Damien Symonds

Really? I would have said the style was characterised by removal of colour.

Gawd that's nauseating.

Yes, I think so. If there was more shadowing I might have been able to leave Blue at 0/0/100/0. I made it.

I'm not sure what you mean, sorry. I didn't do anything like that. I think this method would work for a lot of photos; but again I emphasise there was no blue channel shift. I simply used the blue channel to make the black-and-white version of the photo, which is then used on Soft Light mode as a form of D&B.

Unexpectedly dark printing is first and foremost the result of a too-bright screen. What luminance target do you calibrate to?

The instagram subject has a more shadowing on her than your subject (particularly when we compare arms), but I'm pretty sure the blue channel is the key: Download PSD

Hmmmm ... that might make it tricky.

That might be a challenge for you? Do you do any photographic printing? Do you have any pro lab prints you can use?

Cool. Have you followed my directions here?

I see in your profile you list X-Rite under calibration device. Which X-Rite do you have?

I've moved this thread into Brian's area. This is beyond me, sorry.

Are you still around, @Seamus?

How strange! If you go to Task Manager, are there any clues there?

Yep, I can see that one, thanks. Ok, that's Step 1 taken care of. Now you need to do Steps 2-4. https://ask.damiensymonds.net/topic/107-read-this-first-posting-guidelines-and-download-files/

Her business page must be locked down to people in her own country only.

Now I can't see that you've posted anything at all, sorry.

I can't see it, sorry.

Unfortunately it's more than two decades since I used CorelDraw. So all I can do is tell you how it works in InDesign, and hope it translates ok. In InDesign we set up our document in the CMYK profile that the print shop advises for the job (make sure they DO advise one, don't just guess). It's vitally important that the document is CMYK, not RGB, so that blacks are accurate. We do our design - text and linework and graphs and whatever else - in that CMYK document. For photos, we edit them in Photoshop and leave them in RGB mode, but we soft-proof them as you mentioned above, and make any adjustments that are necessary. We DON'T convert them to CMYK. We place the RGB photos into the CMYK document. Then, as you said, the PDF conversion makes the photos CMYK during the output process. This is one of the reasons we do it as described above. If your final PDF output is an RGB e-book, the photos stay exactly as they are, and the other items get converted to RGB. This means that no matter what you're outputting, none of the elements of your design get converted more than once. Multiple colour mode conversions are very dangerous. There is no "round trip" in colour conversion. If a photo is in RGB, then gets converted to CMYK then back to RGB again, the values don't end up back where they were. They'll be different. This must be avoided. Gosh I hope this makes sense.

Hi @Seamus, what software do you use?

@MLev?

"Somewhere in between" is exactly what we aim for, yes.

Yes, I know. A foolish purchase, now you're stuck with it.

Yes, you've done absolutely everything you can do, short of a completely new computer.

Fair enough. Ok, go with what you've got, I guess.

So, you think the screen is still a little warmer than the prints?