For the last couple of years I have printed quite happily, onced I had realised the monitor needed calibrating
However, last week I purchased a Samsung 22inch widescreen monitor, so I calibrated it with my Spyder2Pro. Colours on screen are bright and vibrant. Going to sites like Photo.net proves the calibration was correct, with natural skin tones and good levels of brightness.
Stangley though, my print outs are now washed out, dark ans with wrong colours. If I do a copy on my HP 3200 printer, scanner, copier the result is fine - suggesting the printer itself is OK.
The only other thing I have done in the last couple of weeks is to upgrade to PhotoShop CS3. I have the PhotoRGB colour space selected in CS3 as I use Lightroom.
Anyone have any other suggestions?
Ray.
Posted by Zack Schnepf on March 10, 2008 at 2:32 PM
I would guess it was the move to CS3, but that is just my hunch. There are quite a few things that have to be set up properly to get prints to look right. Are you selecting the right printer, and paper profiles? You may want to do a google search on printing in CS3, there are some nice step by step setup tutorials out there.
My first impression is that it sounds like your display is brighter than your printer paper. If you hold up a page of your printing paper next to a blank white screen on your monitor is the monitor a lot brighter? There is no way your prints are going to match your screen if your screen is a lot brighter.
If this is the case, the easiest thing to try is to turn down the luminance (brightness) on your monitor. Don't be surprised if you need to turn the brightness down pretty low - even to zero. Sometimes zero is still too bright. If your software needs numbers to aim for, a luminance of 120 is a good place to start for an LCD. A lot depends on your lighting situation also; whether you are in a dark room or have a light booth or something like that.
This is getting to be a more common issue as more people are using LCD displays for the first time. These displays are pretty bright, and if you're used to a CRT, it takes some getting used to.
Does your Samsung have any kind of power saver setting that will reduce the brightness? Some of the newer displays have that.
I would also ensure that you have "let Photoshop manage colors" checked in the PS print screen; you also need to ensure the correct black point is checked at the same screen. Also ensure that color management is turned off in your printer drivers. CS3 has a drop down to select the color profile. Be sure the correct profile is selected.
Posted by Greg Barteluk on March 10, 2008 at 4:46 PM
Do you softproof your images? If not, give it a try and see if there's a big difference. Also, at least with Epson, there are almost hidden printer dialog boxes that require you to turn off printer colour management, perhaps that's also the case with HP. Also, under you color settings you should select gray gamma 1.8 for prophoto RGB.
Thanks all for the advice. In CS3, I have set the colour profile to my monitor profile (created with the Spyder2) and my prints are now spot on. However, I have read this should be set to Adobe RGB and never to the monitor profile
Why shouldn't the monitor profile be used?
Ray
Posted by David Bostedo on March 10, 2008 at 8:14 PM
Raymond - As far as profiles go, here's what you should be using :
-- For monitor settings (video card settings) your calibrated monitor profile should be used. This is probably set by the Spyder.
-- For editing, you will use Adobe RGB, or sRGB, or ProPhoto RGB, etc - these should look correct on a well calibrated monitor. These are set either in camera, or during RAW conversion, and are tagged in the image itself. (If you have JPGs, they are in probably in sRGB.)
-- For printing, you should be using a printer profile, which will actually be for a particular printer/paper/ink combo.
When you say "in CS3", do you mean when printing? Or in the actual profile attached to the image? When you print, with the printer color management off and letting PS manage colors, it should look at your input profile of sRGB or Adobe RGB, and use the printer profile to translate how those colors look to the correct settings for your printer/paper/ink combo. If the monitor is calibrated to a standard target, and the profiles are good, the print should come out close to the screen. (Notable exception are if you have an LCD set too bright, or you have well out of gamut colors.)
Discussion
6 repliesHowever, last week I purchased a Samsung 22inch widescreen monitor, so I calibrated it with my Spyder2Pro. Colours on screen are bright and vibrant. Going to sites like Photo.net proves the calibration was correct, with natural skin tones and good levels of brightness.
Stangley though, my print outs are now washed out, dark ans with wrong colours. If I do a copy on my HP 3200 printer, scanner, copier the result is fine - suggesting the printer itself is OK.
The only other thing I have done in the last couple of weeks is to upgrade to PhotoShop CS3. I have the PhotoRGB colour space selected in CS3 as I use Lightroom.
Anyone have any other suggestions?
Ray.
If this is the case, the easiest thing to try is to turn down the luminance (brightness) on your monitor. Don't be surprised if you need to turn the brightness down pretty low - even to zero. Sometimes zero is still too bright. If your software needs numbers to aim for, a luminance of 120 is a good place to start for an LCD. A lot depends on your lighting situation also; whether you are in a dark room or have a light booth or something like that.
This is getting to be a more common issue as more people are using LCD displays for the first time. These displays are pretty bright, and if you're used to a CRT, it takes some getting used to.
Does your Samsung have any kind of power saver setting that will reduce the brightness? Some of the newer displays have that.
Why shouldn't the monitor profile be used?
Ray
-- For monitor settings (video card settings) your calibrated monitor profile should be used. This is probably set by the Spyder.
-- For editing, you will use Adobe RGB, or sRGB, or ProPhoto RGB, etc - these should look correct on a well calibrated monitor. These are set either in camera, or during RAW conversion, and are tagged in the image itself. (If you have JPGs, they are in probably in sRGB.)
-- For printing, you should be using a printer profile, which will actually be for a particular printer/paper/ink combo.
When you say "in CS3", do you mean when printing? Or in the actual profile attached to the image? When you print, with the printer color management off and letting PS manage colors, it should look at your input profile of sRGB or Adobe RGB, and use the printer profile to translate how those colors look to the correct settings for your printer/paper/ink combo. If the monitor is calibrated to a standard target, and the profiles are good, the print should come out close to the screen. (Notable exception are if you have an LCD set too bright, or you have well out of gamut colors.)