If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
WalMart and jpeg printing
On my Macintosh, I converted a friend's wedding photo from tiff to jpeg
and burned it to a CD for a friend so she could have WalMart make it into Christmas cards. I mailed it off to her, and three weeks later she called and said WalMart did a test print and it "doesn't look right." I have no idea what she means; her description over the phone didn't help me at all. (She lives several hours away, so I can't just drop by to see it.) She said she took it to KMart and Staples also--same problem. While on the phone I suggested she try opening it on her PC, but she got an error message ("jpeg file has errors" or something like that). I tried it in my daughter's Windows 98 PC and I get the same error message. But it opens fine on my husband's PC at work (with Windows XP). And of course it opens and prints fine on my Mac. I burned a new CD and went to my local WalMart to test it. It showed up on the photo machine screen, but I didn't do a test print. (Am I correct in assuming that if I could see it on the WalMart screen it would probably print correctly? I've never used one of those photo machines.) I plan to mail it to her tomorrow, but I just remembered that I converted to jpeg from a (tiff) cmyk file. Should I have converted it from the RGB version instead--or does the color space not matter when converting to jpeg? |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
In article ,
nosredna wrote: On my Macintosh, I converted a friend's wedding photo from tiff to jpeg and burned it to a CD for a friend so she could have WalMart make it into Christmas cards. I mailed it off to her, and three weeks later she called and said WalMart did a test print and it "doesn't look right." I have no idea what she means; her description over the phone didn't help me at all. (She lives several hours away, so I can't just drop by to see it.) She said she took it to KMart and Staples also--same problem. While on the phone I suggested she try opening it on her PC, but she got an error message ("jpeg file has errors" or something like that). I tried it in my daughter's Windows 98 PC and I get the same error message. But it opens fine on my husband's PC at work (with Windows XP). And of course it opens and prints fine on my Mac. I burned a new CD and went to my local WalMart to test it. It showed up on the photo machine screen, but I didn't do a test print. (Am I correct in assuming that if I could see it on the WalMart screen it would probably print correctly? I've never used one of those photo machines.) I plan to mail it to her tomorrow, but I just remembered that I converted to jpeg from a (tiff) cmyk file. Should I have converted it from the RGB version instead--or does the color space not matter when converting to jpeg? Some versions of Windoze can't handle the Mac-specific data that's added to a CD even though it's perfectly within specifications. Try Shutterfly. You can create, preview, address, and order your Christmas cards online. http://www.shutterfly.com |
#3
|
|||
|
|||
"nosredna" wrote in message ... I burned a new CD and went to my local WalMart to test it. It showed up on the photo machine screen, but I didn't do a test print. By not doing a test print, you kept yourself from learning the answer. That would have given you a starting point to determine what the problem was, and also whether the problem was unique to her Wal Mart. (Am I correct in assuming that if I could see it on the WalMart screen it would probably print correctly? I've never used one of those photo machines.) I plan to mail it to her tomorrow, but I just remembered that I converted to jpeg from a (tiff) cmyk file. Should I have converted it from the RGB version instead--or does the color space not matter when converting to jpeg? Make sure to submit it as an RGB file...NOT a CMYK. |
#4
|
|||
|
|||
I had a situation where a client several hundred miles away needed some
photos. I didn't have time to print and ship so I uploaded them to Wal-Mart and had them printed at a Wal-Mart photo center near them. Worked as far as that goes...hated being able to upload only 4 at a time and they gave the client a bit of a hard time as the photos looked professional...as they should. So...why don't you upload the jpg and let her order them? She could have the printed near her home. "nosredna" wrote in message ... In article , Kevin McMurtrie wrote: In article , nosredna wrote: On my Macintosh, I converted a friend's wedding photo from tiff to jpeg and burned it to a CD for a friend so she could have WalMart make it into Christmas cards. I mailed it off to her, and three weeks later she called and said WalMart did a test print and it "doesn't look right." I have no idea what she means; her description over the phone didn't help me at all. (She lives several hours away, so I can't just drop by to see it.) She said she took it to KMart and Staples also--same problem. While on the phone I suggested she try opening it on her PC, but she got an error message ("jpeg file has errors" or something like that). I tried it in my daughter's Windows 98 PC and I get the same error message. But it opens fine on my husband's PC at work (with Windows XP). And of course it opens and prints fine on my Mac. I burned a new CD and went to my local WalMart to test it. It showed up on the photo machine screen, but I didn't do a test print. (Am I correct in assuming that if I could see it on the WalMart screen it would probably print correctly? I've never used one of those photo machines.) I plan to mail it to her tomorrow, but I just remembered that I converted to jpeg from a (tiff) cmyk file. Should I have converted it from the RGB version instead--or does the color space not matter when converting to jpeg? Some versions of Windoze can't handle the Mac-specific data that's added to a CD even though it's perfectly within specifications. Try Shutterfly. You can create, preview, address, and order your Christmas cards online. http://www.shutterfly.com Thanks for the recommendation, but I'm not the one who's doing cards--the friend is. I reconverted the tiff file to jpeg, but I did it from an RGB version this time. After all that, I read on another thread that some PCs and photo machines can't read a file if it has *lower case* .jpg suffix instead of .JPG! Oh well, I used lower case--I don't want to burn another CD at this point. |
#5
|
|||
|
|||
"nosredna" wrote in message
... ..., but I just remembered that I converted to jpeg from a (tiff) cmyk file. Should I have converted it from the RGB version instead--or does the color space not matter when converting to jpeg? If I understand it correctly, JPEG is always and only RGB. Any conversion to JPEG would always result in RGB. You shouldn't have to separately convert it to RGB first. Furthermore, your computer monitor works in RGB. Someone please jump in and correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that when you view the CMYK image on your screen, your viewing software has already produced an RGB version of the image. So you know the software correctly converts CMYK to RGB. It sounds like there is a file format problem that is not related to the image itself. JPEG, surprisingly, is not a file format. It's an image format that goes through further processing to become a disk file. One disk format that's commonly used for JPEG is JFIF. But there are others. Maybe that's the problem. Another possibility is that CDROM readers vary in their ability to read CDRs. Many older CDROM readers, such as those on the older Win98 machines, are unable to read CDRs, only the stamped/manufactured CDs. Alan |
#6
|
|||
|
|||
"nosredna" wrote in message
... ..., but I just remembered that I converted to jpeg from a (tiff) cmyk file. Should I have converted it from the RGB version instead--or does the color space not matter when converting to jpeg? If I understand it correctly, JPEG is always and only RGB. Any conversion to JPEG would always result in RGB. You shouldn't have to separately convert it to RGB first. Furthermore, your computer monitor works in RGB. Someone please jump in and correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that when you view the CMYK image on your screen, your viewing software has already produced an RGB version of the image. So you know the software correctly converts CMYK to RGB. It sounds like there is a file format problem that is not related to the image itself. JPEG, surprisingly, is not a file format. It's an image format that goes through further processing to become a disk file. One disk format that's commonly used for JPEG is JFIF. But there are others. Maybe that's the problem. Another possibility is that CDROM readers vary in their ability to read CDRs. Many older CDROM readers, such as those on the older Win98 machines, are unable to read CDRs, only the stamped/manufactured CDs. Alan |
#7
|
|||
|
|||
nosredna writes:
On my Macintosh, I converted a friend's wedding photo from tiff to jpeg and burned it to a CD for a friend so she could have WalMart make it into Christmas cards. I mailed it off to her, and three weeks later she called and said WalMart did a test print and it "doesn't look right." I have no idea what she means; her description over the phone didn't help me at all. (She lives several hours away, so I can't just drop by to see it.) She said she took it to KMart and Staples also--same problem. While on the phone I suggested she try opening it on her PC, but she got an error message ("jpeg file has errors" or something like that). I tried it in my daughter's Windows 98 PC and I get the same error message. But it opens fine on my husband's PC at work (with Windows XP). And of course it opens and prints fine on my Mac. I burned a new CD and went to my local WalMart to test it. It showed up on the photo machine screen, but I didn't do a test print. (Am I correct in assuming that if I could see it on the WalMart screen it would probably print correctly? I've never used one of those photo machines.) I plan to mail it to her tomorrow, but I just remembered that I converted to jpeg from a (tiff) cmyk file. Should I have converted it from the RGB version instead--or does the color space not matter when converting to jpeg? Yes the color space matters. In my area at least, Walmart uses Fuji machines for the 1 hour printing, and Kodak dye-subs for the instant prints (which is more expensive). For the Fuji machines, you want to make sure the JPG is in the sRGB color space (evidently most/all of the Fuji machines ignore any color space indications in the EXIF header). After some bad prints, I have been stopped printing at Walmart, since they now crank up the auto-correction and boost the saturation which took pictures that used to print fine and now turn them into garish ugly prints (presumably the majority of prints they deal with look better with this, or else everybody else thinks they do). However, you may be able to request them not to do any corrections. If I don't print it myself, I will send out my pictures to mpix.com (shutterfly.com and ezprints.com are other places that I like). -- Michael Meissner email: http://www.the-meissners.org |
#8
|
|||
|
|||
In article ,
Kevin McMurtrie wrote: In article , nosredna wrote: On my Macintosh, I converted a friend's wedding photo from tiff to jpeg and burned it to a CD for a friend so she could have WalMart make it into Christmas cards. I mailed it off to her, and three weeks later she called and said WalMart did a test print and it "doesn't look right." I have no idea what she means; her description over the phone didn't help me at all. (She lives several hours away, so I can't just drop by to see it.) She said she took it to KMart and Staples also--same problem. While on the phone I suggested she try opening it on her PC, but she got an error message ("jpeg file has errors" or something like that). I tried it in my daughter's Windows 98 PC and I get the same error message. But it opens fine on my husband's PC at work (with Windows XP). And of course it opens and prints fine on my Mac. I burned a new CD and went to my local WalMart to test it. It showed up on the photo machine screen, but I didn't do a test print. (Am I correct in assuming that if I could see it on the WalMart screen it would probably print correctly? I've never used one of those photo machines.) I plan to mail it to her tomorrow, but I just remembered that I converted to jpeg from a (tiff) cmyk file. Should I have converted it from the RGB version instead--or does the color space not matter when converting to jpeg? Some versions of Windoze can't handle the Mac-specific data that's added to a CD even though it's perfectly within specifications. Try Shutterfly. You can create, preview, address, and order your Christmas cards online. http://www.shutterfly.com Thanks for the recommendation, but I'm not the one who's doing cards--the friend is. I reconverted the tiff file to jpeg, but I did it from an RGB version this time. After all that, I read on another thread that some PCs and photo machines can't read a file if it has *lower case* .jpg suffix instead of .JPG! Oh well, I used lower case--I don't want to burn another CD at this point. |
#9
|
|||
|
|||
In article ,
Kevin McMurtrie wrote: In article , nosredna wrote: On my Macintosh, I converted a friend's wedding photo from tiff to jpeg and burned it to a CD for a friend so she could have WalMart make it into Christmas cards. I mailed it off to her, and three weeks later she called and said WalMart did a test print and it "doesn't look right." I have no idea what she means; her description over the phone didn't help me at all. (She lives several hours away, so I can't just drop by to see it.) She said she took it to KMart and Staples also--same problem. While on the phone I suggested she try opening it on her PC, but she got an error message ("jpeg file has errors" or something like that). I tried it in my daughter's Windows 98 PC and I get the same error message. But it opens fine on my husband's PC at work (with Windows XP). And of course it opens and prints fine on my Mac. I burned a new CD and went to my local WalMart to test it. It showed up on the photo machine screen, but I didn't do a test print. (Am I correct in assuming that if I could see it on the WalMart screen it would probably print correctly? I've never used one of those photo machines.) I plan to mail it to her tomorrow, but I just remembered that I converted to jpeg from a (tiff) cmyk file. Should I have converted it from the RGB version instead--or does the color space not matter when converting to jpeg? Some versions of Windoze can't handle the Mac-specific data that's added to a CD even though it's perfectly within specifications. Try Shutterfly. You can create, preview, address, and order your Christmas cards online. http://www.shutterfly.com Thanks for the recommendation, but I'm not the one who's doing cards--the friend is. I reconverted the tiff file to jpeg, but I did it from an RGB version this time. After all that, I read on another thread that some PCs and photo machines can't read a file if it has *lower case* .jpg suffix instead of .JPG! Oh well, I used lower case--I don't want to burn another CD at this point. |
#10
|
|||
|
|||
In article ,
"Alan Meyer" wrote: "nosredna" wrote in message ... ..., but I just remembered that I converted to jpeg from a (tiff) cmyk file. Should I have converted it from the RGB version instead--or does the color space not matter when converting to jpeg? If I understand it correctly, JPEG is always and only RGB. Any conversion to JPEG would always result in RGB. You shouldn't have to separately convert it to RGB first. Furthermore, your computer monitor works in RGB. Someone please jump in and correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that when you view the CMYK image on your screen, your viewing software has already produced an RGB version of the image. So you know the software correctly converts CMYK to RGB. It sounds like there is a file format problem that is not related to the image itself. JPEG, surprisingly, is not a file format. It's an image format that goes through further processing to become a disk file. One disk format that's commonly used for JPEG is JFIF. But there are others. Maybe that's the problem. Another possibility is that CDROM readers vary in their ability to read CDRs. Many older CDROM readers, such as those on the older Win98 machines, are unable to read CDRs, only the stamped/manufactured CDs. Alan It doesn't appear that "any conversion to jpeg would always result in RGB," since, according to Photoshop's Mode menu, the jpeg is definitely CMYK, presumably because I converted from a CMYK tiff. Normally I keep my tiffs in RGB and do a "save as" if I ever need a CMYK version, but for some crazy reason I didn't keep the RGB version of the photo in question, and didn't think to check its color mode before converting. The PCs I tested it in (the far away friend's who needs the jpeg and my daughter's Win98 machine) could read the CDR but couldn't open the jpeg. But my husband's PC (WinXP) could open the jpeg. |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|