So I have some 30x40" paintings I will be making into posters, so I need them scanned. Fortunately there is a place in town with a flatbed scanner that is big enough. Plus they do giclee’s and other fine art reproduction, so they’re a high-end shop; I should get real good quality. It’ll cost like $325 for the scans but I need good quality so that’s fine.
I schlep 4 big paintings into the shop to be scanned. They can’t get them in their promised 24 hour turnaround; it’s a Wednesday and they won’t have until Monday. Well, that sucks, I had hoped to be able to work on them over the weekend. But what can you do.
So Monday I get the scans. Yay! But they’re dark. Distinctly muddy. I adjust the curves and bump up the saturation and lightness, but I’m worried that I’m over adjusting. Everytime you adjust the colors you change the relations between them and lose color information. Besides, these are scans done by a professional shop, they should be spot-on. I’m not asking for pantone color matching, just eye-match colors, and these aren’t. I call the shop and they say “Oh, we can’t guarantee how it will display on your monitor, but it’ll look right when it prints.” Well, I thought my monitor was calibrated correctly, but maybe they’re right. I print it. Still too dark. I call to ask what color profile to use, and they say just standard RGB. I try the apple RGB profile since they’re mac and I’m PC and it helps a bit, but not much. The shop claims the image is perfect for them, they printed it out to check after the scan and it was a match; colors are clear and bright, levels are correct. I post a question to an adobe forum and get a response telling me I don’t know what I’m talking about, if my monitor is calibrated right the picture should display the same across all monitors.
I call the shop, talk to the manager, and ask them if I can see a printout to take home and test against my painting, so I can see if my monitor is bolluxed. Oh, they can print something but they’ll have to charge me for it. They do sophisticated color matching and it’ll take three days. No, they can’t just print something out on a color printer. Well, I need this working ASAP so I can’t wait three days to see if my monitor is messed up. I recalibrate my gamma on the monitor a couple times, and that helps but not enough. So I decide I’ll go into their shop to see it on their monitor and confirm that they colors are displaying right for them, so I can hopefully narrow down the problem.
I scan a piece of the painting myself and confirms that the colors display and print properly on my own monitor from my scan. I go to the shop to see their “bright, clear” display of that scan and IT IS MUDDY AND DARK JUST LIKE ON MY MONITOR. It’s not a match to the painting at all! I show them the scan I did myself with correct colors. See, there it is a bright blue, not a medium blue! They couldn’t have checked the scan over very carefully; even a glance shows it is too dark compared to the brilliant colors of the original. And they’re supposed to do fine art repro!
So what can I do now? I don’t really have time or inclination to haul the paintings in for another scan. If they adjust their scanner to get the colors right in one area maybe it’ll mess it up someplace else. I guess I will adjust the colors myself. The tech asks what would make me happy, and I say maybe some free scans or something, but I’m just tired of dealing with all this. Recalibrating my monitor again and again, responses that assume it’s MY ignorance making the scan not show up right, worries about over adjusting to correct the scan and having it print horrible. At least I feel justified about my insistance that my monitor WAS calibrated correctly and the scan WAS too dark.