Help re printing from LR/CS5

[Snakepottery]

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Hello all,

 

I now have my replacement Epson R2280 after the 2400 died, and have been playing around. Still can't get the prints to look like the screen, mostly the prints are dark. Loads on the net about this but I suspect it is me not understanding colour spaces and profiles. I do use the ICC profiles for the paper I use (mostly Ilford Galerie SP) and have a calibrated screen, problem is it is expensive in terms of ink and paper to get to the bottom of it! I have had a thought though, should I process the DNG's to TIFF or Jpeg before printing them or is it OK to print the DNG's directly? I have tried both and it doesn't seem to make much difference. To print I generally have to pump the brightness up on the image (in LR) so that it is washed out and then the print is the right density.

 

I posted about this problem with the R2400 ages ago and never really got it sorted and eventually just gave up.

I am determined now!! I want to see the image on the screen, edit it etc, click print ad it look the same! Surely not too much to ask?

 

The main issue is that I don't know where in my workflow I am going wrong.

 

I use LR3/CS5/Imac/Snow Leopard/latest Epson drivers.

 

Any help or pointers from all you whizzy experts out there would be really good!

 

Andy

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[archi4]

Andy.

I print with an Epson 3800 and my prints match unbelievably well.

to what brightness do you calibrate your screen?

I have my iMac at 80 cd/m2

Sorry to ask such a stupid question, but in the dialog from the printer have you turned color correction off?

[Snakepottery]

Hi,

 

Always worth asking the obvious questions! yes, I do turn it off.

I use an Eye one thing that came with an HP A1 printer some years ago and use the easy calibrate! When I tried the Advanced it asked lots of questions that I wsn't sure of and the end result was not good!!! I know i have an option of the gamma setting and I opt for the standard which suggest 2.2.

 

I will have another go with the advanced settings and spend more time reading the guide rather than just clicking next!

There seems to be a lot on the net about the brightness of Imac screens and there fore setting the print too dark. Makes sense. BTW, I also do use soft proofing if I print from CS5. LR doesn't seem to have this option.

 

Thanks

[Snakepottery]

I re ran Eye one in advance mode and in fact in only asks about the luminance which it recommends to set at 120 but taking your advice I set it at 80. It also talks about setting up the brightness/contract etc of your LCD monitor but of course I don't think this is possible with an Imac?

I will now try some prints in LR and see what happens.

Is there any kind of colour chart or something you can load and view on the screen to see if it is somewhere near right? I could do with comparing something that is 18% grey I suppose?

 

In terms of colour space, I have set my M8 to Adobe 1998 so I presume LR and CS5 will just keep that profile? Or have I got the wrong end of the stick?

 

Thanks

Andy

[archi4]

Andy

I have an iMac and the only thing you can adjust is the brightness using the slider under screen preferences until the pointer in the eyeOne match software is centered in the green area.

[wlaidlaw]

Andy,

 

Sorry if this will seem basic but are you sure in the printer dialog box that you have the setting on colour handling set to "Photoshop Manages Colours", have printer control disabled and rendering intent set to "Relative Colorimetric". If you don't have this you will almost always find your prints are too dark. You can also try turning off "black point compensation". In spite of calibrating various screens and prints from sending off test prints of the usual TC18 print sampler file to the paper makers to get profiles written, I nearly always have to increase brightness between 5 and 20% to get the print looking correct. The only exception is when I print on Ilford Galerie papers using the profiles downloaded from Ilford's website (specific for each printer and paper type), where the profiles are very good and the colours and brightness are close to perfect. On the pic below, you can see I have photoshop managing the colours and I am using the Ilford profile for their Smooth Pearl Professional paper and the Canon Pixma Pro 9500 printer.

 

Wilson

[Snakepottery]

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Thanks Gents, I'll have another go and adjust the brightness accordingly.

Yes, definitely set to Photoshop manages colours! Exactly the same as your screen print. Interestingly, the latest Epson driver automatically disables "Printer manages colours" when you go to print. For a short time after upgrading to Snow Leopard, the Epson driver was upgraded automatically by Apple, and had a load more adjustments. You could get to various options labelled general 1 to maybe 10. In them you could adjust brightness and a whole load of things. Then I tried a different Epson driver (from their website) and have never been able to get back to it! As much as I love Mac's, I have to say, Windows handles printing and drivers a whole load better!

 

Andy

[delander †]

Hi Andy,

 

I purchased this Kodak color check up kit and find it quite useful. You get the original images on CD plus the corresponding colour acurate prints.

 

https://shop.colourconfidence.com/product.php?xProd=1186

 

Your monitor and the prints of the Kodak images from your printer should look similar to the Kodak prints, but of course prints will never look the same as an image on a back lit LCD.

 

I've just got an i-mac and have not calibrated the screen yet. Using this kit I just turned down the brightness to get very near to the Kodak prints and the printer output.

 

I agree with you that the Mac dialogue for Epson printing is nowhere near as user friendly as the Windows version. So you need to make doubly sure that settings are correct.

 

Jeff

 

PS I never print from Lightroom, just tif files from PSCS5

[george +]

I use Windows7, CS5 and a Canon Pro 9000 II. Different as this may be, it is still worth mentioning that I have never been fully satisfied printing from Photoshop.

 

Printing the file directly seems a lot more predictable. I have also invested in a ColorMunki and the results are well worth the relatively modest investment.