Dark prints are now the #1 reason prints are returned:

The problem is, the brighter the monitor, the more dark shots look normal. But while monitors get brighter each year, prints never change. They are still illuminated by the subdued light of homes, whereas photos on computer monitors get lit from behind by the ever-brighter power of flat panels.

Here’s what you can do about it:

http://www.smugmug.com/help/too-dark

Unfortunately, most flashes emit UV unless you place a filter over their heads. Using the Canon EX550 flash for fill made this dress blue where the flash hit it hardest:

Some photographers have a photoshop action to look for the brightest part of the photo and turn it white. The assumption is the brightest part of the photo must be the dress.

But that wouldn’t help the blue grass near the dress, which is lit by the blue light coming off of it:

I have seen photographers place plastic warming filters over their flash heads that also cut the UV. Warming filters can be selected to match the color of indoor light so you can use fill flash in a chapel with the fill being the same color as the light inside.

Here’s our blue dress corrected, but notice it didn’t remove the blue from the grass around the dress:

Anyone have favorite filters for their flash heads?

In shots taken with on-board flash, the poor fair-skinned caucasian with little skin pigment, a redish complexion, or blemishes goes nuclear:

Neither your eye nor film sees near-infrared light. But common in-camera and on-board flashes emit it, fair caucasians reflect it, and digital cameras record it. And they record it as extra red your eye didn’t see.

It’s a tough problem because correcting a nuclearized face by removing magenta, adding yellow, etc., makes everyone else look like they were semeared with bronzing makeup. The only way to do it seems to be to mask off the offending area and correct just that part, as some autocorrect software does like i2e.

Here’s more info on the problem.

Anyone else seen this and have something to contribute?

Trouble is: time. It takes for-EVAH to get decent color correction with Photoshop. That’s okay for landscape photographers, but what event photographers have the time to Photoshop 500 photos?

And face it: Photoshop’s autocolor is a joke.

Enter i2e, the program I use for 90% of my color correction. When you order a print from smugmug and choose autocolor, it’s going through i2e. And 90% of the time, its autocorrect is better than most people can do manually in Photoshop.

I use the image editor standard edition ($325) from Colour-Science in Switzerland. I don’t need the color management stuff in the pro edition. They have a home edition for $64 — good if you don’t process too many images.

What makes the program so sweet?

1. Rare is the image that fully automatic i2e corrections don’t improve. Photoshop’s autocorrect screws up 50% of images.

2. It does a great job of sensing memory color areas of the photo — sky, grass, and skin — and moving them toward believable values.

3. Manually tweaking is incredibly easy and fast compared to Photoshop curves. You can process hundreds of photos an hour.

What you still need Photoshop for: creative things like the bandaid tool to fix blemishes.

What I wish it had: a hover tool + info pallette like Photoshop has so you can see color values at any spot on the photo.

They’ve got a month’s free trial. You gotta try it.

Disclaimer: I’ve never even met them and don’t get anything for saying nice things about the program.