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Save me from my Printing Hell
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Need some help peeps, it goes like this –
The usual can of worms… my home inkjet prints are about 5+ shades darker than the onscreen image.
Dell PC + Dell Monitor
Huey Pro Calibration (OK, I know its crap but its surely better than now’t?)
Epson R2880
Epson Inks
Epson Paper
Epson ProfilesOnce I’ve finished post processing an image I then soft proof it (CS3). Differences in the proof are negligable so I proceed to print the original image (CS3).
CS3 Print Settings = Photoshop Manages Colours, Epson Profile Selected, Black Point Compensation On, R2880 settings changed to ensure it doesn’t try anthing funky.
The print comes out… and it’s way darker than it’s on screen equivalent.
I’m never 100% certain that what I do when I calibrate the monitor is correct… but I can see the shades of black and the shades of white when prompted. I adjust the brightness & contrast via the buttons on the monitor.
There’s also an nVidia Control Panel that allows you to change brightness & contrast but it seems a bit naff to me so I just leave it alone.
“Your monitor is too bright” I hear you say. If I darken down the monitor to match the print then monitor is horrible. Surely I can’t be expected to work with a monitor this dark?
Urgghh… annoying.
Can anyone save me from my printing hell?
Thanks
J*Edit* Typo
Try using the epson profile for onscreen proofing,
but using the embedded profile for the printer dialogue…
Ideally, you’ll be using Adobe RGB-In the print dialogue box, turn off colour management
If your monitor is too dark, it might mean that the room you’re working in is too bright…
Although the viewing conditions for the print should be quite bright, and ideally, daylight balanced.These things are connected, you know-
Cheerz for ze response jz.
I usually pull the curtains to darken down the room.
The image is in Adobe RGB.
I soft proof using the Epson Profile, but in essence the soft proofing is totally redundant here as any differences are too negligible to spend time sorting out.
I print using the Espon Profile (Photoshop Manages Colours etc).
Are you suggesting I should just stick with aRGB? Any chance of a screen shot of your print settings?
Ta
dunno if this is gonna help…
or how the pc dialogues relate-
above is the ‘print with preview’ dialogue on the left, and the ‘print’ dialogue on the right-Using the soft proofing, you should be able to simulate paper white-
there should be a noticeable difference onscreen, even if it’s small-I say this with great trepidation, but I’ve heard of this problem before,
and it almost always came down to double profiling — once in PS and again
in the printer. Are you quite certain that ICM is turned off in the printer dialogue?If you print with let the printer manage colour, do you get as dark an image?
the monitor should be quite dark
what kind of monitor – lcd or crt?
the other real problem with cheaper monitors is they dont have proper control over brightness, they have backlight instead
most office type monitors are about 5-10 times brighter than you need for printing
the other thing get a standard test image to print and profile from, so you are always using the same thing
also turn off that ambient light thing on the huey as it adjusts things on the fly, which you dont want
Thanks for the replies lads.
I’m pretty sure my settings are pretty similar to those posted by Joseph. I was of the assumption that the main thing here was “Colour Settings = Off” which I have.
Steve: It’s an LCD. When you say it should be quite dark that would then lead me to thinking that all my images need +1-2 stops of exposure for them to look normal on the screen, because they look fine at my current settings… or are they simply supposed to look dark on screen? Very confusing.
Cheers
Jbrightness of your screen is the problem
remember your trying to make the images on screen look like they would on paper, so if that means they look dark on screen but look the same on paper then you have something right
Presets-
once you have your settings dialed in,
you can save them as a preset, usually for a particular paper type-Go to ‘Presets’ – save as…
Cheers lads.
I’m able to get a print looking fairly close to what’s onscreen but it requires a couple of passes of the Curves – Lighten preset.
I’m still a bit baffled about the screen brightness… if I have a darkened monitor, I download images from my camera, they all look too dark because of the darkened monitor, they all have to be adjusted to lighten them to an acceptable level for printing.
So my hand is being forced… I have to lighten the images via post processing to get an acceptable print. Maybe this is the norm… but I’d have thought then that having to lighten is an additional post processing step… image quality ‘n all that? Forgive my ignorance.. just trying to get my head around this properly.
Thanks again.
*Edit* Re: Presets – Thanks Joseph, I had mentioned that in my earlier post but removed about a minute later as I figured out same.
Don’t know if you’re allowed to mention another group on here, but ephotozine.com has a calibration strip at the bottom of each page, white on the left, black on the right in a series of squares. You adjust your monitor brightness and contrast until you can see each square. It worked a treat for me when I recently bought an LG television which also functions as a monitor. I think I ended up reducing the brightness to 70%. It looked terrible at first after seeing the initial HD brightness, but my prints look more like what I see on-screen now.
Alex.Hey John,
I’ve added a calibration strip to the bottom of the site here. One I had prepared earlier :)
Will perhaps position it a bit better later.Cheers Mark, handy to have.
I can’t for the love of me get nfl-da’s PC to show me the darkest 6 boxes or so. No calibration h/w here… just tweaking the brightness and contrast but not happening for me at all.
Edit: Actually I can. I just read that there are 16 shades… I initially never read the instructions (doh) and thought that the long black segment at the end was split into 5-6 boxes.
J
Mark, do you have a link to that image?
The last 4 boxes are all showing 100% black for me,
but it’s probably my monitor…
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