Anyone that knows much about photography AND printing?

[TheSnowman]

We are wanting to do window perf across this door here, to match the side of the building and kind of "hide" the door if you will. I don't know rather we're going to be better off taking a picture in the sun and printing that, or taking one in the shade. Ideas on what will match best? I would assume with the sun, but I figured I might as well see if anyone has had to match anything like this before.

 

[Gino]

The sunny version is always your best option. It is probalby closer to the natural appearance of the surrounding area.

 

[jc1cell]

My process would be a sunny picture of the wall, create several swatches with different tints of the picture color match and then compare with the actual wall and not rely only on the picture.

jc

 

[rfulford]

Shoot in the sunlight for sure. You will get your best color balance when shooting in daylight which is what your CCD or film if you prefer is balanced for. Also, your icc profiles in your printer are probably built for daylight viewing. The resulting image will match closer under daylight conditions and probably balance better as light changes. If you want to take and additional step, print a few color swatches, take them out to the site and evaluate them. You can adjust your photo as necessary to match colors you pick off your swatches.

 

[iSign]

is seeing out that window really critical? The window tiny peeking through will darken even a perfect color match, so you need to print lighter... or sell them on solid coverage!

 

[TheSnowman]

is seeing out that window really critical? The window tiny peeking through will darken even a perfect color match, so you need to print lighter... or sell them on solid coverage!

There's not much to "sell them on" since this is my shop...guess I should have said that. I will be subbing the print out, so not much chance for test prints. It's just something we wanted to try. We haven't done much with window perf before. There is a showroom in that door, and it lets in a lot of light, so we wanted to keep that around.

I will shoot in daylight, and then lighten it just a little more maybe, and see how it turns out. Like I said, just an idea we had, and we haven't done much with perf before. If it's horrible...I'll toss it.

 

[artbot]

not sun or shade. take the pic, vectorize over the pic. and get a sample of the paint color and match it in shop.

 

[signswi]

I wouldn't even bother with the first two steps artbot, just match the paint color. Stick your x1 on the paint swatch and print, done.

 

[SignManiac]

I wouldn't try to match the building. Different times of the day it will never match anyway. Instead, do something completely whacked out and creative. I just posted my bathroom door. Do something fun!

 

[artbot]

@jesse

the photo would be to bitmap the texture onto the final. otherwise i think there'd be no optical illusion. eyes are easily deceived.

 

[shakey0818]

why not just paint it

 

[Gino]

Make it your...... 'Chick Entrance'

​

 

[threads1]

I would take it in full shade. When you go to manipulate the shot later you will get all of the correct info (color) that is available. Your highlights get burnt out in sunlight. Also, if your camera is equipt with different focus zones, expose the parking lot. That will give you the truest colors of the entire shot. Then print it out o-natural and when the sun does hit it (or the shade) it will reflect the same way as the wall next to it. Hope I made some sense there.

 

[anotherdog]

the concrete looks to be a neutral color. If you can't work off a paint chip or pantone color then use photoshop curves to adjust that concrete to take off any cast or color bias. If you are really after hiding the door then you will also want the image of the concrete skirt to run across the bottom of the door.

Depending on the hole size you should lighten the image, however that will be down to a little trial and error (swatches).

Touble with doing some swatches is unless its local or a loss leader its a lot of work for a little door.

 

[messmedia]

DO NOT SHOOT SUNNY PHOTO!
Sun makes it too warm so U won't get needed effect.
Do it in a shade, but not too deep (if You have light meter it should b around 5600 k's) WITH WHITE BALLANCE ADJUSTMENT to Your camera, so U get color as close to original as it can b. If You can not set white ballance in camera, then make sure You have something white or neutral gray in your shot (peace of paper for example) - so You can TWEAK white balance in Photoshop.

Also, to mach the wal exactly, U need to measure the wall and adjust your photo so the parts on it have same dimensons as original.

 

[dwt]

why not just paint it

That's what I would do.
Thin a little oil based paint in a cup, load your gun and shoot it on the perf.

Since this thread is a few weeks old, maybe you can tell us what you went with.

 

[J. Miller Adam]

This is probably far too late, but...

As a photographer, whenever I need to get an accurate color balance I always put a small neutral grey card somewhere in the photo (where it can be cropped out later) and then use that to color balance on in Photoshop. If you use the Color Sampler tool (one of the eyedroppers) it will give you the rgb values of your grey patch. If it is perfectly color balanced a neutral grey will have the rgb values all the same... It's easy to adjust them in curves to get them to match. Then you put an Adobe RGB profile on it, send it off to print and pray!