Help! Blue Color cast on digital prints from Walgreens!

[efjeld]

So I go to Walgreen's today because I want to get multiple 4x6 prints of a few pictures for my wife's family. I go to pick them up and they all have a blue cast on them. The Walgreen's "Photo Specialist" told me that the files were uncompatible with their system. I asked what she could do and she said "Nothing." Granted, I didn't pay for them, but the same thing happened after our honeymoon and got prints made at Sam's Club. What gives??

Now, I'm printing the pictures at home with my Picturemate and they're coming out exactly as they look on my screen. Hmm...

Camera is a D70, color setting is AdobeRGB(1998). Am I doing something wrong here, or are the people at Walgreen's/Sam's Club just incompetent?

As far as why I didn't just use the picturemate... Well, I liked the idea of "conveniently" going to the store, upload photo's, come back in an hour and pick them up. The Picturemate seems excruciatingly slow, and slows my system down quite a bit when the computer is sending files to the printer.

[Skyman]

most labs should handle adobe rgb but try converting the files to a cmyk .jpg as this is the colour space their machines will be calibrated to.

[another view]

Those kind of places usually have no idea about different color spaces. They probably just got an error message on the machine saying there was something wrong. They're set up for sRGB, and any other color space will not print correctly. Really, the only time you should use Adobe RGB (or anything other than sRGB for that matter) is if you're doing all of your own printing and your whole system is set up that way.

Minilab machines want to see sRGB files, so go into Photoshop and convert the color space on them to this and you should be fine. I wouldn't try cmyk either - these machines are set up for the files the general public will bring in. 99% of digital camera owners don't know about different color spaces, and many just have prints made straight from the memory card.

[OldSchool]

Should do away with a good portion of printing issues from the local photo shops.

[Photo-John]

I woudn't set them up as CMYK. Photo printers that print with red, green, and blue shouldn't be using anything involving CMYK. Since most cameras default to the sRGB colorspace, that's your best bet. But sRGB isn't that different from Adobe RGB. At least not enough to account for a noticeable blue color shift. My guess is the labs machine calibration is crap. Ask them what they do to calibrate and keep their machines "in line." If they don't have a good answer or don't know what you're talking about, get your stuff printed somewhere else.

[JSPhoto]

Odd, I used to have them do all my race photos from the weekend and never had this happen and I used AdobeRGB.
If you have a Walmart give them a try. They also did a good job, and it didn't matter which camera they were shot with.

JS

[efjeld]

If they don't have a good answer or don't know what you're talking about, get your stuff printed somewhere else.

That was the general attitute the "Photo Specialist" conveyed to me. I will switch to sRGB, and will be going elsewhere for big jobs. Walgreen's is so convenient, but the service and photo printing knowledge is awful.

Thanks for all the help everyone!!

[OldSchool]

I look at my files on THEIR CRT. When their color management is off, the print looks significantly different than how it looks on their CRT (It really bugs me when they can't get color management right). The shops have always been happy to try again, or not charge me if there is a problem.