Some Help from the board please. . .

[CLKunst]

I have a singer I am working with for her promo picture. I set up her promo shot and she sent it to the printers as a .TIFF file. The first image is what I sent, the second is the test image they sent back to her. Noe her skin appears blotchy and there are no highlights in her hair or shadow details. What went wrong?

[OldSchool]

I usually ask the printers to turn off all auto- exposure and color adjusting programs. Most shops do this (because a good portion of peoples prints need it). Check it out. Maybe that's what happened here.

[drg]

The contrast is what appears to have been ruined.

Did the printer specify a size for the file (dpi x dpi)? They may have resized and then compensated with various adjustments.

Your original looks soft. Did you sharpen as the last thing before saving the file?

This also appears to have a black point problem. They have obviously made it "blacker" and "whiter" and there is dynamic range at play in the final print. As Old School suggested, asking them to print the file as is, and not auto adjust might help.

I'd check the specification they need, and even have some test samples run with varying degrees of any adjustment that you made. Ask them what they think happened.

[CLKunst]

Hmmm. That's what I suspect as well; some auto contrast adjustment somewhere.

This image was never intended to be black and white though either. I shot this in a dark little bar in Baltimore and it has lush deep colors and highlights.

J9 the Diva

But I am not in charge since she (my singer) chose the printer and is the one directly interacting with them. I was given no file size requirements for this project other than an 8x10 layout and I set my dpi for 300. The .TIFF file I sent was somewhere in the neighborhood of 17MB and I also sent her a duplicate in .JPEG at maximum about a 6MB file. They used the .TIFF file from what I can gather but again I haven't spoken directly to anyone from the shop.

I shall certainly suggest that she request they make no alterations to the file but is this something that could happen due to a different platform too (Like Photoshop v. Corel)? How can I protect my files from stuff like this? My singer is looking at me a little like this is my fault somehow and if it is I want to make it right but I don't seem to have enough information to do so yet. Has anyone else ever had this problem?

[Themage]

I actually like the 2nd shot better - mabye thats just me.