Damien Symonds

May we see?

I know it is, that's exactly the point. You must NEVER sharpen in Lightroom. It's just a plain blank layer. What's important is that you have your clone tool set to "Sample: Current and below" in the options bar.

No, they're identical. Which web browser do you use?

There are two problems here. Both are very bad, but both are fixable. The problem with them looking different is that in your Save As dialog, you don't have the "ICC profile" checkbox checked. It's really important to keep that checked at all times. Never uncheck it, under any circumstance. The second problem is that you're in Adobe RGB. Follow this troubleshooter all the way to the end to fix this very very bad problem.

In case you like it, here's the PSD file. Hopefully you'll be able to see the steps I took, and copy them on your photo.

I beg you, don't wait too long to take the Sharpening class. Your edit makes me cry a little. This is the best I can do: It's not great, but I'm hoping it would pass casual scrutiny. What do you think?

Let me know how the comparison goes.

Again, though, ppi is one of the things that the poorly-endowed men and control-freak women will wig out about. So stick to 300.

The ppi is completely irrelevant. Generally we leave it at 300, but it honestly could be 10000, or 72, or 13. It's meaningless. Only the pixel dimensions matter. PPI only matters when you're doing the printing yourself.

No, you didn't. You chose the instructions from the "Desktop computers and external monitors" column, but you have a Mac, so of course you were supposed to choose it from the "Macs and Laptops" column.

Well, my understanding was that it was just the software. But I've never actually done it.

No, you're NOT following my instructions correctly. Go to the link again, and choose the correct one.

I have never seen that screen before. How did you access it?

Oh yeah, this is so murky. Basically, the bare minimum you can give them is six megapixels - roughly 2000x3000 pixels in size. As long as the focus is excellent, that's big enough to print at any size. However, by modern standards, 6MP is very small. So most clients, if you gave them 6MP files, would wonder why they are so small. In this modern age, you should usually be giving files of at least 10 megapixels. Yes, this makes things even more confusing. You know, and I know, that megabytes are meaningless. As you say, if a photo has lots of white space or plain colour, its jpeg compression will be very effective, and the resultant file will be quite small. Is a 2MB file necessarily a bad thing? Of course not. But it's damned hard to convince a client of that, isn't it? Clients, especially male clients with small penises, expect much bigger file sizes. I don't know, honestly. All you can tell them is the truth - that the file you've given them is suitable to be printed as big as a house if they wish, and that whatever dumb printer they've tried to use does not understand photographs. I've talked about these issues a bit more in this article, and at length in the recent update to The Print Sharpening Class.

If you upgrade to the Elite (and yes, I do recommend it if you can afford it) you'll find that my Elite instructions include the "SpyderTune" section for this purpose.

Hi Tammie, were you following my instructions here?

Alas, green-red is impossible to compensate for with the Pro, as far as I know. The Elite has powerful functions for doing so.

Oh, yeah, I remember the problem now. For some reason, icc profiles have two names - an "internal" and "external" name, as it were. These are their external names: But these are their internal names: Confusing, I know.

Gosh. Ok, may I try? Can you send the profiles to me?

Not a stupid question at all. In Photoshop (and other colour-managed programs like Bridge), they should look the same. However, in non-colour-managed programs (eg Windows Viewer) they're likely to look different.

Gosh, I don't know. That's the right place. Had you quit Photoshop while you loaded them there; or have you since restarted Photoshop, at least?

This one is for all your fucked up previous photos. Stoopid Udemy.

Just to confirm, are you getting a good print match with the desktop?

The Spyder Pro allows you to calibrate both screens, yes. However, ultimately it comes down to the laptop's ability to handle them. Mind you, most modern laptops have a graphics card powerful enough to cope with multiple profiles at once, so I'd be surprised if this was a problem. If you're not sure if each screen's profile is being honoured, you can use this. Are you following my calibration instructions here for the laptop, and here for the desktop?

Oh crap, I just noticed you have a MUCH worse problem!!!!! Please fix it here.