Printing from Lightroom

[Autumn]

Re: Printing from Lightroom

Hi Audrey,

Most LCD monitors are far too bright and this is not usually taken account of in the profiling process, with the result that prints look much darker than the screen version. I had to turn my screen brightness down to 30% after profiling.

I have reprofiled my screen again today. I didn't think it had worked properly yesterday as I didn't have to do all the messing about with the RGB sliders. It just said it had finished, and it seemed too bright.

So today I am sure it looks OK and am very pleased with it. It doesn't now seem too bright.

If you go to ePhotozine, at the bottom of their first page there is a 13 step grayscale chart on which you should be able to distinguish 13 separate steps - a good guide to contrast and brightness of your display.

I did that and it was fine. I could see all the shades.

In your CS3 screengrab you have your monitor profile set up as your working space - this is wrong! Your working space is not a profile, it should be set to a working space such as Adobe RGB or ProPhoto.

I have now set is to sRGB IEC61966-2. I think that is what my camera is.

To find your installed printer/paper profiles go to: Start > 'C' > Windows > System32 and scroll down to Spool > Drivers > Color where you will (should) find all the profiles installed by Vista or Epson.

I did do that. I am attaching a screengrab of them. The only one I recognised unfortunately is the top one which is covered up It is "Generic PnP Monitor" which is the name my Spyder 2 gave it and I didn't change it.

Apart from that I don't have any Vista or Epson profiles that I am aware of. I have not recently had any paper profiled.

I couldn't see the 'Colcpl' item. Again a screengrab.

If you can see anything I should be putting in, please let me know.

Thanks Roger.

[Autumn]

Re: Printing from Lightroom

Hi,

It's me again Audrey, I managed to see your screen grabs again later, and I see from your CS print dialogue that you have your printer profile set to 'WorkingRGB - Monitor'

This is wrong because it is not a printer profile. You should set here a paper/printer profile, either from Epson or your paper manufacturer.

On the subject of 'profile' versus 'colour space'. This is one of the major sources of confusion in colour management. When I am asked I try to explain it in painting terms, as a painter would see the difference.

Think of the colour space as the painter's palette - it contains all the colours available to him.

I have done some alterations and printed something in CS3. I am attaching a screengrab of the settings.

Perhaps you will let me know if anything needs altering and to what.

The print wasn't "Far Out" just a hint of green.

In haste. Speak later.

PS The screengrab is not very clear. Hope you can make it out.

[rogleale]

Re: Printing from Lightroom

Again Audrey!

You have a working space - sRGB set as a printer profile. If it prints correctly from that I would be surprised.

Roger

[rogleale]

Re: Printing from Lightroom

Hi Audrey,

You should not use a monitor profile for a printer. Monitors deal with light, and printers deal with ink, and their profiles should never be used for anything but monitors.

1. I am surprised by the 'Generic PnP Monitor' I thought Spyder would have given the profile a name and a date. Have a look in Colorcpl which I can see about half way down your screen grab. Spyder may have put its generated profile in there.

2. Sorry to repeat myself Audrey, but sRGB is a working space NOT a profile to be used by a printer. The profile to be used by your printer should be by either Epson or your paper manufacturer. Although I use Canon printers, if you can find your printer profile we could set up an ad hoc colour managed work flow if you like.

Roger

[Autumn]

Re: Printing from Lightroom

Hi Audrey,
1. I am surprised by the 'Generic PnP Monitor' I thought Spyder would have given the profile a name and a date. Have a look in Colorcpl which I can see about half way down your screen grab. Spyder may have put its generated profile in there.

See screengrab. I think it is the profiled name Spyder gave it. Normally I add the date, but I decided not to as I thought I would overwrite each profiling and not have so many floating around. Perhaps this is wrong.

2. Sorry to repeat myself Audrey, but sRGB is a working space NOT a profile to be used by a printer. The profile to be used by your printer should be by either Epson or your paper manufacturer. Although I use Canon printers, if you can find your printer profile we could set up an ad hoc colour managed work flow if you like.

I do appreciate your spending all this time on me and I hope it may be useful to others sometime.

I would appreciate it if you could generate an ad hoc colour managed work flow for me if it is possible with the information I have.


Here is a screengrab of everything in my Printer Profile box. Do you see anything there? If there in nothing suitable, what can I put into the box?

And yet another screengrab of Colorcpl. I had noticed that this morning, but you called it Colcpl, so I didn't think it was the same thing.

[rogleale]

Re: Printing from Lightroom

Hi Audrey,

I realise that I am stepping into a minefield here because there are so many people with their own ideas about colour management and workflows,but we could make a definite first, and the most important, step by setting your monitor to use the Spyder profile.

1. 'C' > Windows > System32 > colorcpl

2. Click on 'Devices' and your 'Generic . . .' profile should be shown.

3. Click on 'Use my settings for this device' - click the 'Add' button.

4. The 'Associate Color Profile' window will open.

5. Scroll down and click on the '1.0.5-1 Color Vision' profile and click OK.

6. You will arrive back at the 'Devices' window, and the Spyder profile
will be listed.

7. Select it, click 'Add' and then click on 'Set as default profile'

A pretty long procedure, but you should never need to do it again unless you change monitors. Spyder should automatically install any new profile you make as default.

That's a start anyway,

Roger

[Autumn]

Re: Printing from Lightroom

Hi Audrey,

I realise that I am stepping into a minefield here because there are so many people with their own ideas about colour management and workflows,but we could make a definite first, and the most important, step by setting your monitor to use the Spyder profile.

1. 'C' > Windows > System32 > colorcpl

2. Click on 'Devices' and your 'Generic . . .' profile should be shown.

3. Click on 'Use my settings for this device' - click the 'Add' button.

4. The 'Associate Color Profile' window will open.

5. Scroll down and click on the '1.0.5-1 Color Vision' profile and click OK.

6. You will arrive back at the 'Devices' window, and the Spyder profile
will be listed.

7. Select it, click 'Add' and then click on 'Set as default profile'

A pretty long procedure, but you should never need to do it again unless you change monitors. Spyder should automatically install any new profile you make as default.

That's a start anyway,

Roger

Hi Roger

I got so far but could not see '1.0.5-1 Color Vision' (only the Generic one, which when I chose the Profile Chooser [screengrab last night] and clicked "About", showed the Spyder logo.)

See if you can see it in my screensgrabs attached.

[rogleale]

Re: Printing from Lightroom

Sorry Audrey but I think that I may have missed a step although there do seem to be some subtle differences between the screens we are seeing.
When you click on 'Devices' make sure that ' all monitor profiles ' is selected.

From the evidence of all your screen shots there is no printer profile on your machine. This is not surprising because Epson have not issued a Vista driver for the 1290 as far as I can find out. If I were you I would try a Windows 200 driver which is available from HERE It may work!

Roger

[rogleale]

Re: Printing from Lightroom

Hi Yet Again,

I don't know much about the S9500 Audrey, but I don't believe that you can select a colour space to record in. Is that true? If it is true it means that you are shooting in sRGB mode, and that will greatly simplify your work flow because you will not need to consider any other colour space for your work, as changing to a wider gamut colour space like AdobeRGB will not produce any gain.

This in turn means that you can set your workspace in CS3 to sRGB, and your export preferences in Lightroom to sRGB with no fear of losing any colour info and your pictures will be in the right mode for putting on the web or e-mailing.

You don't have many choices for white balance as I remember, fine, shade, auto, and various artificial lightings.
Using Auto will mostly produce good jpegs I am sure, but if the available lighting is easily defined, eg very shady, setting the WB to shade should produce even more consistent results.

Does that help at all?

Roger

[rogleale]

Re: Printing from Lightroom

Hi Ian,
A very delayed response to the original post I know but this is a discussion being held all over the web where LR is concerned.

The general opinion seems to be that if you are getting good prints letting the printer manage colour in Photoshop you are very lucky and should not worry why. LR is different in the way it handles colour spaces and profiles, and it is most likely that somewhere in your workflow the files being passed to the printer from LR are being double profiled.
The answer, where it has worked because it doesn't always, is to go through your workflow step by step meticulously, especially where the disabling of colour management by the printer is concerned. I understand that many people have found this to be the source of the problem, and easily missed in the Epson driver.

You have probably solved the problem by now anyway!

Roger

[Autumn]

Re: Printing from Lightroom

Sorry Audrey but I think that I may have missed a step although there do seem to be some subtle differences between the screens we are seeing.
When you click on 'Devices' make sure that ' all monitor profiles ' is selected.

From the evidence of all your screen shots there is no printer profile on your machine. This is not surprising because Epson have not issued a Vista driver for the 1290 as far as I can find out. If I were you I would try a Windows 200 driver which is available from HERE It may work!

Roger

Sorry for the delay Roger, I had an appointment this morning.

I am attaching a screengrab of how I installed my 1290 printer.

I clicked on Add new printer and went through the lists that were there.

Epson talked me through the procedure as there aren't any dedicated Vista drivers.

I had to click on "Epson 1290 Photo 1290 (M)" for it to print.

It does print OK. It took such a long time for me to get it printing trying all sorts. If I went down the route of using Windows 2000 drivers, I might mess it up again.

See the screengrab of where I got my drivers. They must be on my hard drive somewhere. Is that what I am looking for?

[Autumn]

Re: Printing from Lightroom

Hi Yet Again,

I don't know much about the S9500 Audrey, but I don't believe that you can select a colour space to record in. Is that true? If it is true it means that you are shooting in sRGB mode, and that will greatly simplify your work flow because you will not need to consider any other colour space for your work, as changing to a wider gamut colour space like AdobeRGB will not produce any gain.

This in turn means that you can set your workspace in CS3 to sRGB, and your export preferences in Lightroom to sRGB with no fear of losing any colour info and your pictures will be in the right mode for putting on the web or e-mailing.

You don't have many choices for white balance as I remember, fine, shade, auto, and various artificial lightings.
Using Auto will mostly produce good jpegs I am sure, but if the available lighting is easily defined, eg very shady, setting the WB to shade should produce even more consistent results.

Does that help at all?

Roger

You are right about the colour space in the all my cameras. They are only sRGB. That is why I have CS3 set to that and Lightroom.

Having said that, I open up the Generic Monitor information and it said RGB! It also gave yesterday's date - the date I profiled it. So it must be the Spyder. In fact Spyder did give me the option to change the title. Perhaps I should have done - called it Spyder so that it would be more recognisable.

When I click on the Colorvision Profile Chooser on my desk top is shows:

1 - Generic PnP Monitor

[Patrick]

Re: Printing from Lightroom

Sorry for the delay Roger, I had an appointment this morning.

I am attaching a screengrab of how I installed my 1290 printer.

I clicked on Add new printer and went through the lists that were there.

Epson talked me through the procedure as there aren't any dedicated Vista drivers.

I had to click on "Epson 1290 Photo 1290 (M)" for it to print.

It does print OK. It took such a long time for me to get it printing trying all sorts. If I went down the route of using Windows 2000 drivers, I might mess it up again.

See the screengrab of where I got my drivers. They must be on my hard drive somewhere. Is that what I am looking for?

I have been following the exchange between you and Roger, so would you forgive me for interupting this descussion.

First, I suggest you recalibrate your screen again but this time give it a new name when asked. I simply call mine Monitor and the date it was made for example my current monitor profile is "Monitor 05-05-08"


Roger told you how to get to your profiles but all the screen grabs do not appear to be that window. I attach the profile window of my Laptop with the printer profiles highlighted (the laptop uses an all in one Epson RX585 for office use no custom profiles here) you may notice in this window profiles have a multi coloured triangle as their symbol. The printer profiles if present should be made active, by right clicking on the profile and selecting "Install Profile" They will then appear on your list of profile options in Lightroom when you select Other. Screen grab attached

Also there is a screen grab of Lightroom printer settings, and a setting for the printer hope these could be helpful.

I have included a screen grab of color setting I use in CS3

I underline again don't use "manage by printer" in Lightroom use "other" and select your profile.

Patrick

[rogleale]

Re: Printing from Lightroom

You're probably about the 2000 driver. The drivers shown on your screen shot may all exist on your HD but I doubt it. Probably if you click on your model the 'Next' it will probably search for a while then say 'Insert disk' but it is worth trying.

Roger

[rogleale]

Re: Printing from Lightroom

Hi Patrick,

We did see the correct window in Audrey's post of 22 hours back but there are no printer profiles there, not even a generic Epson profile. I think you may have overlooked it because of Audrey's colour scheme, which looks like Windows 98 to me!

When a profile becomes available you have to go to Colorcpl to install it if the installer does not put it in the right place for you, or if you have downloaded it.

I am not an Epson user, but on various forums I have noticed that many posters have had trouble in preventing their Epson printer from managing the print job. From the screen grab that you have posted it seems to be pretty straight forward on your model.

Roger