Tif files colour loss

[daxus]

Hi guys,
ive been asked to do some mug printing for a artist who has all his work saved in Tiff files ,although i have programs that will open and edit the tiffs, on print out i have had a loss of colour,i have talked to 2 graphic designers the first says there is a embeded colour profile thats causing the problem ,the second says there is no colour profile but the tiffs are very pale ,which is how the original mugs printed out very pale bar one which was scanned in small and saved as a png this printed perfectly,if i adjust the colour and contrast i get other issues such as the background showing a grey block of colour ect if anyone can offer a reason why these tiffs print out pale as the file they are in but perfect in a smaller file which i dont have please advise many thanks

[Paul]

would be good to see those graphic. is worth to remember that tiff are exelent file format that hold a file with no quality loss. Also is worth to remember that sublimation colour gamut is very limited and this can coze the troubles.

[daxus]

Hi thanks for the reply ,i cant upload the file to the forum as its quite copyright sensitive being its a known artist i realise this makes solving the problem a lot harder but really dont know what direction to go in next short of sitting down with the artist and going through all the files and there alot of them and correcting them bit by bit and its also if then they print true to the colour corrections

[John G]

What program are you opening and editing the files with - it may be something a little as cmyk / rgb settings or if its a photo/scan it may need the levels sorting out. A tiff is probably the best way to save as its lossless compared to a jpeg which is lossy.

[JSR]

It sounds like a profiling issue. I've occasionally had files (jpgs usually) sent to me that were created on a Mac using a profile that I just don't have. Some software can do a reasonable approximation of what it's supposed to look like, while others just show completely the wrong colours.

The only practical solution was to ask the creator of the file to save the file using a profile that's more commonplace. There's no point trying to use special profiles to achieve certain colours when the sublimation ink has a very small colour gamut anyway.

[daxus]

Hi there many thanks for the replies ive tryed opening the images in a number of programs publisher photo shop and corel we are now editing it in photo shop we have maged to evenly increase the colour but now it seems by too much so we are making progress ,the creator of the file was also a printer and when it comes to asking him to supply us with the images in a different file type,well it just doesnt look like its going to happen so all i can do is an approximation of the printed images for the time being