monitor calibration, print colors...$*%&...LOL

[a.paul]

I'm using an iMac, 24" screen. Photoshop CS3. I've calibrated the monitor with an i1.

Printing to an Epson Stylus Photo RX595 just for note cards and quick small prints (haven't found the time to start up the HP B9180 yet).


Prints are way too dark. To get a print that fairly well matches the monitor I have to adjust the brightness up about 50 on b/w and about half that for color, and with color I also need to open up the shadows +10 to 15.

I use the profiles for the paper, I make sure to set it so that color management is set to "Photoshop manages color" and I turn off color management in the printer menu...I've done about everything I've read about trying to solve the problem and nothing has really worked.

I'm usually printing on matte paper--it's not quite as bad with a glossy finish. But by choosing the matte profile, that should eliminate that issue, shouldn't it?

I'm wondering if the problem is the monitor--if this monitor is capable of being calibrated as well as it should be? Perhaps the only way to solve the problem is to invest in a second, more photo friendly monitor (or simply remember to brighten all pictures before printing)?

Thoughts, advice, further questions...thanks.

I'm trying to learn all this stuff in sort of a crash course style, but sometimes...it just doesn't work that well.

Thanks all.

[pherold]

All of your settings and choices are good.

When prints are darker than the screen, the most common reason for that that I've found among our customers is that the display is brighter than it should be (relative to the paper and illuminant.)

Since you are trying to match your prints to your display, first take a look at how a blank white sheet of your printer paper compares to a blank white document in Photoshop. If the white on the screen is brighter than the print paper - then your prints are naturally going to look darker.

Newer LCDs like your iMac are capable of getting pretty bright (lums of 300 or more). Don't be surprised if you have to turn the brightness down to less than 50% or even down to 0% to get close to what you need. With i1 Match, choose the Advanced profiling mode and at the third screen, it will allow you to choose a luminance point to aim for. "120" is a good place to start.

The other alternative is to brighten up your "illuminant" - your light source for viewing your images - more lights, brighter lights, color adjusted lights, a light "booth".

-Pat Herold

[Keith]

I also have a iMac 24 inch and it's calibrated very well but I had to use a little program to get the screen brightness down. Unfortunately the iMacs are really better suited to video and dvd and are bright because of this. My screen brightness is turned all the way down and then down some more using this program

http://www.charcoaldesign.co.uk/shades

[Ken Lee]

Monitors continue to get brighter and contrastier. Paper has its limits.

Chromix (http://www2.chromix.com) had a nice series in their newsletters, concerning Monitors.

"The Luminance setting you choose depends a lot on your viewing environment. General guidelines are 100 - 120 for a moderately lit room, 100 or less for a dim room. If you are trying to adjust your screen to match your printer output, then adjust your luminance so that a white screen will be as bright as a blank piece of paper."

On my Apple PowerBook, I do this by turning down the brightness until I get the desired effect.

[Ken Lee]

Keith - Thanks so much for that link !

Shades (http://www.charcoaldesign.co.uk/shades) gives much more control than the standard buttons, which only deal in large increments.

[Leonard Evens]

Did you calibrate your printer yourself or did you use a canned profile? I don't know if that would make a difference, but it is something to consider. If you don't want to lay out the cash for a print reading device such as the i1 photo, you can have someone else make a printer profile for you at moderate cost.

[a.paul]

Did you calibrate your printer yourself or did you use a canned profile? I don't know if that would make a difference, but it is something to consider. If you don't want to lay out the cash for a print reading device such as the i1 photo, you can have someone else make a printer profile for you at moderate cost.


Like I said in my post, I've calibrated the monitor with an I1.

I'm not sure it makes all that much difference with a monitor that doesn't have a way to adjust settings--which is a reason I'm considering the purchase of a second monitor.

Thanks!

[a.paul]

I also have a iMac 24 inch and it's calibrated very well but I had to use a little program to get the screen brightness down. Unfortunately the iMacs are really better suited to video and dvd and are bright because of this. My screen brightness is turned all the way down and then down some more using this program

http://www.charcoaldesign.co.uk/shades


Thanks for that. My screen brightness is turned to zero, and the monitor is calibrated towards 5000 kelvin (hey, there are only 3 choices, lol)--but the monitor is still a ton brighter than the paper.

[Leonard Evens]

Like I said in my post, I've calibrated the monitor with an I1.

I'm not sure it makes all that much difference with a monitor that doesn't have a way to adjust settings--which is a reason I'm considering the purchase of a second monitor.

Thanks!

You also need a printer profile, if you are comparing what you see on the monitor with what you see when you make a print. It wasn't clear to me where you got the printer profile.

[Lenny Eiger]

You also need a printer profile, if you are comparing what you see on the monitor with what you see when you make a print. It wasn't clear to me where you got the printer profile.

Exactly right. Every printer is different. Canned profiles can get you a certain distance, but to really tune it - you have to profile your own printer.

That said, I am not a fan of matching to the monitor, or spending that much time with it. Sure its important in certain instances like going to offset. However, I don't bother much with the monitor - I look at the print. If I haven't printed for a little while, I am always a little off in what I imagine the monitor is showing me vs what happens in the print. then I tune my "conversion" a little bit in my brain and I end up making better choices.

The monitor is a transmissive medium and the print is a reflective one - and never the twain shall meet. There is a conversion that is required - in the brain - that isn't unlike the ability of a b&w photographer to view a shot outside and know immediately what the print will look like.

Once you've calibrated a monitor and are using good print profiles it's up to you to tune the understanding of how things translate. That said, it sounds like you could use a better print profile.

Lenny
EigerStudios

[pherold]

My screen brightness is turned to zero, and the monitor is calibrated towards 5000 kelvin --but the monitor is still a ton brighter than the paper.

This would be why your prints are way too dark compared to the monitor. You would need to solve this first in order to get things to match closer. Here are a few options for you as I see it:

Shades. This is a clever little program that can indeed reduce the brightness on your screen, by directly accessing the LUT tables in your video card. You can apply this correction after you make your i1 profile - however it would in fact "invalidate" your profile. It changes your monitor from the state it was in when it was profiled. Bottom line: it might not give you the high-precision results you need for a color-critical work.
GretagMacbeth ProfileMaker suite. (Not really an option as it costs ~$3000+ but it is capable of reducing screen brightness in the video card.)
ColorEyes Display Pro. (This is one of the best software packages around for calibrating monitors. You can get the software-only version since you already have an i1 Device, for less than $200. This is the only other piece of software I know of that will reduce the brightness using the video card if you run out of room with the monitor controls.)
Increase the lighting situation where you work (get a lightbooth) to match the brightness of your display.

I wish I had some better options for you!

-Pat Herold
CHROMiX

[Brian K]

I'm having exactly the same problem as the OP. I'm using a MacPro, Eizo monitor, Leopard, PS CS3. I have calibrated and re-calibrated my monitor (which is actually a little dim after 3 years), and done printer calibrations, all done with my Eye One and the latest version of the eye-one match software. I am also using the newest epson driver 6.15 and have turned off guttenprint.

Using the "let photoshop match", turning off color control in the printer dialog box, using the profile that I made specifically for the paper I am using, black point on and off, etc, all my prints come out too dark as well, and not slightly. I have also used the generic profiles like enhanced matte, etc.

This seems like a systemic problem and not necessarily just a problem that I am having.

[a.paul]

Pat, part of my problem is that there aren't really adjustments available for the iMac. That's why I mentioned getting a second monitor, one that had individual controls for brightness and so forth.


I also do realize that it's never going to be exact because of the difference between paper and monitor. It's not colors that are the problem--it's solely an issue of brightness, and it's more pronounced in b/w than in color, oddly enough (at least it's odd to me, but I've freely admitted my newbness).

Thanks all.

[Ken Lee]

Shades. This is a clever little program that can indeed reduce the brightness on your screen, by directly accessing the LUT tables in your video card. You can apply this correction after you make your i1 profile - however it would in fact "invalidate" your profile. It changes your monitor from the state it was in when it was profiled. Bottom line: it might not give you the high-precision results you need for a color-critical work.
GretagMacbeth ProfileMaker suite. (Not really an option as it costs ~$3000+ but it is capable of reducing screen brightness in the video card.)
ColorEyes Display Pro. (This is one of the best software packages around for calibrating monitors. You can get the software-only version since you already have an i1 Device, for less than $200. This is the only other piece of software I know of that will reduce the brightness using the video card if you run out of room with the monitor controls.)
Increase the lighting situation where you work (get a lightbooth) to match the brightness of your display.


Excellent !

By the way, my Chromix profiles are superb. And so is their free newsletter. (I'm just a satisfied customer, who appreciates when the vendor is more of an educator, than a marketeer).

[Keith]

Shades you use BEFORE you profile to simply get your luminance of the monitor down to a usable level. It does not effect your profile only the brightness of the screen.

It works and it's free.

[pherold]

Yes, I tried Shades before profiling, but there seemed to be a conflict between Shades control of the LUT curves and the i1 software that was trying to perform the calibration. At least, the screen flickered a lot and the LUT curves bounced around back and forth a lot. The resulting profile looked pretty bad, rather greenish in the midtones. This makes sense really. The usual routine for a monitor calibrator is to take the LUT values back to flat line at the beginning of the process so that it can make a clean new profile. If Shades is messing with these curves to begin with, the software is going to get confused.

Now for the disclaimer: This is just my experience on my system (Mac OS 10.4). Your results may vary. Keith, are you using Shades to bring the brightness down a small amount below what your iMac can do? I would imagine it could work very well used sparingly.

-Pat

[Ken Lee]

On Pat's advice, I purchased a copy of ColorEyes Display Pro (from Chromix) and it really works nicely. I have never seen my monitor so... grey !

The fact that I was able to use my existing i1 device, made it that much more palatable.

Like Pat, I found that I had to disable and remove Shades, after having the same experience with flickering, etc. But that's fine with me, since the idea of manually fiddling with monitor brightness, after having profiled my printer and calibrating my monitor, seems ironic at best.