Epson 3800 prints are too dark?

[JavaDuke]

I got my Epson 3800 last week and tried to print some BW using ABW driver. Well, b&w prints came out just perfect, very neutral tones, deep blacks, very fine details. So I tried to print some color ones. I carefully calibrated my monitor, selected the soft proof and verified my colors, then on the print dialog I selected the option "Let Photoshop determine colors". I chose Relative Colormetric option and checked black point compensation, then on the driver dialog I chose "No color management" option. The print came out very dark. Then I tried to let printer determine colors and to my surprise colors were very close to what I saw on the monitor. While I'm very happy with what I get when I let printer determine colors, I still think I'm doing something wrong here, but I can't just figure out what exactly. It's stil hard to believe that printer does the better color management than Photoshop. I'm wondering if anyone had the same problem and I would appreciate any suggestion.

Thanks a lot!

[Doug Dolde]

I think this is because they just look brighter on a monitor. The backlighting is responsible for this. I often have to lighten them to get the print to look right. (I'm also using a 3800).

[JavaDuke]

Doug,

Well, that's what I thought, but prints managed by printer look pretty good. If compared side by side with monitor, they look very similar.

[Greg Lockrey]

If you selected "don't color manage" in the printer then what "profiles" are you using with the PS? I let the printer do the color managing myself since there are none made up as of yet other than the "canned" ones. I like Bill Atcheson's profiles over anything I make for my 9600's BTW and as far as I know, he hasn't made any for the 3800. For another little tidbit that I am discovering, the "canned" profile in the 3800 and my 4800 to me looks better than Bill Atcheson profile on my 9600. The colors are more accurate and as rich as the Atcheson's. Where the canned profle in the 9600 are accurate but not as rich.

[Brian Ellis]

That hasn't been my experience in the short time (about two weeks) I've been using my 3800. I get a very close match between the monitor and the print using Moab Entrada Natural paper and using the profile downloaded from the Moab web site. If your monitor is properly calibrated and you have a good paper profile the difference between backlighting and reflective lighting shouldn't be so great as to require a consistent lightening of the monitor image to get what you want in the print. What paper are you using and when you're in "Print With Preview" what paper profile have you selected?

[JavaDuke]

I actually followed Eric Chan's guide http://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan/dp/Epson3800/printworkflow.html. I selected Pro38 PLPP since I'm using Epson Premium Luster paper. I tried both Perceptual w/o Black point and Relative with Black point combinations - both result in very dark prints. Again, my point is, even if my monitor is calibrated incorrectly, then prints either managed by ps or printer should look dark - which is not the case. I even compared print managed by printer to the original 4x5 slide and the difference is very subtle.

[Brian Ellis]

"I actually followed Eric Chan's guide http://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan...tworkflow.html."

Well that takes care of the easy solutions. If you followed that procedure and your monitor is calibrated properly that should result in a much better match between monitor and print than it sounds like you're getting with a color managed system. And since using the printer driver works fine your calibration presumably is fine so it would seem that either it's an odd coincidence that the printer driver happens to give a good match (not totally out of the question, I actually used to get a pretty good match using the printer driver on a 1280 without even calibrating the monitor) or there's something wrong somewhere but I don't know where it might be. My only suggestion would be to call Epson and see what they say. I'm no Photoshop whiz and my color prints match the monitor to about 90% accuracy, the remaining 10% being the difference between backlight and reflective lighting I believe. Sorry not to be of more help.

[xavier deltell]

If you select the option "Let Photoshop determine colors", then you must put the paper profile. I use Hahnemulhle (photo rag and photo rag pearl ) papers and the profiles are very accurated.

Sorry for my english.

[Harley Goldman]

Go into the AWB advanced button in the printer setting (print with preview, etc). There are darkness settings and the default is dark. Set it to normal or light. If I am reading your problem correctly, that should do the trick.

I am at work so I cannot give you the exact directions, but do in there and you will see what I am referring to.

[Remigius]

JavaDuke,

You seem to use PS for printing. I have found that PS also produces dark JPEGs, but there's a menu entry View -> Color Proof (or similar, I have unfortunately a German PS version), usually with shortcut Ctrl+Y, that simply put darkens the screen view without changing the image data. Unfortunately, this is not sticky, i.E. you have to enable it for every image separately. Dunno if this is the source of your problem...

[JohnnyV]

This is a known issue with Epson printers...

I've seen this problem - dark prints with a calibrated LCD - with a client's Mac/Epson 3800 and could not resolve it. As it turns out there is bad bug in OS X. Bad enough that Adobe has posted a TechNote with a screwy work around:

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=kb400878

Strange thing is the issue affects some users and not others. For instance my Mac/Epson 4800 prints dead on.

[JavaDuke]

This is a known issue with Epson printers...

I've seen this problem - dark prints with a calibrated LCD - with a client's Mac/Epson 3800 and could not resolve it. As it turns out there is bad bug in OS X. Bad enough that Adobe has posted a TechNote with a screwy work around:

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=kb400878

Strange thing is the issue affects some users and not others. For instance my Mac/Epson 4800 prints dead on.

Yes, this is exactly what happens to me but I'm running Windows XP (yuck!) So I just use "Let the printer manage the colors" option. I get the pretty accurate color reproduction though so I really don't know if Photoshop color management would make it any better.

[JohnnyV]

Yep a buddy of mine has same problem with XP and the Epson 2400. I think he went into the system to change the default color work space and that fixed everything.

[pherold]

Here are a few more obscure steps to try:
- Make sure the printer you are using is listed as the default printer.
- This problem is sometimes solved by listing "Generic RGB.icc" as the default printer in the Epson driver. I know, I know - it shouldn't matter what profile is listed in the driver if you've already turned color management off - but this has to do with the "bug" listed above.

Finally, if you haven't tried this yet - uninstall the Epson driver, reboot, and install it again. I have heard from many others who have fixed the problem with this.