Tips for the consumer
In today’s world of digital imaging we have discovered that photographers are split into two camps. There are those of you who like it the old way. You brought us your negatives for processing and allowed The Lab Works to make beautiful prints for you. A premium print. We can optimize your digital files as well. Simply submit the files you would like printed and let us do the work. All file adjustments including sizing, cropping, sharpening, colour and saturation will be done.
For those of you who prefer to do your own file management, here are a few simple guidelines for setting up your files for printing by The Lab Works at print ready, square footage pricing.
To supply print ready files, it is important that each file has a valid ICC profile embedded. Without this profile we do not know what colourspace your files are in. Most photographers use either sRGB or Adobe RGB (1998) as a working colour space. Provide us with colour managed files, changed to 8 bit, cropped and sized to the print size you desire, saved as a RGB jpeg or tiff with no layers or channels or LZW compression. The name of the file should be fairly short and should not have any odd characters. Files that are print ready means no intervention by us and less cost for you.
We recommend working on a calibrated monitor for making exposure and colour decisions.
We encourage soft proofing using our printer ICC profile which can be found on our FTP site or can be emailed to you. Soft proofing gives you the ability to view on-screen what your photograph's colours will look like when printed on our printers using Kodak Professional Endura ultra paper. To soft proof effectively, your monitor has to be calibrated. Call for details.
We encourage you to test with us. You can then be confident that your files printed at The Lab Works will be as you see them on your computer screen. There will be no charge to you for this test print and we will help you make any adjustments to ensure all the right file qualities for your future orders.
So which is better: RAW or JPEG? There is no single answer, as this depends on the type of photography you are doing. In most cases, RAW files will provide the best solution due to their technical advantages. RAW files give the photographer far more control, but with this comes the trade-off of speed, storage space and ease of use. The RAW trade-off is sometimes not worth it for sports and press photographers, although portrait, landscape, commercial and most fine art photographers choose RAW in order to maximize the image quality potential of their digital camera. When you shoot JPEG, your files are only as good as your camera’s ability to make decisions on processing. One key advantage of RAW is that it allows the photographer to postpone applying adjustments-- giving more flexibility to the photographer to later apply adjustments themselves, in a way which best suits each image.
A RAW file needs to be developed (processed) into a final JPEG or TIFF image before it can be printed.
Tips for the Pro shooting digitally
For those of you who shoot for a living (or on a very regular basis) we recommend WorkStream Digital Studio image submission software. It is a free Windows based program and makes digital workflow easy for any photographer. Use WorkStream for imaging productivity and flexibility, efficient order management and seamless integration between our lab and your studio. WorkStream eliminates any potential interpretation errors between the lab and photographer, which can cost time and money. Contact us for a demonstration of this free software and we’ll help you submit your orders with ease. We have WorkStream pro pricing and turnaround times to wow you.
The following 4 parts working in harmony will guarantee a good digital image process, start to finish. Create professional images with precision tonal control and simplify the production workflow with predictable results.
Capture Process Output-The Lab Works Archive
Establishing a RAW workflow in your studio is the best way to get the most out of your digital photographic images. Think of the RAW workflow as non-destructive photo editing. By having a RAW file, you can correct and enhance without hurting the overall quality of the pixels and dynamic range of the image.
The RAW file format is digital photography's equivalent of a negative in film photography: it contains untouched, "raw" pixel information straight from the digital camera's sensor. Digital cameras normally "develop" this RAW file by converting it into a full color JPEG or TIFF image file, and then store the converted file in your memory card. Digital cameras have to make several interpretative decisions when they develop a RAW file, and so shooting RAW file format offers you more control over how the final JPEG or TIFF image is generated.
The most important numbers to know in digital capture are where the highlight with detail and shadow with detail fall on a final 256 level scale. 240-245 is a good range for highlight detail in print output. On the shadow side, a range of about 20-25 is a good place for darkest shadow detail. Digital capture files can’t be processed properly if they’re overexposed. When it comes to quality, nothing replaces proper exposure for getting the tones to reproduce with all the dynamic range possible. Taking a little more time to expose the image properly will save you twice as much time back at the computer and leave more time for creativity instead of corrections.
Capture Process Output-The Lab Works Archive
Many colour corrections can be streamlined with a little effort on the front end of shooting to custom balance the colour of any photographic situation. It’s less labour intensive to be able to process one image and apply similar enhancements to several more just like it. This is very important for not only continuity between all photographs, but a major time saving during the processing stage of the images. It starts with good computer calibration and custom profiling.
We recommend regular monitor calibration with the use of a hardware monitor calibration device. We use a calibration device from X-rite. This device actually attaches to the front of your monitor and reads colour patches displayed by the software. Using these readings, the software removes any colour cast from your screen, helps otimize the brightness/contrast/colour output and creates a profile describing how your monitor displays colour. Photoshop then uses this profile when displaying images to give you the most accurate colour display possible. This monitor calibration device is an investment of $200 to $300 dollars and is the only way to get the best monitor to print match.
Stay in 16-bit depth mode as long as possible. It is a good time to do all your tonal enhancements. A tool to simplify the RAW processing workflow is Adobe Lightroom. Having Photoshop’s colour setting properly set for your individual needs is the next important step. Adobe RGB (1998) seems to be a good space for general Photography. Pro Photo RGB is a huge space that really captures more colour than can be printed on a sheet of paper.
Capture Process Output-The Lab Works Archive
We encourage soft proofing using our custom ICC profile specifically built for our printer using Kodak’s Professional Endura ultra paper. This profile can be found on our FTP site. Soft proofing gives you the ability to view on-screen what your photograph's colours will look like when printed on our printers using Kodak Professional Endura Ultra paper. To soft proof effectively, your monitor has to be properly calibrated. Call for details.
When an image is completed and ready to print, get on print what you see on screen, at least as close as possible. We make no adjustments to colour managed files when submitted for output.
It is important that each file has a valid ICC profile embedded. Without this profile we do not know what colour space your files are in. Most photographers use either sRGB or Adobe RGB (1998) as a working colour space. Provide us with colour managed files, changed to 8 bit, saved as a RGB jpeg or tiff with no layers or channels or LZW compression. The name of the file should be fairly short and should not have any odd characters.
Capture Process Output-The Lab Works Archive
Keep all your digital files organized and properly backed up. Digital camera files should be removed from hard drives and stored properly. A hard drive never announces that it’s going to quit working, 24 hours in advance. Rename all files (with a batch rename and numbering sequence) and folders for automatic keyword tagging, and do weekly back ups of the files on quality DVD’s and CD’s and immediate cataloguing of the backed up files in file cataloguing software for help with quick retrieval.
Tips for the Pro shooting traditionally
Send us your film for dip and dunk processing. We will scan the rolls and make beautiful proofs for you and your clients.
Files sent via FTP
You can transmit your files to us through the convenience of our FTP site. The virtual key to get into an FTP site is the UserID and password. Email us at digital@thelabworks.com to set up a user account and password to access this service.
What is FTP? FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is the simplest and most secure way to exchange files over the Internet.
An FTP address looks a lot like an HTTP, or Website address except it used the prefix ftp:// instead of http://.
Our Website address: http://www.thelabworks.com
Our FTP site address: ftp://ftp.thelabworks.com
You can use your web browser for your FTP needs. You can also use FTP software. Mac users can try Fetch software. Windows users can try a free copy of WS_FTP Limited Edition. We hope that you’ll find this information useful. If you have any questions, email or call.
WorkStream Digital Studio download
Come into The Lab Works for a demonstration of this ordering software and pick up everything you’ll need to get started, or call and we’ll tell you how to download everything from our FTP site for WorkStream DS.
Once at our FTP site: Download the WorkStream DS software for PC computers, The Lab Works configuration file, our printer profile, helpful notes and a target file for testing.
See our “Tips for the pro”. We also have low, medium and high volume pricing for our WorkStream users.
Low volume pricing for clients who average up to $500 per month.
Medium volume pricing for clients who average between $500-$999 per month.
High volume pricing for clients who average over $1000 per month.
File Management
It is important that each file has a valid ICC profile embedded. Without this profile, we do not know what colour space your files are in. Most clients use either sRGB or Adobe RGB (1998) as a working colour space.
Follow the directions below to properly set up your Photoshop Colour Settings.
Open Photoshop
Mac OS X users go to Edit in the Menu Bar - Colour Settings Windows - go to Edit in the Menu Bar - Colour Settings
Select a Working Space for RGB Files. You should select either sRGB IEC661966-2.1 or Adobe RGB (1998). If unsure, select sRGB IEC661966-2.1.
Select “Convert to Working RGB” next to RGB under Colour Management Policies.
Check Ask When Opening and Ask When Pasting next to Profile Mismatches. Whenever you open a file saved and tagged in a colour space other than your working space, Photoshop will prompt you to convert to the working colour space. If you would rather have Photoshop do this automatically for every file, you can un-check these boxes.
Un-check Ask When Opening next to Missing Profiles Photoshop will assume every file not tagged with a colour space is in your working space.
When you save your Jpegs out of Photoshop, make sure to check the “Embed Colour Profile: checkbox in the Save dialogue box. Without this checked, we will not know the colour space of your files and you will have unpredictable colour in your prints.
ICC Printer Profile download
TLW ProLab_ultra.ICC (click to download)
To use our TLW ProLab_ultra.ICC profile, to aid in soft proofing for our digital printer output, please email us at upfront@thelabworks.com. We can give you information on how to use it.