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Lightboy thanks so so much for taking the time and effort to do that. By my side, I ordered a print from a friend that owns a plotter, and he told me more or less the same than you. I will post a picture with both of the prints so you see the difference if finally the image was ok for my friend too.

By the way, thanks for the info about the calibrator, this same guy lent me a Spyder so I can calibrate mine with full precision.

PAQUITO
I'm not if you already solved your problem.
I once had a similar problem.
Saving as tiff cmyk rgb will not matter. it all comes down how the image colors are and the printing is done in a way so both color profiles match for the image and the printer.

I once solved that problem with opening image in PS and make sure you turn on Gamut Warning from View menu.
if you see grey areas those are the problematic areas for the color profile you're working on.
You have to check that with CMYK profile. Here in Turkey people use the Forga29 for Cymk I think.

I usually work in Adove 1998 RGB color profile. Which has large gamut spectrum.
Standard SRGB-IEC monitor profiles are messy. Wont wok well with print houses.

if you have those grey areas. all you need to do is desature the colors a bit,
Also applying grain on to the image works.

The image you posted had exposed very saturated yellow back ground. I do not know this deeply.
But I think it all depends on if the printer or the the program you print handles the colors well.
if your colors are maximum values. this messes the progress. The printer or the software might first try to overcome the out-of-gamut area. That would also worsen the other colors that have no problem at all.
But your image completely looks different if printed.
So you should correct the images before hand. so that you will not let printer decide for itself

hope it helps.


Edit....
By the way About the Color calibration. Calibrating is good for few days but cannot be compared to hardware calibrated monitors. What ever you calibration is if your renders have very dark or very saturated / bright colors they will not print out as it is. You have to check with Gamut..

Some printers install their own color profiles with the install.

The one I own canon ix6850 has that, so when i print. I make sure I choose that profile.
That gives the best result. Printing from PS I always let color handling by PS and Choose the correct printers color profile. And you can see the color preview as well

Eww.

Telling to the client they don´t know a thing about what they are supposed to be doing. Worst things.

yea you don't tell your client they don't know what their doing, you educate them and show them how to do it the right way. Then they will be your client forever

Actually the print is not from my client, but from a third person. A printing house, I guess. But yes, I will show them the good print from my friend so they are aware of the service they are receiving.

- what gamma setting are you using, 2.2 should be on the output, look into linear workflow if you didn't yet, it's a bitch to wrap your mind around it..
- had one render printed in 3x2 meters, turned out pretty much as expected
- crappy printers give out very crappy dark tones

Gamma 1.0 as it says the imager tab. Could you give some info about working in linear?

there was a lot of talk here and all around the web, put it on your to do list..

- bottom line, you should work in gamma 1.0 with input textures (although I use whatever looks ok), and export with gamma 2.2 - try working on output 2.2, something was changed there, but I keep it like that..

- basic theory: software works with gamma 1.0, monitors with 2.2 (approximately) - keep an eye out on that topic, search around the forum..

http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic. ... ow#p213159

if your images look a bit "burned out" - gamma is too low, too high and looks a bit washed out..

.. also I try and compare how the images look on an ipad (for an average looking display, and check on other people's uncalibrated monitors)

Octane is taking care of the input gamma for you on textures. rgb textures have a gamma of 2.2 and bump, displacement float images have a gamma of 1.0
by default octane works in the linear color space, you should have your color options disabled in modo when working in octane.
There is nothing wrong with the gamma of your images they print fine.
As long as you have your display calibrated and profiled properly what you see is what you get.
Before you get all confused with the information flying around, there was nothing wrong with your image. The service bureau that your client took the image to screwed up, plain and simple.
it's not any more complicated than that.

Do not check your images on uncalibrated, unprofiled displays, that will lead you down the wrong path as you don't know what is correct.
The last thing you want to do is make color, contrast, brightness corrections on a display that is not calibrated and profiled. If you do you may be making corrections to the image that are the fault of the display not the image.

The whole purpose of color management is to take the guessing out of the equation so when you go from a display to a print or device that is color managed that the colors translate across to the device in a predictable manner.
Every device,including prints have a color gamut which is the range of colors that they are able to reproduce. Some can produce a wider more varied range of colors and some less.
Your typical computer monitor on the low end is usually around a srgb color space 2.2 gamma now days that is what the manufactures aim for. The preset settings on the monitor are not accurate but generally give a reasonable representation of an image on screen. When you go up the line in displays to premium models most today will almost cover the adobe rgb color space which has a lot larger color gamut than srgb,meaning they can display more subtle and highly saturated colors with out clipping these are called wide gamut displays.

The issue is if you don't have a profiling package installed on your computer your monitor can be fairly accurate, way off, or anything in between.
A calibrated display means that the grey scale representation of your monitor is correct, a mid grey swatch of color should have no color shifts to red or blue etc.
A properly calibrate grey scale from black all the way up to white will do wonders for the look of the image, but it will do nothing for the color accuracy from your original it will be better of course because your greys will be nuetral, you will get nice color but the color will be what the native color gamut is of the device so color representation compared to your original may be off a bit.
Profiling is to tune up the color. Here is an example
Say you have a color in photoshop and it is a red of say 125 on your monitor that will give you a certain color of red, now on my monitor if I go into photoshop and do the same color swatch of 125 my red will look different from your red. which one is correct mine or yours?
Photoshop knows what color 125 red is. Your monitor does not so it will display a red that is it's 125 red and your monitor will do the same.
Profiling takes the true 125 red and see's the way your monitor represents colors. The profile for your monitor is basically a look up table, so when you want 125 red your monitor might actually give you 145 red etc. The monitor profile will adjust the color so that on your monitor that 125 red will be correct or as correct as your display device can display it at which minimizes the error in color representation across different devices.

Without color management thoughout the chain from creation to output anything can go wrong color wise and give you a result you were not expecting which makes the client angry if anything goes wrong.
If your client knows that you have a fully color manged workflow from end to end you give them confidence that if there is a problem with the color later down the line, it's not on your end.
I hope that clears things up a bit.
Keith

which is all correct, theory is all good, and the printing service isn't doing a good job..

- the thing with color profiles, nobody knows how to wrap around it.. - I have asked people doing professional photography on uncalibrated monitors, and every time I ask, did you calibrate, they usually smile and say something like, do you even..

- I started treating this the same way you would treat High fidelity music - Hi fi just doesn't sound good on average home sound systems, hi fi is produces for hi fi speakers, the ones that 95% people use are lo fi pc speakers etc.. so most music is now produced for low fi, so when you listen to music on hi fi it sounds bad, cause you hear all the mistakes, and other way round

- so I try and approximate, and try to find and average looking scenario for most displays (95% displays are probably not calibrated)..

- most printing services I've seen, also don't bother that much with color profiles, just print it out via their RIP software, or whatever, approximate - it's a mess..

- lastly you really need to dig deeply and educate yourself about colour profiles to get somwhere, I give up when usually someone suggest to read this and that book - OMG -
- anyway, I still try and educate myself whenever possible, but it seems everything is a lot of approximation and to do with experience working with printing services..

- but basically for web presentations, I feel you absolutely need to check on non calibrated monitors because everyone else will see it like that

- post links about color profile theories calibrators etc - I use a spyder elite for calibration - and still I'm not too happy with the results (and it has some trouble calibrating dell monitors, which I primarily use)
.. something basic and whatever works is ok..