So Before I Chuck My Printer in the Bin...

Mojo Fones

Mojo Fones

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Name
Michael
Edit My Images
Yes
Hello Chums.

I just cannot get my prints to match on screen. Believe me, I've tried lots of different things from changing colour profiles on the printer, in Windows, in Photoshop, and fiddling with all the settings of my monitor (an Asus ProArt PA238Q). My printer is an Epson all-in-one unit (PX720WD) and at first the prints seemed darker. Then I realised it's a colour issue and the only way I can think of to describe it is that they are 'bleached' a bit. Is this printer not really up to the job?

Here's my Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/buzzphotouk/ so you can have a look and see if anything is obvious. I though that maybe if my monitor needs calibration it might show up in the way I've adjusted my images.

So I uploaded a few jpegs to PhotoBox and the prints came back looking marvellous, and quite closely matched what my monitor displayed, so I spent an hour shaking my fist at the printer and tried some more. Adjusting gamma and saturation sliders etc. in the printer properties, trying to set all devices to AdobeRGB (1998) in Windows colour management (that was something I read on the web somewhere).

AAARRRGHHHH!

So now I'm thinking maybe get a new printer. I don't print many of my images but I would like to be able to do it if I feel like it, so the wife (also a tog) and I might print less than ten per month. Maybe it's just not worth all the headaches. Perhaps I might be better off spending some cash on a Spyder and then send my photos to a printing service instead, which might work out more expensive in the long term but I won't develop an ulcer.

I'd be grateful for any advice or thoughts you may have. Thanks.

EDIT:
Actually, after doing some more web research it looks like the Spyder 4 Pro is a good investment anyway, regardless of my printing woes. I like it's ability to adjust the screen brightness automatically depending on the ambient lighting. This would be a boon as I have quite a big window in my living room which is where the computer's at.
 
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Not sure I can help solve your problem, but I had the same very frustrating problems when I had an Epson printer. I managed to able to get the prints something like printing using the printer software - once you've finished with the image and are ready to print, save it and open Epson print and print it from there, this helped me.

Still not very impressed with the messing and results I was getting, bought a Canon iP printer and have never looked back. Can print from Canon printer software, PSE or Lightroom and can get consistent results from all of them. Still doesn't always match the screen as I've not got everything calibrated, but 9/10 I'm happy with the print outs.

Hope this is of some help ...
 
Cheers Andy. I had an HP before I got into photography and when I printed snaps it was great. Then I managed to convince myself I needed a better printer (the HP was only £40) so I bought the Epson. I even used third party inks and paper with the HP and was very happy with the results.
 
There's no reason why you can't achieve a good match between screen and print but realistically they may never be 100% the same

Main two reasons for this are: Colour Range of screen and printer may be different; screens transmit light and prints are viewed by reflected light so the light source is important.

However, to get close you need to consider the following:-

1. You should calibrate and profile your monitor - this wont guarantee your prints will match but does mean that what you see is accurately rendered. So, if you need to make any corrections to an image, you are not correcting a screen problem but an image problem.

2. You need to use a Colour Managed program e.g Photoshop which has it's colour settings set up properly.

3. Your image needs to have a colour profile embedded in it.

4. You need a printer/paper profile that matches what you are using.

5. You need to let the program e.g Photoshop, manage the colours and turn this function off in the printer driver. Use Relative Colourimetric as a rendering intent.

6. View the prints under a daylight bulb (65k if possible).

There are fine details to the above but if you can do all this then you should have no problems.

Colin
 
Thank you Colin, lots for me to think about there.

I hadn't really considered the fact that it might not be possible to get 100% results, or that that the way light is transmitted/reflected will affect the image. It's so obvious I'm kicking myself, although I do take my prints over to the window to try to get some natural light to have a look.

One little thing I'd like to check. I have the colour space on my camera set to Adobe RGB (1998) and I've set Photoshop to the same. There's nothing I else I can really do in that department right?
 
If your camera is set to produce images that are in the AdobeRGB space then that's fine but keep in mind that your screen is most likely to have a colour space close to sRGB and your home printer may be similar or less.

Since AdobeRGB is a wider colour space than sRGB you wont see the benefit of the wider colour space. The out of range colours will be clipped.

If you have Photoshop set to preserve embedded colour spaces then it will use the profile in the image. So your camera image could be sRGB or AdobeRGB and it will use either of those. You don't have to set the Working Space of Photoshop to match. The work space profile is only for images that are created totally within Photoshop.

I assume you have the full version of Photoshop and not Elements. In which case in the colour settings I find it useful to turn on the warnings for images that do not have a profile or for ones that don't match the working space choice. It just acts as a reminder.

Colin
 
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