How can I get commercial prints of my digital photographs to look more like they look on screen?

Question

When I print digital photographs at Costco, they turn out much darker than the images I see on the screen. My work flow is:

Canon SD300 -> GraphicConverter (Mac) to sharpen, crop, set color profile -> Costco printer

Answer 1

Tiger's suggestion is probably the best way to go about this. Make sure you choose a picture with a good range of colors, or you may end up adjusting for one part of the sprectrum while completely destroying another.



On another note, I've noticed Costco prints are generally always too dark. I would recommend Walmart's service.

Answer 2

It's very hard to get print outs to exactly match what you see on screen due to the difference between monitors and printers. Pros use color calibration software to match the screen and printer outputs. In order to match Costco printers, you would need to know what profile they use.

But perhaps here is something you could try: get a Costco print out (a normal day time one), open the same image on your computer and adjust the monitor's brightness and contrast (not the software's brightness and contrast) to match the print out's. Then adjust your other pictures.