[davidhughesarchitect]

Hi,
I watched the video tutorial about using Maxwell itself to adjust the white balance in an image as it has a wider colour space than if you export to photoshop and do it in post production.

So in a similar vein I have the following question...

I am producing images that look fine on screen but are very dark when printed.

Is it better to adjust these images in post production using photo shop or even Google picasa fill light option...

or should I simply do a save as of the image from the mxi but just boost the exposure level within maxwell to create a 'for print' version of the image that is brighter?

Thanks

[Mihai]

I would say it depends by how much you would like to lighten it. If you save the image as 16bit, you have lots more room for adjusting exposure compared to 8bit, and if it's minor, 16bits is enough. If really much darker and you need to lighten shadows a lot, then you can save it in 32bits. Exposure can be dealt with either in PS or Maxwell if you save as 16/32 bit. It is not really dependent on how wide the color gamut is so you would have no benefit of doing it in Maxwell unless the change is extreme.

Best solution would be of course that you get an ICC profile of this printer which you can then preview with in PS. Or if it's your printer, that you calibrate monitor + printer for proper predictable results.

[davidhughesarchitect]

Thanks for that answer Mihai,

not quite sure how to use the ICC profile to calibrate...but I will look it up on the web not expecting you to answer that one.

One final related question...show I save it ...in any particular format to adjust exposure in photoshop... .EXR for instance or will regular jpeg or png be sufficient...

[Mihai]

Jpg doesn't allow 16bit, PNG allows it and as of V3 it can save EXR files as "half float" ie 16bit, which take up a lot less space than 32bits, plus most if not all of PS tools work in 16bit, while only a handfull work with 32b files. I'm not sure which of PNG or EXR in 16b will take up least space...maybe not that important EXR has the advantage that it can save extra channels like normals, custom alphas etc. embedded in the EXR file itself if you need them, but PS can't read those without a plugin called ProEXR. Of course you can always save these channels out as separate files and import them into PS. Just a bit more convenient to have them all embedded into one file.

[tom]

Maxwell's white balance tools or mxi depth will not help you much about the darkening problem in printing. Printers usually have color (CMY + optionally extra) and black (K) toners/inks for reproducing the image on paper. You need to do it in the color separation stage in Photoshop after converting the buffer to a suitable CMYK space. All you need to do is to avoid high load of black ink/toner and gain the loss by pushing CMY instead. Well, this is basically the idea...

[davidhughesarchitect]

Thanks again Mihai