Please help: exposure and printing.

[Lankey]

Hello!
My first post here, though i have been getting the newsletters for a while now! But I really wanted to be part of the community here so i decided to join.

I'm having a bit of problems now though in getting the correct exposure when some of my pictures get printed.
I understand a bit about histogram, curves and levels ....though I am a bit hazed on what situation you would want to use one over the other (cur/lev). But when i get them printed at the shop, they seem to come out underexposed.

This image here for example, i tried to get it printed in just a small size but it comes out way to under exposed. Yet the picture looks much better on my monitor.

f6.3
1/60sec
18mm
Do you think it is under exposed?
And if so, could you please adjust it to what you think the correct exposure is?
Hopefully i can use it as a future reference.

[teaking]

It does look a little under exposed but it does depend on the conditions you took it under was it late in the day, night, dusk?

To me it sounds like your monitor maybe set brighter so the pictures look exposed but when printed off a calibrated printer they show the difference. It maybe worth trying to calibrate your monitor? theres different ways to do this some cost a lot otheres are free web based ones and you do get different results.

[kencaleno]

Why play with levels and curves if there are easier ways_ All I did here was to duplicate the basic level (Ctrl+J) then I selected "Screen" from the drop-down blending options box.

Regards, Ken

[Lankey]

@teaking
Was shot at about 6am
Yes your correct my monitor was set on 81 brightness and when i put it back to 50, it does look quite alot more like the printed version. Wow, i feel really stupid now but thanks for pointing that out.

@kencaleno
Thanks for the tip and for taking the time to show me too, I have only learn't a few of the overlay type options and "screen" was not one of them. But now i am going to investigate further.

Problems solved, thanks again!

[OsmosisStudios]

The image is dark: your monitor needs a good calibration.