers. You might want to take a look at four of these articles. Beginning with part one of four at: http://hubsidarkroom.blogspot.com/2008/08/...g-color-in.html

You might also want to consider investing in Harald Johnson's "Mastering Digital Printing" book as a reference book that you can sit next to your computer.

Although camera, software, printer and computer manufacturers have done their best to provide technically accurate digital imaging products, [b]EACH manufacturer works from the assumption that you understand at least the basics of color management and that your system is color managed.

Hope these articles help in your basic understanding of color management.

Good luck.

Hub
www.hubbardcamera.com

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How right you are Hub, I cannot comment professionally but have spent many happy hours trying to make prints look like the monitor version. Have played with Colour Management, profiles etc but differences are always tiny & nothing like enough to produce the desired efffect.
I would like comments on what worries me most - Suppose I take a high quality Jpg or RAW photo on a nice day in lovely conditions on my D200 (which is getting old now but still a top SLR in my opinion) or even on my 9 MP compact, I expect to get a virtually perfect exposure, it should need little tweaking at all. Therefore if I do as many experts say and adjust my monitors brilliance etc to match a print from now on I can only make a print match by changing what is a correctly exposed image by changing the details in my software. I will now have a poor quality print which will not look right on the monitor or web. So I cannot see the point of monitor cal either. It makes little difference.
The problem needs solving in the printer. Have also tried different paper profiles, this seems to make the biggest changes but needs a real print expert to assess.

I also agree with hub. Personally and I think that Dazzaone will back me up on this, I have great experience in colour correction and management which comes from many years newspaper and magazine printing experience. Unfortunately these days a lot of so called Professional printers do not actually know how to colour correct or match. I recently found this out first hand after supplying what was perfect artwork for printing on a HP Designjet to print 2 A2 prints. Unfortunately for me the guy who printed these decided he would colour correct them on screen and what I got was a load of dribble. the images were too dark and extremely pixelated.

The best advice I can give to you out there is read the links supplied by hub and also invest in a decent A4 photo printer. Practice makes perfect with this and the more you try the better you will get at replicating the colours on screen to that on print. Then should you need anything printing by an outside source SEND A COLOUR PROOF of what you are expecting back.

also one of the big contributions to your end result is the paper you are printing on. For instance back in the day at work anything that wasn't supplied with a colour proof would have 30% black removed before printing this is due to the grey tinge to newspaper. Obviously this isn't a problem with photo printing as much as newspaper but it still does contribute to your end result.

basically you can change color mode to cmyk and change color profile that already supported by your printer