On Friday, 20 December 2019 12:11:34 UTC, Mike Halmarack wrote:
On Thu, 19 Dec 2019 16:56:58 -0800 (PST), tabbypurr wrote:
On Thursday, 19 December 2019 21:11:30 UTC, Martin Brown wrote:
On 19/12/2019 12:03, Mike Halmarack wrote:
On Thu, 19 Dec 2019 02:48:19 -0800 (PST), tabbypurr wrote:
On Wednesday, 18 December 2019 14:28:38 UTC, Mike Halmarack wrote:

My daughter sends me photos from her camera and I try to optimise them
for photoprinting. I often find that the final photos end up too dark,
even when I tweak my computer monitor brightness.
I know I can buy additional equipment to help with this, though I'm
not keen to.
Would printing the files on an inkjet printer provide adequate
examples of how the photoprint will ultimately come out?

If there's one adjustment I use more than any other, it's to move the brightness levels of the file up so the white areas come out white. In Gimp it's Colour, Levels.


NT

Thanks, I'll have a look at that.

Any easy sanity check is to take a look at the luminance histogram. That
will show any obvious faults in the raw image like under/over exposure..

Most print shops will automatically scale maximum brightness in the
supplied image to 255 if you feed them something underexposed.

But that isn't usually what you want. For general photos you want at least some of the bright area to overexpose & white out. How much is matter of judgement, but for general photos if you only have the brightest spot at white the rest is too dark. Brightest pixel at white is a good approach for diagrams, text etc, and some very carefully staged photos, but not for most real life photos.

I just spent some time and money on getting back dark prints and
posters, so any helpful advice is appreciated.
One particular image is a perfectly composed family group to my mind
but the original is fuzzy and dark and after many hours of attempted
improvements it ain't much improved. I already invested in Photoshop
CC and am in the process of choosing a new monitor/TV. I live in hope.

Gimp is free and does more than you'll learn in years.
Dark: I assume you've set white levels, next look at gamma. Gimp: colour, levels, as graph, and pull a spot on the line left or right.
Fuzzy: if you mean out of focus, there are sharpening filters but what you can do is limited. If you mean noisy, there are noise filters too. Again they're limited, but can help noticeably. If you mean lost in darkness, tweaking gamma often resolves it.


NT