Colour and printing help please

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I am pulling my hair out here.
I have a 2oD, shooting Raw. I have Elements 8 for PP. I have a deskjet 5550 printer for printing.
Now, I have just calabrated my screen, as I thought that may be a factor, but no.
What it is, is all my images look great on screen, but when I print them, they are all too dark.
What should I be doing?
As far as I can see, the images are in sRGB.
 
It's highly probable that your screen is way too bright. All monitors I have come across are way too bright and have to be turned down.

Have you set a brightness level of the monitor. If you can set it around 120-140 cd/m2. It wouldn't surprise me if it's way above this. My iMac was way beyond 450.
 
Chappers said:
It's highly probable that your screen is way too bright. All monitors I have come across are way too bright and have to be turned down.

Have you set a brightness level of the monitor. If you can set it around 120-140 cd/m2. It wouldn't surprise me if it's way above this. My iMac was way beyond 450.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure. I have spydered it last week, and it dulled a bit in that calibration.
How do I find the levels you mention and how do I adjust them?
PC, Windows XP. Dell monitor, using digital connection to the graphics card.
 
Chris.
I am playing with the setting in the other thread and while I have the printer now on no colour setting, I am missing the paper setting in Elements 8.
Please see my comments on the other thread and if you can help, please do!
 
How do other peoples images look on your monitor? If generally good, then maybe your monitor isn't so bright?

Since changing to Windows 7, I couldn't print anything decent, all looked about 2 stops under and no amount of tweaking with the Epson controls would help.

Since purchasing a "colormunki" my prints are now better than my usual pro printers.
It has also opened up more possibilities for experimenting with different papers that were not before considered usable with my printer.

Before you go rushing out and buying a Colormunki or similar, I suggest you try borrow a good profiling kit and profile both your monitor and printer.

For me, its been the best purchase I have made in a long time.
 
Steve

We discussed this in another thread from yesterday. Unfortunately James's printer is a basic 3 colour printer so doesn't have the profiling capabilities of a 4 or more colour printer.

I did some trawling of the web for ICC profiles to suit his printer but they just don't exist.

It would be better for Steve to start out by buying a 4 or 6 colour printer.

As for profiling I use a Spyder system and like your ColorMunki it was the best money I've ever spent towards decent printout accuracy.
 
Sorry Chris, I somehow missed the other thread..Doh.
I agree with eveything you say.
 
screen (emission) will always be brighter than prints (reflective).

how you print is also a factor in how your prints look. do you let the printer choose the colour or elements? if you let elements you have to have ICC profiles for the paper (easy enough to create) or if you let the printer choose you can't have elements interfering.



jmsjabb said:
I am pulling my hair out here.
I have a 2oD, shooting Raw. I have Elements 8 for PP. I have a deskjet 5550 printer for printing.
Now, I have just calabrated my screen, as I thought that may be a factor, but no.
What it is, is all my images look great on screen, but when I print them, they are all too dark.
What should I be doing?
As far as I can see, the images are in sRGB.
Click to expand...
 
Chris has been a tremendous help on the other thread, and I am resigned to the fact my printer is rubbish!
I am saving now for a good printer.
 
Do you have one then for my old, nearly through the window Deskjet 5550?
 
Which spyder did you use? Did you pay attention to the luminance part of the calibration? The default values of the Spyder are way too bright for photo editing.
 
I've got a Spyder three so don;t know if the software is different. Is there a phase where it measures brightness and gives you a value in cdm^2?
 
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