What a waste of a few weeks OR anyone want a cheap 27" iMac

Well guys here's a little interesting story about printing. My partner is a Pastel Artist and we have decided to set up a Print and Sublimation Business to sell copies of her work as well as taking in work from other sources. After a fair bit of research we purchased a used 27" Mac as my 24" died sometime ago and for printers we have bought a Ricoh SG 3110DN with Sawgrass Inks along with a flatbed press and a mini 3d vacuum press for sublimation work as well as a wide format (17") Canon IPF5100 for reproducing Fine Art Prints.

All has been going well with the iMac and Ricoh combination although I did have initial setup issues but the nice peeps at Sawgrass were very helpful and got me started with really good results, I did have a bad batch of 6 x 8 tiles from BMS which saw the start of many hair tearing out sessions over ICC profiles etc! again the nice man at BMS (Scott) sorted out a replacement batch so everything at the moment on the sublimation side is looking good.

I think I'm becoming a bit of an expert on ICC Profiles, setting up Photoshop and general colour management as working with the Canon 5100 has been a nightmare until tonight!!!! but more on that in a mo....

For my partners Pastel Artwork I've set up a temp Photo Studio so as to control the conditions as much as possible, I'm using a Nikon D3200 with a Nikon 35mm primary Lens. 2 x Continuos Softbox Lights, Good Tripod and a totally dark room. Shooting in Raw format and editing via Photoshop CS6. When checking the photos in the Raw plugin I'm getting a light reading of 5050 as shot which with a little tweak I can bring it up to 5500 which is what the bulbs are. The photos look great with a 45 - 50 mb file size but then I go to print oopppssy. now the problems start.

Whatever settings, calibration, profiles I'm using I seem to be getting prints that are tinted with yellow, tried al sorts, been surfing the web, checking forums, talking to people but nothing seems to work. I've run print after print after print on a variety of papers to no avail. Bear in mind some of the 17" paper works out at 6 -7 quid a metre, so some expense involved which one could do without.

So back to tonight, I cam across an old post on an Apple forum with a number of people having the same problem and not just with Canon printers but Epsom and HP. One guy even had a 2hr session at his local Apple Store with an Apple software genius using his equipment and failed to resolve the issue. So i dug out me old HP Laptop, loaded one of the photos into Photoshop using very basic colour management and produce a stunning 16" x 20" print with about a 97% colour accuracy to the original painting.

The sad thing is I've used Macs for years, there great for video editing and I always thought that they were the Bees Knees for graphics but I'm going to sling it on Ebay tomorrow and look to buying a decent quality PC with a graphics monitor and see where we go from there.

If anyone can recommend a good PC Monitor and or setup then please let me know as it could save me a whole heap of time.

Thanks for reading, Rant over

John (ICC Profile Master):mad:

I would be inclined to use a slightly longer lens if possible just to reduce possible issues of image distortion. The room does not need to be totally dark either - just avoid bright light that might overwhelm your softboxes output. Nothing so intense as to create its own shadows! Also, never assume the lamps will run at 5500º K just because they claim to. Lamps vary significantly with age and production so the use of standard grey and white reference in your setup shots as well is a good 'belt and braces' approach.

Regardless of whether you shoot in RAW format or not it is also always good practise to check white balance prior to starting if such an option is open to you. Finally, again regardless of whether you have MAC or PC it is good practice to always colour manage your monitor with something like the Spyder just to make sure that anything you see onscreen is really what you are supposed to be seeing.

As for MACs being the graphics must have - that idea died a long time ago when big changes were made inside and they began to look more like PC's!

Monitors vary in cost and quality but I would give serious consideration to some of the Dell monitors which give good value for money. NEC and Eizo offer high end quality but at a price. With monitor calibration systems such as the Spyder you will get a pretty good result from most modern monitors and unless you intend offering professional photo-retouching or graphics services that should be close enough.

Listen what that guy above said ^!
looks like you diid all but not most important thing. To reproduce fine art you need to calibrate your screen and printer. Not sure why you getting yellow tint but this also could be some option overseen in your editing software.
I use imac and macbook to print and i dont experience this problems.

Btw, what is you lighting gear? Branded lights or el cheapo of ebay??? As this could be your problem. 5500k is on th warmer side of day light. So your mac actually see it properly and put that warm light tint to your prints. If you want white, cool light try 6500k or higher for colder light.

I would be interested to know what the lights are too. C Temp is not really a critical issue if the RAW file is then balanced correctly. After all, it's a reasonably simple matter to shoot under tungsten and then correctly adjust or filter for neutral colours so the odd handful of ºK should be a doddle. K21John appears to be 'tweaking' the CT in CS6 so it should all work out PROVIDING the lamps are running at precisely 5500ºK - which is highly unlikely. I employ studio flash out of preference but appreciate the significant cost difference.

I'm old school - prefer more than one way of checking. White balancing under the chosen lighting should sort things out but I would always begin any copy work buy substitution of the artwork with my own array of reference cards - 18% grey, greyscales, colour wedges, white ref etc. Far more objective and far easier to sample if needed.

Of course, none of this will work if it is only being done by eye and the monitor shows incorrect colours!

It seems that, somewhere between the birth of digital cameras and the steady demise of film, colour management became the unmentioned topic. Perhaps manufacturers feared it would make digital imaging appear overly complex.

We could devote a whole thread to communicating with customers who view your images on an incorrectly adjusted monitor and blame you for the inaccurate colours!

Just dug about in one of my silver cases and found something that I have never used.... A strange screw on walking stick handle black/white/grey with a silver sphere on top with the text Spyder CUBE on it.

Thanks for the response guys, and I here what your saying, so I've a calibrated monitor, profiled paper and tried a 101 different combinations along with several paper types and the results all have this yellow tint. However as I said last night I have dug out my HP Laptop which is running Windows 7 and Photoshop CS3 and hey presto I've a print which is 97% colour correct, so for all the laptop screen is not great for graphics I will calibrate it later today and see what the results are with a few other prints.

This problem does not seem to effect all macs but some of them seem to have a problem that even has Apple scratching their heads, see the post on here https://discussions.apple.com/message/3684995#3684995 which looks like exactly the same problem as I'm getting.

With regards to photographing this artwork which is on coloured paper and it is soft pastels blended by hand, the work is stunning and I need to get close to 99% colour accuracy, I'm lucky though as I can do side by side comparisons (print to original) which is a great help.

Still going to sell the Mac as I don't do any video production these days and put the money to a reasonable PC setup....

Thanks again guys

John

Ahh silver cases with underused photography gadgets..check! Sublimation has a tiny colour space so you won't get all those colours reproduced. For my artistic stuff, I don't get too hung up on accurate colour, after all it is only me who knows what colour it should be. I send identical TFF files to one of the best labs in the country and the greys look slightly different each time using Adobe RGB 1998...must be those stupid macs.

Got a sublimated mug from one of the biggest print houses from before I got in to sublimation...... I wouldn't even show it in a coconut shy, I thought it was great at the time didn't even think about the extreme sunburn on the faces in the photo.

GoonerGary is absolutely right - the range of colour available via sublimation is far less than the Nikon D3200 will manage with ease. There will have to be a degree of trade-off somewhere along the line. Factor in the excitement of having to wait for the sublimated object to cook before discovering what colours you actually achieve and it looks like a few late night lay in store!

Good luck anyway