Printing help

[buzzlghtyr]

Hey All

I couldn't find a "best place" to post questions about printing, so I am just doing it here. Please move this mods if there is a better location.

So, I need some help / education with printing. Basically, the prints are pretty dark compared to what I see on my screen. I know there are a lot of things going on here, but is there a basic way I can change the color management of the printer to have say a photo setting and a normal setting. I have a all in one Dell ink jet, trying to print on the highest setting on photo paper. Oh and from Vista on a PC.

Thanks,

[JamesB]

I dont have an answer, so im just bumping for hte print heads to see this

James

[buzzlghtyr]

Thanks James. 8)

[SilverShooter]

My system is different than yours (Windows XP, CS3, and Epson r2400 printer), but the problem is one I have noticed as well. Even color calibrated monitors will almost always look brighter than the printed image. This is basically caused by the difference between a light source (the monitor) and a reflective image (the print). After market books on printing (closely associated with Epson) have lead me to believe that you will never get your monitor to look exactly like your prints. I've gone to a very high end LCD monitor and calibrate the thing routinely. I use the Epson ICCs when I print. Even using CS3 and with those added attempts to solve the problem, I still have to lighten my screen image to get the prints to have the proper brightness. I do get the correct colors on the screen, the only remaining problem is the brightness. My advice to you is to establish the correct amount of brightness to add and make that your last step before printing. Then use a "test strip" approach. That is print a small section of your image (full size if you don't mind the cost) to see if you got it right. Make a final adjustment and then print. Don't resize between the test strip and the final image or you may get color and brightness shifts from that step. For me, I need about 1/2 stop of brightness added to make a good print. Starting with a screen image that I really like, I add a blank adjustment layer in CS3, then blend it in screen mode and reduce its opacity to about 50% before printing. That usually does the trick. If not, it gets me so close that I only have to print one test strip. to make the final adjustment.

[shutterdrone]

Originally Posted by buzzlghtyr

Hey All

I couldn't find a "best place" to post questions about printing, so I am just doing it here. Please move this mods if there is a better location.

So, I need some help / education with printing. Basically, the prints are pretty dark compared to what I see on my screen. I know there are a lot of things going on here, but is there a basic way I can change the color management of the printer to have say a photo setting and a normal setting. I have a all in one Dell ink jet, trying to print on the highest setting on photo paper. Oh and from Vista on a PC.

Thanks,

Are you using photoshop? If so, you should be soft-proofing, . As for the actual settings on your printer, when you go to print, there should be a settings and/or printer button, hit that to get to your printer's settings.

!c

[SilverShooter]

Soft proofing will help with colors, but I'm not sure it will get you past the brightness problem. It didn't in my case. I have found that the Epson ICCs yield good color on their papers using Photoshop color correction to drive the Epson printer driver, so I usually skip soft proofing other than the print preview window in CS3. Another point I should mention, is that the correct brightness of your prints will be somewhat a function of how you display them. In bright sun, your prints can be much darker than if you view them in museum lighting levels.

[shutterdrone]

Originally Posted by SilverShooter

Soft proofing will help with colors, but I'm not sure it will get you past the brightness problem. It didn't in my case. I have found that the Epson ICCs yield good color on their papers using Photoshop color correction to drive the Epson printer driver, so I usually skip soft proofing other than the print preview window in CS3. Another point I should mention, is that the correct brightness of your prints will be somewhat a function of how you display them. In bright sun, your prints can be much darker than if you view them in museum lighting levels.

Oddly enough, I only print b&w, and I found the soft proofing helps with understanding rendering of shades on my epson, but I'm still stuck with an old 925, so the profiles may have a different effect. We also differ a bit, I think, in that I almost never modify the source image to get the printing right - I always adjust the contrast/brightness/etc. sliders until the print proofs right. (Although I would probably not be able to if I had someone else do printing - then I would have to make sure that the image looks the same in soft proof.) Another thing I've done is print b&w gradients, where the shade value is listed on each slice. Then I print that on different papers and with different settings so I have a reference of how a particular depth would come out. (Could do the same w/ color gradients, I'm sure.) I use these to determine which settings I should be printing with to get the tonal range I'm looking for. One thing is pretty consistent for me: on epson papers, I almost always reduce the contrast in the printer settings, on regular old watercolor paper, I almost always increase the contrast.

!c

[SilverShooter]

I agree that the source image needs to be preserved. I make a print copy of images I want to print, saving the final image separately. Of course, I never delete the RAW file I start from either. I'll have to look at the printer adjustment idea. So far, I've just used CS3 for all adjustments.

[buzzlghtyr]

Thanks for the input everyone. As I figured, just another step in the digital world. 8)

I am using Adobe Lightroom right now for everything and only use Photoshop on my mac, for when I need to really process something. I am trying to keep everything simple as possible (yeah, right... good luck), cause I just enjoy taking tons of pics of my daughter and what not and don't want it to become a burden cause I got to spend more time on the pics, than enjoying the pics.

Perhaps having a print house print them will be a better solution, but I will try some of these suggestions.

Thank you all

[w_nelson]

Well, here is a similar problem I'm having.

I updated to CS3 a few weeks ago and I have noticed that prints were coming out much darker than I expected based on on-screen previews. To test this I printed the same image file using both versions on the same computer, same montior, same printer, same paper. Sure enough, using CS2 the print came out much closer to what appears on the monitor. Using CS3, the print was at least one stop and maybe two stops darker. Screen images were the same with both CS versions.

What am I missing? I have noticed that apparently there is no place to designate the appropriate paper icc for the printer (Epson R1800) within the CS3 print dialogue box. If there is, where is it? Do these icc files need to be moved to a CS3 folder? In CS3 I designate the paper type in the Epson driver dialogue box.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Bill

[shutterdrone]

Originally Posted by w_nelson

I updated to CS3 a few weeks ago and I have noticed that prints were coming out much darker than I expected based on on-screen previews.

Bill,

While I haven't used CS3 myself yet, I do know that one change in CS3 is that printer settings are on a per-image basis, where they were simply "global" in CS2 and earlier versions on the PC (the word is this new behavior makes it consistent with previous versions on the Mac). So, the first question is - are you adjusting the settings on a per-image basis, or setting up once for a print session and then printing each image (as I do w/ CS2).

On the darker issue, there's also this note from adobe:

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/view...0878&sliceId=2

One thing mentioned about not finding ICC profiles for paper, is whether or not you installed the PIM (print image matching) driver for your Epson? If not, install it and see if the profiles are available.

!c

[w_nelson]

Thanks much, Church.

I'll check these leads out and let you know what I find.

Adobe's solution referred to in the link sounds more like a software design problem. Very strange. The profiles are available in CS2. Does the epson driver need to be updated for CS3, re-installed or neither?

Anyway, thanks.

Bill

[SilverShooter]

If you take a look in the print screen, on the right hand side you will see the printer profile drop box. If you have everything loaded properly, that drop box will have all the paper profiles listed in it. I missed this setting when I first went to CS3 and got darker than usual prints until I noticed the availability of these ICCs. I think the default setting for this drop box is Adobe RGB (or whatever you set the workspace color space to be). That will surely give you prints that are way too dark.

[w_nelson]

Steve and Church:

I just got off the phone with Adobe and would like to pass on what I've discovered. As it turns out, I did NOT have View/Proof Colors checked in the main CS3 window. If this is checked, the paper profiles become available (visible) in the printer dialogue box "Printer Profile". If it is not checked, none of the paper profiles show up. Once I made this change and chose the proper paper profile, I am happy to report that the prints are almost identical between Photoshop versions and the printer output in both cases is close to the what you see on the screen, given the difference between transmitted/reflected light, ambient room lighting, etc.

My monitor is a relatively inexpensive Dell 2007WFP (19inch) which has been color adjusted with an icm created using the Pantone Spyder system. I am therefore quite pleased with the accuracy of the screen view versus the print output. (I have no icc specific to my printer (R1800) other than the paper profiles supplied by Epson.)

And again, thanks for your help.

[shutterdrone]

Bill, that's excellent news - thanks for posting that back here, as I will probably need that info when I eventually upgrade to CS3, and it's great to have the solution in the archives.

!c