Help with M8 Printing Needed in Lightroom

[smgorsch]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

I have been delighted witht the photos I've been getting from the M8 but have had difficulty with printing. I'm using Lightroom & an Epson stylus Photo 2200. Whenever I print, the photos are consistently too dark even though the appear to be fine on the monitor. I know that one can calibrate monitors to ensure that colors are accurate but this is not an issue of color calibration (same problem with B&W) but of apparent exposure.

 

I suppose I could set all my photos for 1/2 stop or more greater exposure prior to printing but this seems like a poor solution. Am I missing something?

 

Thanks

 

Stefan

[Advertisement]

The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[gtmerideth]

I hope you get an answer because I have the same problem in LR with my Epson 2400.

g.

[robertwright]

There are a lot of factors, you need to detail if you are on pc or mac, how you have calibrated/profiled your monitor, and if you are using the canned epson profiles or some of your own.

 

It may be that the profiles are a little dark, but there could be other things. You could export a tiff from LR to photoshop and print that and compare and let us know the results to see if LR's color management is affecting things, tho I doubt it. I have been printing with LR to an epson R1800 and everything is fine.

[rwfreund]

I have been printing with lightroom to an Epson R2400 with no trouble with the following process.

I am using Windows Vista, but that is not an important factor I think, but the rest of this discussion is based on windows and not on Mac.

1. I have made profiles via i1 match for epson glossy paper and the photo RPM and other printer settings that I use. If you do not have the ability to make your own profile, then download the profiles available at the epson site

2. make sure that the printing preferences are set for icm and icm disabled. Lightroom, and not the driver will do the color conversion

3. Print settings with lightroom include setting that lightroom will do the color management, not the printer. Select in the print view in the bottom of the right panel set color management to other and then select the appropriate profile accordin to your printer settings and media.

I am assuming that you are using a calibrated monitor and proper viewing conditions.

-bob

[smgorsch]

I'm using a MacPro with the Epson 2200. I think I've successfully switched to LR for color management (? do I set to Custom color management then to Color Sync on Epson -- there's absolutely no documentation on this in the manual).

 

The files still seem 1 stop too dark. Any thoughts? Am I setting color management incorrectly?

 

BTW, when I choose the LR color profile it lists 2 options for each paper .mk or .pk -- what's the difference?

 

Please help me -- I''m lost on the truly dark side.

[robertwright]

These are the steps I use on the R1800, but there is little difference.

 

assuming you have the print open in the print module, first you need to setup the paper dimensions and borderless options. I will assume you can go about centering the image how you like.

 

Print setup is the button below the print, and it takes you to the Mac OS print setup dialogue where you choose your printer "Format for"--Epson2200 and under "paper size" you pick the paper and any border or borderless options. I know that there is a new driver for the intel mac pro for the 2200, we use it at work. I would assume you have that because I don't believe it would work otherwise. It is intel native.

 

after setting that up you go to the right sidebar, and skip down to the Print Job window, where you can select draft mode, the print resolution, print sharpening, etc. I will let you decide that. Next under color management you will pick your paper profile for the paper you are using, whatever epson canned profile for the media you are using, eg, premium glossy photo paper, 1440 or rpm depending on how you do the next bits. You do not want to choose printer color management in that box, that would send you into the epson dialogue where you can adjust the colors on the fly. that is not how I am describing this. I am describing the same as you would from photoshop for example.

Under rendering intent you can choose relative or perceptual, that probably is not going to make a difference.

then you choose the print settings button at the bottom, and you get the standard mac os print dialogue box, and you choose your printer, epson 2200, and under the last radio button you go to Print Settings, and choose the media you are using, eg, premium glossy photo paper, the color mode, color, choose "advanced" which gives you a choice of print quality, best photo usually, and then high speed can be on and finest detail can be on,.

Back to the third radio button and choose "Color Management"-here you choose the holy grail of all this-"OFF" none of this works properly if you have it any other way. Good news is that you can save all this as a preset, call it premium glossy 1440 borderless for example, and LR should be able to deliver this with one click in the furture.

Thats it, hit print.

 

where people get confused is that there are actually three ways to print in the mac os, the way I have described in which the application does the color management, ie LR or Ps. this is why you choose a profile to apply IN the application and turn printer color management OFF.

 

the second way would be to choose Printer color Magagement in the application under Profile, and then work the sliders in the print driver by choosing Color controls in the color management section, onwards from there.. I do not recommend this.

 

the third way doesn't work in LR exactly, using colorsync and registering the default profiles in the colorsync utility for all the devices and let the Apple colorsync engine do the transforms. No one I know does it that way.

 

btw all of this assumes that you have a calibrated display. IF you have a calibrated display (recently) and your prints are still off suspect the epson profiles. But if it is the profiles, then the prints should look the same out of LR or Ps, since the same wrongness is happening. (mostly, I understand Lr has a different way of handling color than Ps, but the results should not vary greatly) Get a custom profile for your media.

 

about display calibration, most experts recommend d65or 6500K as the whitepoint and 2.2 gamma. If you choose 5000k as the whitepoint the monitor always looks yellow and crappy. Most would advise 6500. Also the gamma selection for the monitor has moved beyond the mac/pc gamma wars, and any pro application will render the image correctly under each gamma, so you will not really see a difference. Most LCD displays have a native gamma closer to 2.2, so at this point there is no reason not to calibrate for 2.2. Google "gamma bruce fraser color mangagement" and you will find a detailed answer. And just to be explicit, when I say calibrate and profile your monitor I mean Hardware calibrate with a spyder or ther colorimeter. Software calibrations like the ones in the mac utilities folder are no substitute.

 

hth

[BillBrittain]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

I'm using a MacPro with the Epson 2200. I think I've successfully switched to LR for color management (? do I set to Custom color management then to Color Sync on Epson -- there's absolutely no documentation on this in the manual).

 

The files still seem 1 stop too dark. Any thoughts? Am I setting color management incorrectly?

 

BTW, when I choose the LR color profile it lists 2 options for each paper .mk or .pk -- what's the difference?

 

Please help me -- I''m lost on the truly dark side.

 

Monitor profiles are essential and can strongly affect both colors and "brightness", which is essentially referred to as "gamma"

 

1) Assuming that you don't have a colorimeter, go to System Preferences/Displays then select the Color tab. Click on the calibrate button and build a new profile for your monitor. A Gamma of 1.8 will be fine although if others will be viewing your work on other PCs, 2.2 is a more likely match. Save your money for a colorimeter.

 

2) Go to Epson's site (or whoever your paper manufacturer is) and download the profiles for your printer/paper combination. Install them according to the instructions and then restart Lightroom.

 

3) Process your file as you wish. If you "round trip" the image to Photoshop, you can soft proof using the paper profile you downloaded, to get a pretty close idea of how it will look when printed. Images can not look identical on screen to the printed version, since the media are very different.

 

4) From Lightroom, go to the print module and among other settings go to the Color Management controls, near the bottom on the right panel. Under "Profile", select the paper profile you've downloaded. You might have to select "other..." to load the profile you prefer. Do NOT select "Managed by Printer"

 

5) Under "Rendering Intent", select one the sounds good. In reality (so far as I know) you just have to try Perceptual and Relative Colorimetric and see which works best. The difference should not be great between the two.

 

6) Set up the page settings, etc... to make sure you're printing to the right paper and orientation.

 

7) Click Print... and the usual print dialog will come up. Go to "Print Settings" and select the kind of paper you're using and select advanced settings that seem appropriate. I used to have a 2200 and frankly could not see the difference between 1440 and 2880 dpi.

 

8) Under Printer Color Management select "Off". This is critical. In this way the only software that is affecting your print job is the color managed, profiled job that you sent from Lightroom.

 

9) Print the job. You should find that you're quite close to the expected results. Have fun, and let us know how it goes!

[smgorsch]

Robert, thanks so much I'll try this afternoon.

 

Bill -- I think this is fairly close to the way I have been doing it but will double check when I'm at the Printer

 

Can anyone explain the difference between the LR files listed as say Enhanced MAtte 2880. pk and enhanced Matte 2880.mk?

[eudemian]

I use a superb printing programme calle QImage. It is a dedicated printing programme and once set up with the correct printer profiles delivers consistent colour.

I cannot praise it too highly, it has inbuilt sharpening as well and once you are used to the interface it is the programme to use.

I know this is an extra step using a dedicated programme but I think Photoshop and Lightroom are good for what they do but they are not really printing programmes.

Give it a try you have nothing to lose.

 

Tom

[siralevine]

"can anyone explain the difference between the LR files listed as say Enhanced MAtte 2880. pk and enhanced Matte 2880.mk?"

 

2880.pk means that the profile was created using photo black ink on matte paper. 2880.mk means that the profile was created using matte black in on matte paper.