Bay Photo color correction or do it yourself?

[CynthiaM]

Those of you who use BayPhoto, are you pleased with their color correction or do you prefer to turn it off and do your own soft proof and color correction?

If you use their color correction, is their any reason to use a print delay, assuming you have uploaded a full resolution image to smugmug?

What do you do about output sharpening? If you are not doing a giclee print, then the images are not printed on inkjet, right? So what kind of printing process is this? Contone?

[Oscarc]

Those of you who use BayPhoto, are you pleased with their color correction or do you prefer to turn it off and do your own soft proof and color correction?

I am very happy with their color correction. I generally do some correction myself to get it in the ballpark, but will let them fine tune it when printing. I think it's well worth the slight increase in cost.

If you use their color correction, is their any reason to use a print delay, assuming you have uploaded a full resolution image to smugmug?

Proof delay is useful to catch & correct cropping issues, especially when customers print my 3:2 photos on 8x10 paper. I've found that some people have a hard time understanding why photos that look good as 4x6s have the edges missing as 8x10s.

[justus]

I definitely feel the extra cost is worth it to let Bay Photo color correct. I edit my images myself, but their "extra set of eyes" have always produced a stunning product. As one of my customers just wrote to tell me..." These photos look alive..they look like they belong in a coffee table photo book."

That sounded good to me...

[CynthiaM]

I definitely feel the extra cost is worth it to let Bay Photo color correct. I edit my images myself, but their "extra set of eyes" have always produced a stunning product. As one of my customers just wrote to tell me..." These photos look alive..they look like they belong in a coffee table photo book."

That sounded good to me...

So if I understand you correctly, you don't soft proof these images with their printer profiles and make corrections to compensate for what gets lost in printing, but rather, you do whatever it takes to get something you like on screen and that is what you send off to Bay Photo?

[Traces of Texas]

So if I understand you correctly, you don't soft proof these images with their printer profiles and make corrections to compensate for what gets lost in printing, but rather, you do whatever it takes to get something you like on screen and that is what you send off to Bay Photo?



I'm kind of wondering the same thing.

Some of my photos are heavily post-processed/surreal and don't look anything like what you'd encounter in the real world.

Skin tones, for example. If they color correct to make them look "real," they've defeated the purpose of some of my post processing.

[thaKing]

the way i do it is do a test run...do all my processing and soft proof using bay's profile...then, i turned off color correction in my private gallery...lastly i ordered some prints to see how closely they resembled what i saw on my screen...if all was well, then i could leave color correction off...if it looks bad, adjust and test again...

does this take some time and a little up front cost on your part? yes...but, you only have to do it once...then every time you process you'll know how they'll look once printed...