Giving Up on Printer Color Management
Gary Eickmeier
(Canon) printer with Cathy's profiling service, and been relatively happy
until now. Lately, I have had problems in the reds and in low light values,
as in muddy shadow areas. So I told my Photoshop Elements 6 to just let the
printer manage color, set the print optimization settings within the
printer, and let her rip.
I found that it handled contrasts and colors better than I was doing with
all the printer management by Photoshop and depending on my monitor to show
me what it would look like. So what the hell. You still use an accurate
monitor to work the image and make it look the best you can. You adjust
levels, dodge and burn here and there, sharpen, etc, but then in translating
that image to print you may want to just let the printer drivers and
optimization settings do the rest, to make the print "pop" and really look
good.
Please tell me your experiences if you have tried it all.
Gary Eickmeier
Alan Browne
Still enslaved to management. Almost there... almost there...
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John McWilliams
> Gary Eickmeier wrote:
>> I have calibrated my monitor as best technology allows, calibrated my
>> (Canon) printer with Cathy's profiling service, and been relatively
>> happy until now. Lately, I have had problems in the reds and in low
>> light values, as in muddy shadow areas. So I told my Photoshop
>> Elements 6 to just let the printer manage color, set the print
>> optimization settings within the printer, and let her rip.
>>
>> I found that it handled contrasts and colors better than I was doing
>> with all the printer management by Photoshop and depending on my
>> monitor to show me what it would look like. So what the hell. You
>> still use an accurate monitor to work the image and make it look the
>> best you can. You adjust levels, dodge and burn here and there,
>> sharpen, etc, but then in translating that image to print you may want
>> to just let the printer drivers and optimization settings do the rest,
>> to make the print "pop" and really look good.
>>
>> Please tell me your experiences if you have tried it all.
>
> Still enslaved to management. Almost there... almost there...
I have Lightroom and Photoshop manage my printing on two Epsons and one
Canon. Comes out fine, but it's not always a cinch to set up correctly,
but once that's done, it's fine.
--
john mcwilliams
bmoag
matching, not guaranteed WYSIWYG printing.
I am reasonably certain you are using an LCD panel. Except for high end
graphics units, which use a different display technology then the vast
majority of consumer grade LCD panels regardless of cost, it is the LCD
panel itself that is the cause of nearly all frustration with color
management.
These LCD panels are too bright and because of the display technology you
cannot adjust brightness and contrast on these units for color management.
Although monitor calibration devices claim to be able to take into account
the uber brightness and inflexible adjustment parameters of these screens as
you have learned Hueys, Spyders, Monacos et al simply do not. These devices
can match color but not brightness and contrast.
Part of the problem is neurologic: you see an overly bright transmitted
color image on the monitor and then look at a reflective print without
matching the ambient light. These are utterly different viewing experiences
and the print will always suffer in the comparison. A transmitted color
value will always look less muddy than a reflective color value.
Printer calibration is not as helpful as all the buzz out there would make
you think. Particularly with Epson printers and papers you will not get a
technically better custom profile compared to what the vendor supplies. That
does not mean that a custom profile will not be more to your liking, but you
have to generate the profile through trial and error, not rely on a third
party.
Which leads me to my last comment on color management--follow the
calibration ritual and then generate a series of test prints varying
brightness/contrast by fixed/reproducible amounts, analogous to a darkroom
test print. You can use the curves tool or the CS4-4 brightness/contrast
adjustment layers. You should be able to find a fixed setting that
compensates for the monitor calibration mismatch and will yield an
acceptable print on the first try the vast majority of times.
Or do what I do. Hang on to your last good CRT monitor and use it to proof
images prior to printing.
Jay Ts
> [...] So I told my Photoshop Elements
> 6 to just let the printer manage color, set the print optimization
The thing with color management is that as helpful as it
can be in many cases, it can never guarantee perfect results.
It's there mainly to reduce, and at best minimize, color
differences. And sometimes it produces results that beg for
tweaking.
If you are getting prints that look good to you, that is
the best standard to go by. Sometimes it's best to lightly
push theory aside and just do what works.
> Please tell me your experiences if you have tried it all.
1. Subscribed to Lynda.com for a while and watched most
of of the Color Management Essential Training course.
It helps if you understand color management well, and
also color theory. At least, you may stop expecting too much.
I like the Lynda.com course because of the instructor, Chris
Murphy, who has a wise and perhaps slightly-cynical attitude,
which I think is appropriate for this topic. ;)
The course also covers topics such as maintaining proper ambient
lighting, which is essential. If you haven't studied color management
yet, consider this or some other comprehensive course. You may learn
that you are doing something basically wrong, which can be corrected
very easily.
2. Got an X-rite (Gretag MacBeth) Eye One, and ran it on all of
my monitors (laptop, LCD and CRT). Colors still are different
on each, but match *far* better than before!
3. Profiled my Epson scanner. High-quality and inexpensive targets
available from Wolf Faust in Germany (http://www.targets.coloraid.de/).
4. IMO there are no high-quality printers available at this time unless
you are very wealthy or have clients/customers/employers to pay for
the ink. So I got an HP D7260, which was just $120 at Newegg.com,
and am using off-brand refillable cartridges and ink, which seem
to be just as good as HP's, both in color and UV resistance.
(The latter according to an ongoing test I'm conducting myself.)
With either ink, color is definitely off compared to images displayed
on monitors, but by trying out different papers and settings, by
trial and error I found one that works better than others, and is not
too bad. The printer's "color management" (note quotes!) is terrible.
You can pick between sRGB and Adobe RGB (no ProPhoto or any other
option), and select a specific HP-brand paper, and that's it. No
way to profile this printer, as far as I can tell.
All that may sound pretty terrible, but I'm pretty sure that with an
unlimited budget, I wouldn't be doing a whole lot better. The main thing
I think I'm doing right is to use 4 different monitors, all profiled,
and making sure the images look good on all of them, and that a print
from my printer also looks good, before publishing to Imagekind and/or
RedBubble. The idea is that when they print the images with their very
expensive Epson and HP/Scitex printers, they will look as good or
(hopefully!) better.
The main reason I have a printer is to make test prints, to check that
the images look good when printed. Many images look great on a monitor,
but look different as reflective images. I keep working on them until
they look good out of the printer.
If the reason you print your images is to sell the prints, or display
them yourself, then I suggest you adopt the following: "If it looks
good, then it _is_ good." In other words, just do whatever works best,
and don't worry too much about if you did things "right". Document what
you did carefully, so you can make more (nearly :) identical prints later.
Jay Ts
http://jayts.imagekind.com
http://jayts.redbubble.com
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Eric Stevens
<ritabe...@aol.com> wrote:
>Gary Eickmeier wrote:
>
>> Please tell me your experiences if you have tried it all.
>
>Toss the LCD in the trash and get yourself an old 19" Sony Trinitron flat
>CRT.
Mine died, not terminally but clearly it was past its 'use buy' date.
The same thing happened to my 19" Nanao (Eizo) which I bought to
replace it. The next was a 20" Hitachi but it too began to fade. After
that I bought a 21" Samsung LCD but that got passed in for for a 24"
Dell just a few weeks ago. When you think of it like that you start to
realise that you are suggesting old, old, technology. What do you
really think it will be like after all these years?
Eric Stevens
David J. Littleboy
"bmoag" <-ae...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> These LCD panels are too bright and because of the display technology you
> cannot adjust brightness and contrast on these units for color management.
Turn down the brightness to zero, and most of them work fine.
The inverse of this is that most people have their monitors way too bright
for viewing photos, and the images you put up on the net look horrible on
any one else's computer. Ouch.
--
David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan
Eric Stevens
<ritabe...@aol.com> wrote:
>Eric Stevens wrote:
>
>>> Toss the LCD in the trash and get yourself an old 19" Sony Trinitron
>>> flat CRT.
>>
>> Mine died, not terminally but clearly it was past its 'use buy' date.
>> The same thing happened to my 19" Nanao (Eizo) which I bought to
>> replace it. The next was a 20" Hitachi but it too began to fade. After
>> that I bought a 21" Samsung LCD but that got passed in for for a 24"
>> Dell just a few weeks ago. When you think of it like that you start to
>> realise that you are suggesting old, old, technology. What do you
>> really think it will be like after all these years?
>
>I still have several new in the box 19" CRT Trinitrons I will never part
>with. I'll hold onto them till LCD technology catches up.
From when do they date?
Eric Stevens
ASAAR
> I still have several new in the box 19" CRT Trinitrons I will never part
> with. I'll hold onto them till LCD technology catches up.
Or for 18 months, whichever comes first.
Lud
I found it difficult to get a good print using PS CS3 and Elements 6
but got excellent results using Lightroom 1.4 - it had 6 profiles to
choose for an older Canon IP4000 printer - the first profile listed
worked best. After having 2 Mitsubishi NEC 21" CRT monitors die on me,
I bought a PLANAR 26" IPS LCD panel - it was easy to calibrate with
Spyder Pro.
Just my experience.
Lud
Tzortzakakis Dimitrios
? "Lud" <Ludw...@gmail.com> ?????? ??? ??????
news:d0ed1153-41e8-4baf...@d23g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
no problems with my Canon pixma iP 4300 and my nytech www.nytech.de I'd
never like to return the the bad old days of CRT monitors, my Miro 17 " CRT
went away with my old 2.4 GHz celeron and high time it was, I was tired of
its flickery screen ( I have poor eyesight I am short sighted).
Just my 2 cents....
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major in electrical engineering
mechanized infantry reservist
hordad AT otenet DOT gr