Why does the print look different from the computer screan?

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Photoman!

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Jamie unwin
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Hi

I have a problem, I have editted some photos and then went to print them out. Once they had been printed i noticed that they looked alot different to what they looked like on the screen. Does anyone now how i can solve this.
 
Photoman! said:
Hi

I have a problem, I have editted some photos and then went to print them out. Once they had been printed i noticed that they looked alot different to what they looked like on the screen. Does anyone now how i can solve this.
Click to expand...

It can get very detailed but, basically, you have to calibrate your monitor to give your printer the best chance to reproduce what you see on screen.

A spyder is a good start.
http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/reviews/profiling/spyder3elite.html#monitor_calibration
 
when i comes out it is darker and has lost some of the contrast
 
Search the forums for monitor calibration and you should find lots of advice on this subject.
 
Hi Photoman!
welcome to TP :clap: and thankyou for opening a can of worms..:lol:
In a very tiny nutshell...
your monitor emits light to your eyes, red green and blue. these are the additive primary colours
your printer uses subtractive primary colours, cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.
these absorb light
it is extremely difficult to get one to match the other :shrug:
As Garnock says, it gets VERY detailed
when you have time, investigate colour theory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_theory

wikipedia is a good place to start

when you have an understanding of the problems, you can delve into profiling

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_profile

Good luck :thumbs:
 
Ideally you should profile your monitor and printer to get the best results. However a quick ( and very dirty) fix is to make some adjustments at the printing stage.

I suspect your screen is probably to bright for the room it's in and that's why you are getting poor results. You could try turning the brightness down and see if that helps.

If you have an Epson printer it has some controls in the printer dialog box which enables you to adjust the output. This may help resolve the problem temporarily. This is not an ideal situation as you may (will) still need to trim the colour.

The alternative is to take the print you've just made and compare it to the screen. Now make the screen look as bad as the print. Make a note of all the corrections you made. Now apply these in reverse. For example, if you make the screen +20 units dark, before you print make it 20 units light. The same for contrast and any colour.

This is a real "dirty" way of working and not one I would recommend as normal working practice, but it will give you reasonable prints.
 
I'm getting similar results with my prints ( from DSCL)

Monitor(s) are calibrated using x-rite eye-one, digital images look the same on my macbook pro, HP Laptop, and custom build PC, but the prints are always dark and dull.

I've proofed the images with the DSCL printer profile, and they're spot on on the screen, yet the prints are all dull, unless I really boost the saturation before sending them to print.

The really annoying thing though, is 2 prints of the same image, but in different sizes, look completely different on the paper!!
 
could be double colour management, if you are using photoshop are you letting photoshop manage the colours or your printer
 
Jason what colour working space are the files you're sending for print using?
 
Jason

Check with your lab but I suspect that you'll need to send the images as sRGB.

It's strange that soft proofing shows good results yet the printed ones are not good. The fact that 2 identical prints at 2 different sizes don't match is not a good sign. If you can try another lab and see what the results are like.
 
The reason soft proofing worked and the prints didn't is pretty obvious when you think about it. The lab doesn't handle profiles and expects sRGB, anything else is printed as is so the colours came out wrong. Soft proofing showed what the print would look like if it had been colour managed.

There's a simple answer, stick to sRGB and the results will be consistent and accurate.
 
Did you convert to sRGB or their profile before saving the file for uploading?
 
No, as they only supply a printer profile for soft proofing, and recommend Adobe RGB or sRGB for editing, so I didn't see the need to change it.

I'll be trying a batch exported sRGB tomorrow, the same images & sizes just re-exported from Lightroom from RAW to jpeg but changing the profile to sRGB.
 
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