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Old 17-03-2007, 08:40 PM
tornado33
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turning digital astro images into prints

Hi all
Do any of you get your astro images printed? I find theres no way of getting a print that looks anywhere near as good as they do on the monitor. Ive tried cheap photolabs in supermarkets, and more specialist places, but none ever give me prints that do my images justice, they never ever look as good as on the monitor. Some give me prints that lose dynamic range, either too dark, or with brighter parts of galaxies burnt out even though the originals on the monitor look great with no such burning out, one lot even had "guide error" that wasnt in the originals, the paper must have moved as they were printed.

This is why Ive never entered any of my images in the David Malin Awards, they dont accept images in electronic form, only prints.

What Australia needs is a photolab that specializes in ONLY deep sky astro images and nothing else.

This is why I post my images in IIS, its the only place I can show my images as they are meant to be
Scott
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Old 17-03-2007, 08:54 PM
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seeker372011 (Narayan)
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Humayun (Octane)has got some of his images printed at Harvey Norman-A3 too- and they turned out quite good..PM him for details ?
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Old 17-03-2007, 08:58 PM
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leon
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I agree Scott, have the same trouble, and i do them at home one a pretty good printer, they just don't come out the same.

Apparently there are programs around to fix all this, not that I know much about them.

Cheers leon
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Old 17-03-2007, 09:02 PM
tornado33
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Thanks.
Theres a Harvey Norman though about 40 mins bus ride away from Newcastle, guess I could check it out some time.
Scott
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Old 18-03-2007, 12:13 AM
Adrian-H
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i havent printed many of my astrophotos just afew, i print truck loads of photography though,

i would like to do some more astrophotography when i get back home

i print my photos with eather a epson or canon photo printer, the quality i get is just as good as a lab would offer,

i used to have some problems incorrect colors when i started printing photos, but since i started calibrating my monitor with spyder ive never had problems with my prints and i notaced the only problem i had was that the monitor was not giving me the correct picture for the data, which was fixed by the spyder monitor calibration. from my experiance adobe gamma wont do justice eather.

i have printed afew astrophotos, and they come out perfectly fine for me.

it kinda sounds like maybe your monitor may not be calibrated to your data, allso when you send photos in for prints, sometimes they apply enhancements to the photos, tell them not to.

spyder blows it away for calibration, so that you are really seeing what your data really looks like, i wouldnt dare edit my photos on an uncalibrated monitor since being through the luxury of proper monitor calibration.

i probly would have given up on photography if i couldnt print any of my photos, i am very glad i made the choice to get one of the monitor calibraters, they are expensive though, everything is expensive for me these days waaah!!! but i guess it was worth it.

Last edited by Adrian-H; 18-03-2007 at 12:26 AM.
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Old 18-03-2007, 01:07 AM
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Deeno
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They are common problems in any type of photography.
You need to build a relationship with whoever does your prints. Avoid cheap outlets as you dont know who is running the machine, type of paper, how often its serviced etc. As good as home printers are they still cant beat profesionally processed prints. Ink based printers use a different colour system and will degrade within a short period of time. (5-10 years vs 90-100 years)

An easy and cheap way to calibrate your monitor is to have a print done requesting that there is no adjustment to the photo in store! Hold it next to the monitor and play with it till they look the same. Do it a few times making sure you walk away from the monitor, having a bit of a break each time.

I know bugger all about astro-photography but, have been stuffing around wth SLRs for around 25years. Motorcycles mainly and have been using the same place for prints for the last five years. If I'm not happy they will print again 'till I am.
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Old 18-03-2007, 08:20 PM
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sejanus (Gavin)
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scott you need to first of all calibrate your monitor with a monitor calibration tool - these are hardware, not software. You need a decent monitor, i.e. not a el cheapo chinese clone lcd screen.

then use a good lab, and get them to give you their profile. I use RGB Digital for my wedding business, I have found them good.
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Old 19-03-2007, 07:04 AM
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acropolite (Phil)
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Or if you can afford it you could buy something like the Epson R1800 which will print A3+ size (and longer using roll feed) with light fast pigment based inks, the results achievable are as good as you will get from a lab, but like most processes there is a learning curve. The R1800 sells for a little over $1000. You should also profile your monitor as Gavin suggests.
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Old 19-03-2007, 07:08 AM
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Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)
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LOL!! One of the main reasons I want to stay with film.... It's actually funny to hear that you guys who insisted on going digital are now finding that that's all very nice - as long as you want to stay in the digital realm. It's all very possible to go to print successfully - but you really have to know what you're doing in order to get consistently good print quality. You can muck about and "claim" success - but there's a real art to it.

You could always try a company called "Trannys" in Crows Nest, (North Sydney) that is a traditional film bureau - but has some very good colour management practices and output devices. They have some seriously high-end colour proofing systems and the knowledge to use them. I use them to develop slide film to order and they really know what they're doing. Good bureaus like these guys are getting hard to find.

http://www.trannys.com.au/

Cheers
Chris
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Old 19-03-2007, 07:58 AM
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h0ughy (David)
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http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/colo...er/default.asp looks good, what about newdark Scott?
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  #11  
Old 19-03-2007, 08:30 AM
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sejanus (Gavin)
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the spyders are awful, not worth the cardboard they come in.

This is what I use ;

http://www.amazon.com/Pantone-Inc-ME.../dp/B000CR78CO
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Old 19-03-2007, 11:10 AM
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Hi Scott, Harvey Norman had a sale on image prints on the weekend, 15c per image.

I thought thats too good to pass up and went through a few of my pics and put them on my mem. card.
I picked up the 80 odd images yesterday, and i was stoked how they come out on film, awsome color in all the pics, even a widefield of m42 and barnards just loks so good.

My lightning pics look just awsome, i am very happy with the quality of the prints it might be worth your while checking them out.

I only got 6x4's, and i am going to go through some of the better ones and get them printed into poster size.

I think if you have good images to start with they should turn out as god as expected, some of the images i shot in raw were only converted into jpg without any adjustments at all and still i am happy with them.

I think Bert was getting a few of his widefield images done at hardly normals as well, so they seem to have a decent rep at printing astro.

Hope this helps.
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Old 19-03-2007, 02:23 PM
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okiscopey (Mike)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sejanus View Post
the spyders are awful, not worth the cardboard they come in.
Sejanus, was that the original Spyder or the Spyder2?

The reason I ask (apart from collecting info. for a possible article) is that the current one is supposed to be an improvement over the first version.
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Old 19-03-2007, 03:25 PM
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sejanus (Gavin)
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yeah the original one. Haven't tried spyder2. It was on a 30" apple lcd, results were awful.
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