Unfortunately, even shots from great cameras won't produce perfect prints without adjustments.
It comes as a rude shock to most people when they discover their digital cameras make them look red, especially with the built-in flash. Color correction to the rescue!
Color correction at SmugMug
SmugMug offers what very few printing sites offer: the ability to turn off color correction. However, unless you adjust your photos yourself and order test prints to verify your adjustments, we highly recommend enabling color correction.
We print through two different labs and they handle color correction differently. EZ Prints is the lab for Power and Standard subscribers (and Professional subscribers if they choose it). At EZ Prints, color correction is included in the print price and automated through industrial-strength software and SmugMug's special recipe. It improves nearly every print.
Professional subscribers can choose Bay Photo as their printing lab instead, and color correction at Bay Photo is done by hand. It increases the base price of each print, but the special attention provides excellent results that are very consistent.
Where do I indicate my choice?
Power and Standard subscribers will see a Color Correction setting in the Settings tab of their Control Panel and they can also specify Color Correction Yes/No in their gallery settings page for each gallery. Pros will see the choice in their pro pricing tool, on both the portfolio and gallery level.
How does color correction through EZ Prints work?
This type of automated correction is nothing like the simple quick fix programs you see in desktop applications that wreck many photos.
The easy part: brightness and contrast.
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The hard part: memory colors — skin, sky, and grass.
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The automated color correction does what is very hard even for Photoshop wizards to do: it senses the areas of photos we're likely to judge them by, and it adjusts those regions to tones we expect to see.
Q: I'm a SmugMug subscriber. Does the Apply Color Effect tool I see in my Tools Menu have this sophistication?
A: Unfortunately, no.
Q: If I am printing black and white or sepia photos, should I enable color correction through EZ Prints?
A: We recommend disabling color correction in this case. It's automated and optimized to improve color prints.
Q: I'm a professional photographer with a SmugMug Pro account. Should I pay for color correction through Bay Photo?
A: It depends. If you enjoy adjusting all your photos and have soft-proofed using Bay's ICC profile, and ordered test prints to verify, then you may wish to turn color correction off. If you would rather someone else do the legwork, you may find their hand color correction is well worth it.