Lightroom 2 and tone fixing add on

[Wekiva]

I shot film for years and started shooting digital about 2 years ago. I've been using a D90 for the last year. We have always put our photos in albums but this came to a screeching halt when we went digital because we were so unhappy with the way printed pics came out. Things look muddy, colors seem off and skin often has bluish cast to it. (of curse this was printing pics from our point and shoot digital...I gave up then and haven't even tried to print photos from the D90)

I was recently reading in Pop Photo about tone fixing software, particularly Photo Tune 3. Apparently this software does a great (and simple) job of fixing photos to correct curves and adjust colors (especially skin tones). I currently have Lightroom 2 and am looking for something to integrate into my unskilled process. I just don't have the time or the knowledge on how to adjust curves to help fix up my photos.

It appears Photo Tune 3 works with Lightroom but from what I've read when you are in Lightroom and adjust a photo using the Photo Tune 3 plugin it makes a duplicate copy of the photo and makes actual adjustments to the duplicate. This seems to be a departure to how Ligthroom works which has always been in a non destructive way (saves the adjustments to the photos...but doesn't actually change the photo). Is there something comparable to Photo Tune that will plug into Lightroom and make the changes in a non destructive way? I really like the way changes made in lightroom don't require changes to the original. With Photo Tune 3 i'll end up with duplicates to every photo I touch...and end up doubling my photos and storage requirements.

Man...life is already so hectic...not really excited that getting a good looking print from my camera has become so complicated. Wow...I'm sounding old!

Thanks for any input.

 

[soydios]

I think a better solution is to calibrate your monitor and printer colors, so that what you see on your monitor is closer to what you see on print.

 

[xchangx]

Why not just adjust the white balance?

 

[Wekiva]

I've tried doing it myself and I'm just not happy with the results. I've tried fixing photos in Lightroom several different ways and each time I get them printed they just look bad...muddy...skin tones off, etc.

I don't print in-house but go to local print places. I am going to try smugmug to see how those come out. I'm sure I need to calibrate my monitor also. I just can't seem to get the hang of adjusting colors and tones. I thought I'd give a program like Photo Tune a try...but wanted something that made changes in a non destructive way.

 

[timswim78]

If you belong to Costco, consider printing with them. If you load their printer profile (which is published on their website) and calibrate your monitor, you should do well.

 

[xchangx]

I've tried doing it myself and I'm just not happy with the results. I've tried fixing photos in Lightroom several different ways and each time I get them printed they just look bad...muddy...skin tones off, etc.

I don't print in-house but go to local print places. I am going to try smugmug to see how those come out. I'm sure I need to calibrate my monitor also. I just can't seem to get the hang of adjusting colors and tones. I thought I'd give a program like Photo Tune a try...but wanted something that made changes in a non destructive way.

I believe you'll find that printing through smugmug will give you better results. Bayphoto has better prints than the other print company smugmug uses in my opinion, they even physically look at each one of your prints to make sure the colors are correct. Been very happy with them.