R800 woes and solution explanation required

Cactus Jack

Cactus Jack

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Neil
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Hi All,

Recently got myself an Asus PA246 monitor :love: which I am very happy with plus it arrived with pretty decent calibration. I do plan to calibrate again one day once I can afford a device.

Anyhow, I have had an R800 printer with no end of troubles getting decent prints out of for years, even after reading about colour management. Recently I got myself a new camera and with a copy of Canon's DPP. From this I have started to get decent prints :thumbs: that look like the softproof (unlike PS elements 6, from which I can not get decent prints, even telling the driver to allow PS to control color managment). However, with DPP I find I need to select a CMYK Profile in addition to the print profile. Out of curiosity why is choosing a CMYK profile giving me prints very close to the soft proof :thinking:, where as when it isn't selected, prints are very dark and usually posterised?

In case anyone is interested I've found the profiles available here http://moabpaper.com/icc-profiles-downloads/epson/epson-stylus-photo-r1800/ superior to those supplied by Epson (both US and EU versions) particualry the legion gloss.

Cheers All
 
Neil

Without profiling your monitor it is all a bit hit and miss. Profiles do assume a correctly calibrated monitor to start with.

Dark prints are usually a result of the monitor being too bright. This is common for many monitors straight out of the box. They do need to be tamed, calibration and profiling does this

As to why opting to CMYK and then applying the profiles via DPP may be simply a bit of luck, but as it works don't knock it.

Are you using MOAB profiles with Epson paper?
 
Hi john, yep used the papers with Epson glossy , fotospeed lustre and Tesco glossy . Much better not a hint of posterisation and to me the detail seems slightly better. This was against the large us profiles about 1.5mb. The profiling on the monitor is pretty good colour wise, Asus provide details of the profiling with it. However it is bright, I has since turned the brightness down to 0 on the monitor woth gamma @ 2.2. This is darker already. I will profile soon but as u say be happy that I've stumbled across the cmyk profile settings. Would like to what effect they have though. Do u know of any sites with further profiles tor the r800 worth testing?
 
Cactus Jack said:
The profiling on the monitor is pretty good colour wise,
Click to expand...


How do you know? :) Without calibrating your screen, soft proofing is a complete waste of time. You can't just visually judge a monitor. Colour is subjective, and you will quickly begin to view a screen as "normal" no matter how far out it actually is.


Your print issues may not be anything to do with your monitor, but you need to rule it out before you start trying to fix things. The reasons for a well calibrated screen go beyond just printing anyway.
 
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Dark prints are usually a result of the monitor being too bright.
Click to expand...

This would only be true if the image is then edited to reduce the apparent brightness. Turning the brightness up or down wont directly affect the print.

However, the statement is generally correct and out of the box displays are set way to high.

Calibrating and profiling your display is a must and can only be done using a hardware device, such as an I1Display, Spyder etc.

However, this only ensures that your display is correctly set and you have accurate profiles for the colour management engine. It will not guarantee accurate prints because there are another set of rules to follow.


Printing requires a few extra steps to get good reproduction:-

1. You need a colour managed program such as Photoshop which has Colour Management enabled.
2. You need a Printer Profile that matches you Printer, Inks and Paper.
3. Best option is to let Photoshop manage the colours and select the following options:-
a) Choose the Print Space profile for your Printer/Paper etc
b) Choose Relative Colourimetric as your rendering intent

4. You disable colour management in your printer driver - if you don't you'll get double colour management and potentially odd results
5. Choose the matching paper and quality setting and print speed in your printer driver.

Couple of final points:-

1. Allow print to dry out for a while - time varies with papers/printers - but give it a while
2. View the print in a lighting condition similar to the white point of your monitor e.g 65K. This is often the culprit for making prints look darker than on screen. Screens transmit light, prints are viewed by reflective light and the colour and intensity can make all the difference.

FWIW: I use the Epson default profiles and find them to be absolutely fine.

Colin
 
Hi all, thanks for the various answers. As stated I understand that my screen is not calibrated, however it comes pre-calibrated to reasonable level. With the apparent asus measurements to give some piece of mind. DPP to my knowledge is colour managed. I can have the same print within ps and dpp both with the apps controlling colour management. Soft proofing they look the same, use the same legend profiles they both print dark however selecting a cmyk profile in dpp sorts it. I was just wondering why? however it is now a mute point as far as my printer goes. Recently clogged heads again meaning another load it wasted ink lead me to purchase a canon mg6350, which so far I am happy with.
 
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