Online Printing - 24-bit image? PS Elements 2.0. HELP!

[magickdrumz]

I'm struggling a bit here, and hope one of you can help. I have Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0. I've sent an image to Snapfish to see how it prints....they seem to have gotten good reviews. Well, the print I got kinda sucked. The colors were all weak and washed out....clear...just not vibrant in color.

So then, I thought, well maybe Snapfish really isn't so great...so I tried Bonusprint.com. In their help section, I read this....'To obtain good quality photographic prints from your digial images, you should use 24-bit true color images. Do not use 256 color images, since the photographic prints will lack color depth.'

It seems that my image is 256....I've tried to convert it, but am quite unclear how.....and the PS Elements Help is just not written simple enough for my brain!

Now I'm stuck, I can't figure out how to convert to a 24-bit image and save the image in .jpg. My options when I try to save the converted image do not include .jpg images. I've hit a level of technical info that I need to learn, and am quite stuck.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!
Fran

[ian_stickland]

I'd be amazed if your pictures were 256 colour, they'd look awful and your photos certainly aren't awful!!

It sounds like good old colour management I'm afraid. So, lots of questions...

1) What camera do you use?
2) Do you select a colour space like sRGB or Adobe RGB? If so, what do you use?
3) Do you use RAW?
4) IF yes to 3) what converter?
5) What are your elements color settings? (under edit menu)
6) Have you calibrated your monitor?

That'll probably do for now!!

Ian.

[robert]

Hello Fran:

I agree with Ian... I saved then opened one of your Joshua Tree photos in Adobe PS CS. It does not have a color space attached. You should save for web and printing in sRGB.

Check your settings in PS Elements. Figure out how to save your photos in sRGB colorspace. Many printers cannot print properly with any other colorspace.

Robert

[magickdrumz]

Thanks Ian and Robert for your responses!

Ian...here are some answers to your questions....

1. I have a Canon Coolpix 8800
2. I think I use color space sRGB....but I wouldn't swear to is!
3/4. I don't use RAW....at least not yet...another are of knowledge I have yet to tackle!
5. Currently set for Full Color Management
6. Yes, I believe my monitor is calibrated and I have no trouble viewing my images. Does the monitor have something to do with this print/sending to an online print source issue?

Oye....and now I'm out of time...back to work I go. Don't know if I'll be able to get to this again today/tonight or not. Glad there is someone out there who can help!

Thank you!

[ian_stickland]

Hi Fran,

You might want to try using limited on the color management settings in Elements. If you're not using RAW and you think the camera is set to sRGB anyway then this will ensure that Elements will only ever use sRGB and not Adobe RGB, which can cause the problem.

There is also a download for Elements 2.0 that instructs it to ignore the colourspace info that the camera inserts into the file. This can sometime make things go astray. There's nothing to lose by trying it, it allows you to turn it on and off.

If none of that makes a difference, then it may well be the monitor calibration. Sometimes a bad calibration can be worse than none. It'll look great on your screen, but not else where. One thing to try is to look at your pictures here on pbase on someone else's computer and see if they look the same or different. If there's a big difference then it could well be the calibration.

IF not, then we'll have to go step by step what you do to send the file for printing to see if there's something in there that might cause your problem.

Hope this helps,

Ian.

[eryani]

I had a color profile mismatch problem; I'm not sure if it's relevant to your problem but I'll describe it anyway because someone might be having the same problem.
I shot some raw pictures with the sRGB color profile. When I opened a raw picture in Photoshop CS2 it would select Adobe RGB by default:

I didn't notice it at the time so I continued my editing. But when I opened the edited picture in IE (which apparently does not support Adobe RGB) it looked like the picture to the right, whereas in PS it looked like the one to the left.

_______________________________________sRGB_______________________________________________________________________________AdobeRGB________________________________________

After I realized it was the color profiles I went to Edit / Convert to Profile:

But it was a tedious process since I already had about a dozen mismatched pictures. I found a slightly easier way: I went to Edit / Color Settings:

And selected sRGB IEC61966-2.1 as the RGB Working Space, AND under Color Management Policies, Profile Mismatches I checked Ask When Opening, Asking When Pasting. Then I just opened the pictures I suspected had this problem and I got this Dialog Box for each picture:

so I just chose the second option and clicked OK and saved the file (if you just close the file without saving it, it will not ask you if you want to save it because apparently it does not detect the conversion operation as a change to the file).