Christmas Project Gone Bad

J

jp4294

Senior Member
Hi guys,
Hopefully this is in the right section and my apologies if it isn't!
I have been doing a Christmas project for my mum and it was going brilliantly until it went to print. What I've been doing is making a triptych, as you can see in the top photo, for a Christmas present for Mum that would be special. I edited the photos in LR4 then assembled the triptych in PS and saved it as a jpeg. I then uploaded it to Snapfish UK because they had a sale on for poster prints and ordered it. Then it arrived a few days later and to my disappointment, it looked nothing like the file I uploaded! The skin tones were very desaturated and looked almost greyish which ruins the whole thing - the second photo is an example of how it pretty much looks (I desaturated it a bit in LR to show an example). I've bought small 6x4 prints and a 18x12 print (same size as this triptych) from Snapfish before and they came out great so I'm wondering if something went wrong with printing or if it was me doing something funky in PS? I put a lot of hours into this so hopefully you can understand my frustration. Also, before anyone critizes the letters, yes I made them out of paper - I'm a poor student ok! :p Also, my camera is set to RGB colour and in PS it says the mode is RGB colour and 8 bit/channel if that makes a difference?

Triptych-1.jpg
Triptych-2.jpg

If anyone knows a possible fix it'd be great so I can hopefully have a nice looking present ready in time for Christmas I'd really appreciate it.
Cheers,
Jaye
 
K

kklor

Senior Member
Jaye-
Your Mum will love it. If you do send it out to a lab make sure that they will do color balance for you as part of the process. Many offer this free but am not sure about snapfish. Have you contacted them to see if they will reprint it for you? Wishing you much luck, so don't give up!
Cheers- Kathleen
 
J

jp4294

Senior Member
Thanks guys. I've emailed Snapfish so I'll see what they come up with. If that doesn't work I guess I'll have to go to a local place and get it done. I'll keep you posted though.
​Jaye
 
J

jp4294

Senior Member
Scott, I would give that a shot but I'm in England on holiday at the moment. It's good to know that for future though. I'm just hoping Snapfish will offer to reprint it. Fingers crossed!
 
J

jp4294

Senior Member
Just thought I'd let you all know that Snapfish think it was a printing error and have printed another one which is on its way. Hopefully no more problems now :)
 
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L

Lee

Senior Member
What happened with the posters? Was the reprint better? I hope it all worked out. What a lovely idea for your mom!!
 
J

jp4294

Senior Member
Ok so yeah I forgot to update this thread! So, they did a free reprint and I got it back and it was a bit better but still not right. At this stage it was a few days before Christmas so I was getting desperate. I was just about to make another complaint when I thought I'd just check to make sure it's not my fault. Sure enough, the photo that was uploaded to the Snapfish website looked just like the print - desaturated! Honestly, I have no idea how it happened because when I uploaded it again, it looked just how I wanted it to. The only thing I can think of is maybe I did something weird when I exported it out of PS the first time? I was so embarrassed though! I ended up giving her the 2nd, slightly better print which she loved anyway but I promised that I'd get it printed right soon, if not for her sake, for mine!
So yeah. Pretty embarrassing mistake by me and one I definitely won't be doing again hopefully. Well done to Snapfish for reprinting it though. The first one had some orange smudges along the very bottom of the print anyway which would be hidden once framed but still not perfect.
 
L

Lee

Senior Member
I'm glad it had a happy ending. I had a little 'issue' with my dad's gift this year and ended up giving him a substitute - still trying to sort out the original gift that the supplier messed up with - so I really empathize with you

Still, at least you had something to give to her. Don't feel too silly. I use Snapfish quite a lot and like their quality, but I've also had problems with prints from time to time and most of them have been down to me. I put it down to working on a laptop where the angle at which you view the screen makes a difference to how the photo looks vs how it really is. On the whole I have had excellent service from Snapfish. Let us know how the final one eventually turns out :)

I still think it's a super special gift that your mom can treasure for years to come!!!
 
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