Snakepottery Posted November 24, 2009 Share #1 Posted November 24, 2009 Advertisement (gone after registration) Hi all, I've been printing pictures on my colour printer for some time but never managed to get colour pictures to have the same brightness as I see on the screen. I usually have to increase the brightness by 1 to 2 stops to get it close. I have calibrated the screen usuing Eye One monitor calibration and use the correct colour profiles for the paper I use (Ilford Galerie Pearl). So I am at a loos as to know what to do next. Interestingly, monochrome pix are perfect! The kit I use is, Apple iMac, Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom 2, Epson R2400 printer. Any thoughts anyone? Thanks Andy PS, Is this the right forum for this? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted November 24, 2009 Posted November 24, 2009 Hi Snakepottery, Take a look here Printing versus screen colour match/density. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
andybarton Posted November 24, 2009 Share #2 Posted November 24, 2009 No Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
andybarton Posted November 24, 2009 Share #3 Posted November 24, 2009 But it is now... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest flatfour Posted November 24, 2009 Share #4 Posted November 24, 2009 I had this problem. Strangely my HP 7960 basic printer gave me correct results but my Photo printer HP B9180 was wrong until I used Advanced HP Photo Paper. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snakepottery Posted November 24, 2009 Author Share #5 Posted November 24, 2009 Thanks Andy! Haven't seen this forum yet! Andy Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ericperlberg Posted November 25, 2009 Share #6 Posted November 25, 2009 Hi all, I've been printing pictures on my colour printer for some time but never managed to get colour pictures to have the same brightness as I see on the screen. I usually have to increase the brightness by 1 to 2 stops to get it close. I have calibrated the screen usuing Eye One monitor calibration and use the correct colour profiles for the paper I use (Ilford Galerie Pearl). So I am at a loos as to know what to do next. Interestingly, monochrome pix are perfect! The kit I use is, Apple iMac, Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom 2, Epson R2400 printer. Any thoughts anyone? Thanks Andy PS, Is this the right forum for this? You shouldn't change the screen "brightness" because the profile you build is based on the "brightness" setting and changing the brightness partially nullifies the monitor profile you've built. What you need to do is get a neutral lamp (ideal but not easy to find but there are some, you need a bulb with a CRI of close to 100 or else develop a sense of how the colour of your illumination device effects the print) and get the print lighting to match your monitor. Then you can make an accurate assessment. I use a Mac and an Eizo profiled monitor and an Epson 2400 and I get very accurate screen soft-proofs (you are using soft-proofing?). You also have to factor in that the fact that the screen emits light while a print reflects light so you'll never be able to get a perfect match. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
GMB Posted November 25, 2009 Share #7 Posted November 25, 2009 Advertisement (gone after registration) I use a Mac and an Eizo profiled monitor and an Epson 2400 and I get very accurate screen soft-proofs (you are using soft-proofing?). You also have to factor in that the fact that the screen emits light while a print reflects light so you'll never be able to get a perfect match. How did you profile your Eizo? I use the same combo and normally get it close but not allways. I can only underline the importance of the lightning. Often I print in evening (I do have a day job). The fact that the room is light makes the screen look brighter; at the same time, the prints look darker (I do not have a calibrated lamp). When I look at them in the morning under daylight, things are generally much better:) Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snakepottery Posted November 25, 2009 Author Share #8 Posted November 25, 2009 Thanks I print at night too and in a small office with limited natural lighting. Soft proofing? I don't wish to be ignorant but not sure wha you mean!! Print preview? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ericperlberg Posted November 25, 2009 Share #9 Posted November 25, 2009 How did you profile your Eizo? I use the same combo and normally get it close but not allways. I can only underline the importance of the lightning. Often I print in evening (I do have a day job). The fact that the room is light makes the screen look brighter; at the same time, the prints look darker (I do not have a calibrated lamp). When I look at them in the morning under daylight, things are generally much better:) I use an Gretag Macbeth (now X-1) spectrophotometre (not a colorimeter) but that shouldn't matter and the colornavigator software that came with my Eizo (I have a coloredge series model). Realise that the intensity of the illumination on your print has to be as close as possible to the brightness of your monitor if you're going to be able to look at your work on the monitor and expect it to match up with how your prints look. Leaving aside colour purity for the moment, if you have a lamp with an elbow arm on it put it near where you're going to view the print (hopefully on a white or neutral grey background) and raise and lower the lamp arm above a print that hopefully you also have displayed on your monitor until the luminosity from the print matches the luminosity (brightness) of your monitor. Having done that you should be in the same ball park in terms of how bright your print looks compared to the monitor and the monitor won't be showing your work brighter than what your printer prints. That should allow you to look at your monitor and your prints and see a good correspondence between print and monitor in terms of brightness. Of course halogen lamps and incandescent lamps aren't neutral white light but have reddish overtones which means that anything reflecting red in your print will be accentuated and anything reflecting blue/green will relatively recede. Flourescent lamps generally are bluish so the reverse happens. CRI is a measure of the neutrality of a bulb and in general terms the closer the CRI rating of a bulb is to 100 the more neutral it is. Solux bulbs (google them) which can be used in any lamp are colour neutral and not too expensive and Solux makes a bunch of lamps from relatively affordable to very pricy viewing booths that professionals must have to avoid losing clients. By using a neutral light (which is generally like mid-day light from a northern exposed window) you should get an even better/more accurate on screen to print match. Hope that's useful. Eric Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ericperlberg Posted November 25, 2009 Share #10 Posted November 25, 2009 Thanks I print at night too and in a small office with limited natural lighting. Soft proofing? I don't wish to be ignorant but not sure wha you mean!! Print preview? Me too (print at night) see my reply above about lighting. Soft-proofing is a great tool which unfortunately doesn't exist in Lightroom for reasons which boggle the imagination, nor in Photoshop Elements (so Adobe can get you to buy Photoshop) but it does exist in most other high end photo software including Photoshop, Picture Window Pro, Aperture, etc. Here's a very brief synopsis of the problem. Your image has a range of colours in it from your camera. The monitor can show many of these colours but not all of them (esp the very saturated colours). Your printer can print many of the colours that your monitor can show but not all of them (again, esp in the saturated areas). Also the paper you print on is not perfectly white, it may be a bit yellowish or very yellowish etc. The paper has a dynamic range, the colour range that it can reflect. Further, your ink has certain characteristics. So you have all these overlapping "gamuts" of colour and (monitor, printer, paper, ink) and just looking at your monitor your not compensating for your printer or paper or ink. You've probably got a printer profile for the paper you print on, either a custom one made for you or one which you've downloaded from the paper manufacturer (a custom one is far better, ie more accurate). Softproofing is a tool which allows your monitor to display not its own range of colours but rather than range of colours that your printer/paper/ink combination are capable of (except where they exceed your monitor's range which of course you can't improve on without buying a better monitor. Here's a more complete explanation. Here's another. Soft-proofing will save you a lot of aggravation even though getting your head around the concepts initially will cause you even more aggravation. You'll also need to learn about Rendering Intents. It's not that complicated really but its like driving... the first time you drive a car you think blimey, how am I going to remember to look in the mirrors and steer the car and brake and all the other things you have to pay attention to and then... voila, it becomes second nature. There are lots of resources on the web about softproofing and rendering intents. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Bernd Banken Posted November 25, 2009 Share #11 Posted November 25, 2009 Eric, thanks for the tipp with the elbow lamp! Brilliant! Cheers Bernd Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnwolf Posted November 25, 2009 Share #12 Posted November 25, 2009 ...Soft proofing? I don't wish to be ignorant but not sure wha you mean!! Print preview? Soft-proofing is critical to a good print, in my view. It emulates how the print will look on the paper you have chosen. That could certainly be part of your problem. I use LR also, but always soft-proof in PS. I open the file in PS, duplicate it, tile the pictures, set the soft-proof to the desired profile on the duplicate, and then adjust it to match the original. If there is a way to soft-proof in LR, I'd sure like to know about. Google soft-proofing. There's lots of info. John Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ericperlberg Posted November 25, 2009 Share #13 Posted November 25, 2009 Soft-proofing is critical to a good print, in my view. It emulates how the print will look on the paper you have chosen. That could certainly be part of your problem. I use LR also, but always soft-proof in PS. I open the file in PS, duplicate it, tile the pictures, set the soft-proof to the desired profile on the duplicate, and then adjust it to match the original. If there is a way to soft-proof in LR, I'd sure like to know about. Google soft-proofing. There's lots of info. John My understanding from reading John Nack's blog (he's a product manager of Photoshop at Adobe and writes a very good blog, google John Nack blog) is that for what ever technical reason it was left out of Lightroom v1 and adding it to the lightroom engine is going to require a major rewrite of critical parts of Lightroom and is not an easy or straightforward task (as in too expensive for Adobe's budget for lightroom if they're going to meet their profit targets for investors). If you bring this subject up at the Lightroom forum the Adobe "black shirts" especially Jeff Schewe will attack and belittle you and generally reveal his true character. I do as John does, I work in Lightroom and then move my files to Photoshop (CS3) to softproof and then print from Photoshop. Excuse me while I vent my frustrations but I refer to this as one aspect of the "Adobe tax". They make lightroom and then they force you to buy Photoshop anyway just so that you can do what Adobe invented in the first place, softproofing. Lightroom is a v. good piece of software and Photoshop is the elephant in the jungle but to leave out soft-proofing in version 1, 2 and 3 of Lightroom is really head scratchingly inexplicable. I personally will be so happy to see the back of all Adobe products because of their attitude towards their customers. Where is the inventor of a better mouse trap when you need her? end rant. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snakepottery Posted November 25, 2009 Author Share #14 Posted November 25, 2009 Well gents! Thanks for you full and complete answers! I will spend some time in CS4 and find soft proofing, hopefully this weekend although I do have to work on Saturday, bah! I have an elbow lamp in the study so can try that too. I intend to spend more time in this forum rather slouching around barnacks Bar!! Thanks Andy Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnwolf Posted November 25, 2009 Share #15 Posted November 25, 2009 Andy, here's a summary of what I do. My screen and prints match pretty well. From LR, open the picture in PS In PS (CS4): Image > Duplicate Window > Arrange > Tile On the duplicated picture: View > Proof Setup > Custom. Choose your paper profile and Simulate Paper Color. De-select Preserve RGB Numbers. Adjust duplicated picture to match the original (levels or curves should do it) Print (with PS managing color). You might want to save the soft-proofed version with a meaningful name that indicates the paper. I've never done this, but probably after that you can import into LR and with the same result. John Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shootist Posted November 26, 2009 Share #16 Posted November 26, 2009 I disagree with not turning the screen brightness down. All LCD screens are notorious for being to bright as shipped from the factory. If turning the brightness down messes with the calibration then RE-Calibrate Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ericperlberg Posted November 26, 2009 Share #17 Posted November 26, 2009 I disagree with not turning the screen brightness down.All LCD screens are notorious for being to bright as shipped from the factory. If turning the brightness down messes with the calibration then RE-Calibrate I think you've misinterpreted what I said. The OP said he had already built his own profile and then would lowerr his brightness to match the print. I said don't lower the brightness to match your print because your profile is based on the luminosity. That doesn't mean he shouldn't reprofile the original settings to a lower luminosity, it means that for any given profile you shouldn't mess with the brightness and keep using that specific profile. Further, his problem may well have not been that his LCD was set too bright from the factory although likely it was before he built his own profile, I thought his problem may well turn out to be a luminosity matching problem that could be fixed with a simple technique using an elbow lamp. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
archi4 Posted November 29, 2009 Share #18 Posted November 29, 2009 Andy, Using the i1 match software when you calibrate you shoulf set your iMac's brightness to 80. This gives me perfect results with prints coming extremely close to the screen When calibrating for brightness (3rd or 4th step( in the advanced mode of i Match, you will see the deviation from the brightness you chose (80) and then don't click stop but use the screen brightness slider you get under display preferences to adjusr, close and then repeat until the little window show you are correct, then click stop. I apologize if I am explaining something you already know! maurice Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snakepottery Posted November 29, 2009 Author Share #19 Posted November 29, 2009 Thanks John, Just tried that and hey presto, the duplicated image with soft proofing set, it shows it as being quite a bit darker! problem solved, Thanks all. Andy Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
magd0328 Posted December 6, 2009 Share #20 Posted December 6, 2009 Many others here have mentioned soft-proofing, which is invaluable, but I would also draw your attention to the last sentence of Eric's post. A monitor is a source of light in itself, a print just reflects light. So images on a monitor almost always look brighter than when printed, even if the range of tones between black and white are all in the same place relative to one another. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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