Newbie printing question - dpi change colour cast

[fwells2]

Hi all,

Hopefully this is the right section of the forum to post my question in...

I'm having a bit of an issue with printing photos through elements 11. All of my photos have been edited via PSE and Lightroom and are at 240dpi.

I decided I'd like to send a few of them off to DSCL to get them printed but saw on their website that they like the photos to have a dpi of 300. Not a problem, easy enough to change.. or so I thought!

I've altered my photos to 300dpi, the appearance of my photos didn't change on my monitor. I downloaded the print profiles from the DSCL website, I made sure I set the colour management over to elements and turned it off on my printer and printed out a few test photos just to check the colour looks ok.

When I've printed them out the colours on the photos look a bit washed out. For example reds look more orange and the skin tones have a slight grey/green cast to them. This was quite frustrating as the image on my screen looked perfect but wasn't representing what was printed out.

I've scanned this forum and noticed that it could be because my monitor isn't calibrated which might be why I'm not seeing the colour changes on the monitor when I changed the photos to 300dpi. I've spent a few hours, lots of photo paper and lots of ink trying to correct the colour cast but have so far been unsuccessful. Some of the photos seem worse than others for some reason.

Feeling a quite disappointed I decided I'd try printing the same photos through my printer photo software. I have a Canon MG6250 pixma which comes with easy photo print. Strangely the photos have come out perfectly and exactly how the appear on my screen.

I don't get it. I then tried printing some of my original 240dpi photos through elements in exactly the same way and they came out fine. It appears to be only because I've changed the dpi to 300 that there's a colour cast.

Why do the photos have a strange colour cast when printed through elements but appear fine when printed through canon's easy print?

When printing through Canon easy print there was no option to select the DSCL printer profile so I just turned off colour management and printed them. Could it be the DSCL printer profile that's giving the photos a colour cast?

Would it just be better to send the 240dpi photos off to DSCL to get printed?

Sorry for the long rant, hopefully I've explained the issue well enough for someone to be able to help me.

Any help would be great before I give up on the whole thing! :bang:

Thanks
Francesca


EDIT: I've just printed the same photos through Elements but instead of using the DSCL printer profile I just used one of the Canon ones and the photos printed fine. Am I just being really dippy and should you only use the DSCL profile when you're printing on their specified paper and using their specified inks? Can you tell I'm new to this whole printing thing?!

 

[18%grey]

DSCL's printer profiles are dedicated to match the ink and paper they use.

When you print at home without having a matched profile you have to use one of
Canon's printer profiles. These are matched to there ink and paper.

If you use good quality brands of ink and paper, they will normally be a close match to Canon's own,
you will then find that the Canon profiles will give fairly good results, as you have seen for yourself.

If the colours are slightly off they can normally be adjusted a little bit in the advanced printer settings.

Changing 'dpi' will not have any affect on colour or any other normal visual effect.

Hope this has helped answer some of your questions.

 

[fwells2]

Thank you for taking the time to reply to me.

That does make sense about dscl's own printer profiles. I was panicking that the colour looked all wrong but guessing thats because I wasn't using dscl's paper or inks!

Panic over. I've sent some photos off to dscl so will see what they come out like.

Thanks again.

 

[fwells2]

Prints from DSCL arrived today and they look great! No silly colour cast at all. I even sent a few in that were either above the recommended 300dpi or below it and they came out fab too. What a relief!

 

[Spuriousfish]

If you just change the PPI (not DPI) figure in the image, the only thing that happens is that the resolution tag in the metadata gets updated. You still have the same number of pixels that you started with and colours wont be affected.

Resolution, in Pixels Per Inch (PPI) is only important in the physical world and just determines the physical size e.g print size, for a given number of pixels.

For example a 6Mpixel image made up as 3000 x 2000 pixels can be printed and various sizes but the optimum resolution in the case of your print shop is 300PPI. This would result in a Print Size as follows:-

Print Size = Pixel Dimensions / Resolution, so....

3000/300 x 2000/300 = 10" x 6.67"

Larger print sizes from these pixel dimensions will have less resolution.

Profiles from print shops are only of use for Soft Proofing and should not be used as your monitor profile or your printer profile.

Key to colour consistency is calibrating and profiling your monitor but this only ensures what you see on screen is accurately rendered. It will not directly affect printing. Printing has it's own rules and limitations.

Colin