Help, i am trying to print my JPEG file that i created in photoshop at a photo lab but it is coming out like an X-ray. I have printed these files before so i have no idea what i am doing wrong.

Question

Help, i am trying to print my JPEG file that i created in photoshop at a photo lab but it is coming out like an X-ray. I have printed these files before so i have no idea what i am doing wrong.
Could it be something i have done in my settings?
or when i am saving the file to JPEG?

Answer 1

Basically you're approaching this the wrong way around. What you need is the extreme sections to be quieter, not louder. The problem with moving the lower end of the audio is that you'll move the noise floor too, and get what's generally referred to as a 'pumping' effect. So what you do is to use a compressor to tame the peaks, and leave the lower level sound alone. When you've done that, you amplify (or normalize to a level you can determine) the whole signal. So the noise floor will be higher, but constant and not pumping. 'Match Volume' is a completely different tool for setting the overall levels of different tracks so that they sound approximately the same - it doesn't even begin to do what you want.
If it's music you are treating, then I'd almost certainly use the multiband compressor, because you get less artefacts with this. You need to experiment with the threshold levels, and almost certainly not use a massive compression ratio - 3:1 or 4:1 should be sufficient (although it's hard to tell without actually hearing the audio). You can tell what it's doing at any given point because the downward meter indicates how hard it's working. In theory you can apply make-up gain with it as well, but personally I leave that until everything's treated and use the 'Normalize' tool to set an absolute max level.