Samantha LaRue

Your prints are correct, even if you don't like - they are correct. Hopefully when you viewed them in different lighting situations you noticed how their color and darkness may have changed a little. But calibrating is going to be extremely difficult if you do not take control of the light in your editing space. Please follow the recommendations that Damien had in that article, and then we can proceed with helping you calibrate. 

I'd get a new card. Which reminds me, I need to do the same because I had a couple similar issues recently.

Please follow the instructions Kim linked above. Damien recommends turning OFF ambient light monitoring (the feature that requires you to leave your device plugged in so it can read the room and tell you if it's too bright). 

@Leslie Vu, I think you have your layer mask flipped. It looks like you masked it off everything but her shirt. It should be the other way. The rest of the photo should be in color with only her shirt in black and white. 

No, it's not possible in CS6 or any other version. "Camera raw filter" in PS is not the same thing as working on a raw file. This is the method that Damien recommends in situations when you need to replace the raw edit: http://www.damiensymonds.net/2013/10/replacing-raw-edit-in-psd.html

No, getting a Mac will put you in the exact same situation. You'd use the laptop instructions for that too when you go to calibrate.

Ok, i still see some noise, so can you go back and try it like this? http://www.damiensymonds.net/2010/07/raw-noise-removal.html

15 minutes ago, Miss Sally said:

wait...that explains it....i uploaded the first one....not once but twice!  lol

Lol! glad you got it figure out! hehe that's a much better view.

Have you done any editing to this image yet, or is it SOOR (only raw editing done)?

Can you get a crop like this? http://www.damiensymonds.net/2013/09/grabbing-700x700px-100-crop.html

Just now, catherine_r said:

I've worked on it in PS. 

OK, can you post the SOOR as well please? (that's all your raw editing work, but no PS work yet)

Is that your SOOR? Or have you worked on that in PS already?

I also went ahead and deleted your 2 duplicate posts since your question posted 3 times.

The hole for the actual mat is going to be just a touch smaller than 5x7 so that your print doesn't fall out. Just print a 5x7 as usual.

15 hours ago, Svetlana said:

it's not applying any manipulation to your monitor.

Correct, it doesn't do anything itself. It just respects the profiles that your monitor uses. That's what we mean by "color-managed."

IE and Windows Viewer and Preview are not colormanaged. I don't know the ins and outs of the programming and why they don't work, I just know they aren't. Some people are lucky and they don't see a huge difference between the programs, but others not so much. The bottom line is, they are not reliable.

And yes, that's the risk you run when you deal with only digitals. You have no control over what your clients are using to view their images and what devices. The best you can do is calibrate to match prints and use that as your standard so that you know what to expect from yourself and allow professionals like Damien to critique your work. 

No, all programs don't view it the same.

And I don't know what you mean by LR isn't color managed. Their software would be completely useless if that was true.

There is really only so much you can do with the Express, which is why Damien doesn't recommend it.

How do your prints compare to your screen?

Did you save layered PSD files of the images? Or is all you have left a bunch of jpegs with lines on them? Can you post one of them here?

He also had a picture on his Facebook page of him in multiple poses, I don't think there was ever a specific post on his site though besides the one that Lara linked above.

4 hours ago, kismet72 said:

I have filled that out before. Do you I need to do it again?

And the issue has now happened again after going to answer some emails and then coming back to PS.

And because I have no idea where you posted that information before.  

Can you get the original photo? A good scan will make this so much easier and give you the best results.

Can you post a 700px crop of the area?

Ah, you have an All In One computer, not a traditional desktop. For the purposes of calibration, it should be treated as a laptop.

Were you following the correct instructions for your computer type?

Can you fill this out please? 

http://www.damiensymonds.net/thread1.html

What sort of light system were you using? If the color of your light changed, it would change the whitebalance in your image. 

And if that doesn't work - how did you add your 2nd image to the file? Did you reduce the opacity of the 2nd image to position it before converting it to a smart object?