prints too dark

[bigtexphoto]

I have a Canon i9100 printer that all of a sudden prints very dark. I have calibrated and reprofiled twice to no avail. The colors seem ok although dark. I must have done something wrong. Any ideas? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[RandySmith]

David - I've been playing around trying to improve some print outputs as well, I am no expert, but some questions & suggestion for you :

Did you profile only the monitor or the printer as well ?
What program are you using to print with ?
If you are using photoshop, try going "View" - "Proof setup" - "Custom" - "Device to Simulate" and check the "preview" box ... does the preview look dark as well ?
What profile space is the image saved as ? sRGB, RGB, Pro-RGB ?

[jeffkohn]

There could be multiple causes for this, it's kind of strange that it happened all of a sudden unless something changed.

The biggest causes of dark prints is actually LCD monitors that are calibrated way too bright. In typical home lighting you probably only want the LCD at about 100 cd/m^2, but many have theirs calibrated at 130-150. Unfortunately many consumer monitors may not calibrate well at lower brightness levels (or even at all).

[PhotoJinx]

Jeff's suggestion is where I would start too. Check the monitor calibration. You may also want to check to make sure you have the latest printer drivers installed. If you are a PC and you run Windows update automagically, it is possible the printer drivers may have been updated without your knowledge.