Colour setup - printing issues...

[luca brazzi]

Printing direct from EOS300D to Canon Card Photo Printer (dye-sub), picture looks great.

Edit in photoshop, looks great on screen, then print out, looks awful.

Skin tones have turned red, almost beetroot, over saturated, strong contrast, no subtle tones remain.

Now that I know its either the screen setup (17" flatpanel) or editing software related (since the camera to printer quality tells me the printer is fine), I'm stuck as to what to change.

It was all perfect until the motherboard packed up and I had to replace, which meant windows re-acquired
all the settings.

Here are a few settings:
Monitor - sRGB
Graphics Card colour management - SM172t (Samsung monitor)
Photoshop CS - sRGB IEC61966-2.1
Printer software properties - sRGB colour space profile

Other images (ie my deer photos from Richmond Park) print great, but portrait skin tones are truly hideous. I'm doing various changes and noting the settings each time, but the output is never as flattering as the camera-printer picture, and its using loads of paper and ink. Don't want to print from camera, as I want to edit ect. before outputting.

Any thoughts gratefully received.

LB

[dcw@pr]

What happens if you get one of the photos that you have printed OK direct from the camera, then open it in Photoshop, and print it without changing anything at all? If it is bad then, your problem most likely lies with either your printer driver or your colour settings in photoshop.

What about printing from another program in windows, again wiht no editing? Try both of those, and then maybe we can narrow down what is happening.

[ehasler]

luca brazzi said:

Printer software properties - sRGB colour space profile

This may be your problem, as if you've got sRGB selected as your profile in the "Print Space" area, you're using a working space profile as the print driver, so the numbers that your PC is sending to the printer are being translated into something completely different.

Are there any printer profiles in the drop down list for your particular printer? If not, do a search for *.icm files on your C drive, and also on the CD supplied with the printer. It should be pretty obvious from the name of the file what it does - e.g., SP2200 Premium Semigloss_PK.icm

Copy these to the c:windowssystem32spooldriverscolor directory, and it should appear in the drop down list in PS, and will be available for you to select as the print driver.

[nighthawk]

I gave up printing many of my shots because I can't get the set up exactly right.

images look great on screen and during retouching, but by the time i print them on my old epson 950 the tones have altered slightly.

using print preview in PS7 and CS doesn't really show what the printer is going to spit out.

An idiots guide to colour management would be great, but it's a thing thats not likely to happen. it's just far to complex to put down on paper.

[ehasler]

nighthawk said:

An idiots guide to colour management would be great, but it's a thing thats not likely to happen. it's just far to complex to put down on paper.

It's not actually that complicated.

A good book on the subject is "Real World Color Management"

or if that's a bit heavy, "Real World Photoshop" touches on the subject too.

Basically, the key to being able to print what you see on screen is to have accurate printer profiles, and an accurately calibrated and profiled monitor.

Most profiles supplied with modern printers are very good, and although you can get custom profiles made, the standard ones should be more than adequate.

Probably the best thing you can do though is to make sure your monitor is setup correctly, which can really only be done properly by using a bit of hardware that sits on the front of the screen and measures the output of various coloured shapes that the matching software flashes at it. It will also guide you on setting up your monitor with the optimum contrast/brightness settings etc... One example of this is the Colorvision Spyder

You also have to take into account the fact that the colours on your screen are produced by adding red, green and blue light, while the colours you see on paper are produced (typically) by cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink reflecting light back at you. The colours you see will also vary depending on the intensity of the light shining on the print - see what the photo looks like under sunlight compared to a reading lamp.

So, in short, if you want accurate prints, you really need to start with calibrating your monitor and using good print profiles, but you also have to be aware of the limitations of colour matching, and recognise when you will not be able to get an exact match.

Hope this helps - I'm still a newbie to all this, so if I've got something wrong, then I'm sure someone will step in and correct me!

[luca brazzi]

Thanks guys, much appreciated.

Its confusing as there are so many things that can be changed....knowing where to start is tricky.

Searched the machine for .icm files.....here's the list (the Printer is a CP-200 Canon btw)


Also, in Photoshop, print setup, the source space is set to 'Document', while the print space is set to 'Same as source'...here's the full list:


Interestingly, my old printer is there (Espon 640), but the new one isn't....will have to go look for the CD and perhaps re-install.

Thoughts?

LB

By the way, having printed about 25-30 images, changing settings each time, I got an output that pretty much matches the screen before a tweak...

When I like the look in Photoshop, I increase brightness by 15, decrease contrast by 10, and desaturate reds by 10...screen look wrong, but prints great. Then I just don't save the wrong looking image.

[ehasler]

I guess it's possible that the CP-200 doesn't come with any profiles, but it's certainly worth a search of the CD.

As a matter of luck, I just found a couple of articles which might be of use:

Printing in Photoshop

Colour Management

They explain things much better than I can!

[simpo two]

You could take a photo of the screen....

[luca brazzi]

ehasler said:

I guess it's possible that the CP-200 doesn't come with any profiles, but it's certainly worth a search of the CD. As a matter of luck, I just found a couple of articles which might be of use: Printing in Photoshop Colour Management They explain things much better than I can!

Excellent Ed....having a look now. Also re-installing the printer (USB), although scanning the CD I've not found an .icm file.

The articles look very promising....already showing I'm using the wrong setting. Will let you know how I progress.

Ta
LB