We provide several benifits when doing color correction.
1) We check that a correct white balance is being used. Most cameras unless custom calibrated will have a slight color cast. Every light source also creates a color cast onto the image. Since we are a custom print house and all printing, adjustments, etc is done by hand we will not adjust white balance on images that are intended to have a color cast. For example if you take a beautiful sunset picture that baths the subject/landscape in a golden light white balancing this would destory the effect. If we are unsure we will contact you before proceeding.
2) With very few exceptions images will always look better if they use the full tonal space without clipping. The second we will do is adjust the image using the "curve" tools to expand an image to use the full tonal range. Below you will see an example of an image taken near sunset that does not use the full range and its corrected image.
3)The third thing we will do is create a custom icc profile for you image. When creating an typical icc profile (color mapping for the printer) a set of predefined colors are printed then using a spectrophotometer those colors are measured and a calibration adjustment is made for color mapping. A custom icc profile based on your image takes the most used color from YOUR image and calibrates based on those. This allows for the most accuate method.
Note: If you are not working on a correctly setup and calibrated monitor you will see different results. Every monitor is different even between the same brand and model. Colors on monitor will also change over time, therefore a regular sceduled calibration of your monitor should be done. Screen brightness is another issue, normally measured in luminance (cd/m^2), and should be around 100 cd/m^2 for print preveiwing. Careful some monitors just use a percentage and 100 is full brightness. Factory settings tend to be higher then is recommended for print preview (Mac tend to be very high). Follow the instructions on your monitor calibration equipment.
Simple conversion to B&W can cause many problems with tonal merging. Since our eyes see in color we tend to use color contrast rather then tonal contrast when designing an image layout. We can convert the image to B&W while "color correcting" the B&W image to retain the relative contrast between objects in the image.
These images will give you an example of the problems that can accure if B&W conversion is not done correctly. The first image is of a color blindness test were spots of very similar tones are used with very different colors. When doing a straight convertion you see in the second image you lose all detail that was presented using different colors. The Third images shows after a "color correction" was made. The B&W now correctly carries the desired look.
We no not provide this service at this time.