Dark prints & screen view

[Josh Bear]

Dear All,

As some of you know I have never really been happy with my R1800 printer. To me the prints always come out darker than what is on my screen. Having searched many sites I know I am not the only one. I am looking at custom calibration but at the moment can't seem to find a company that is open. (holiday time I guess)

I have made a number of attempts to fix it and always get to the point of "Oh it is fine" but then next time I print something for my wall I get dissapointed.

This is what I have done / do:-
1. I calibrate my screen every 4 weeks.
2. I use a TFT and the brightness is set to 2 and the black level to 2. The contrast is set to 98. Not sure this is relevant but the pictures look good on the screen and the eye one calibration thing says it is right.
3. The picture below shows a screen grab. I have included the levels and have indicated the areas that especially come out dark.
4. Following advice I got from patrick I dug out an old test pack of permajet paper I bought last year and then downloaded the correct profile for that paper.
5. The prints on permajet are slightly brighter and warmer than the same print on epson paper.
6. Whn I print i do sect the right settings e.g. ICM, no colour etc etc

That is all I know. If anyone wants the full size Jpeg to look at I am more than happy to send. thanks for any help.

Best Regards

Josh

[Stephen]

Re: Dark prints & screen view

Josh, thanks for sending the file. I spent some time printing various versions yesterday. I assumed that the image was essentially converted straight to JPEG from the Raw file, I did nothing more to it.

I have printed it on my Epson 2100 using 7dayshop premium semi gloss paper, which I consider to be a pretty good paper, and a great deal cheaper than the slightly lighter weight Epson equivalent.

I used my laptop and CS3 to print from as I am still waiting for for Adobe to send me a Mac version, so its not installed on my Mac yet.

My usual MO for printing from PS on my laptop was to let Photoshop manage colours in the PS Print dialogue, and I would select the Epson driver for my printer. If I'm honest I usually just leave the Epson print dialogue on Automatic, but this time I also printed one with the Epson dialogue set on Custom and ICM as you suggested you did. The third version was printed using PS set on Let Printer Manage colours (this is also how I found I had to do it on my Mac using a trial version of CS3) then Auto on the Epson Print dialogue.

Now in all honesty apart from the fact that the colours on all the prints were warmer than they appeared on screen, there wasn't a vast difference between any of them. The print where I let the printer manage colours and using the Auto setting had a slightly lighter and paler blue sky, with marginally less contrast but with more shadow penetration. With the prints letting PS manage colours, I really don't think there was a significant difference between the one done on Auto and the one using ICM, if anything the Auto one was slightly darker or had more contrast its difficult to tell.

In my opinion though all the prints were within acceptable tolerances bearing in mind that the whole scene was pretty contrasty. The areas you marked on your screen grab seemed to me to have an acceptable level of shadow detail and there certainly wasn't the blocked shadow which you seemed to suggest you were getting. The barge and everything this side of the bridge is in shadow anyway so there is a quite a dynamic range in the image to begin with. I suspect that had the photo been taken on most cameras the foreground may well have been darker or the sky and buildings lighter, as your 5D has a better DR than most cameras.

Obviously I have not actually seen one of your prints to compare mine with, but I would be happy to send you the 3 prints I have.

I would suggest that if you are unhappy with the lack of shadow detail or the general brightness of your prints then you should attempt to selectively lighten areas using a well feathered selection and curves. Finally it is important that you select the correct printer driver in the Photoshop Print dialogue and not a default one may there, but I'm sure you do that already.

[Josh Bear]

Re: Dark prints & screen view

Josh, thanks for sending the file. I spent some time printing various versions yesterday. I assumed that the image was essentially converted straight to JPEG from the Raw file, I did nothing more to it.

I have printed it on my Epson 2100 using 7dayshop premium semi gloss paper, which I consider to be a pretty good paper, and a great deal cheaper than the slightly lighter weight Epson equivalent.

I used my laptop and CS3 to print from as I am still waiting for for Adobe to send me a Mac version, so its not installed on my Mac yet.

My usual MO for printing from PS on my laptop was to let Photoshop manage colours in the PS Print dialogue, and I would select the Epson driver for my printer. If I'm honest I usually just leave the Epson print dialogue on Automatic, but this time I also printed one with the Epson dialogue set on Custom and ICM as you suggested you did. The third version was printed using PS set on Let Printer Manage colours (this is also how I found I had to do it on my Mac using a trial version of CS3) then Auto on the Epson Print dialogue.

Now in all honesty apart from the fact that the colours on all the prints were warmer than they appeared on screen, there wasn't a vast difference between any of them. The print where I let the printer manage colours and using the Auto setting had a slightly lighter and paler blue sky, with marginally less contrast but with more shadow penetration. With the prints letting PS manage colours, I really don't think there was a significant difference between the one done on Auto and the one using ICM, if anything the Auto one was slightly darker or had more contrast its difficult to tell.

In my opinion though all the prints were within acceptable tolerances bearing in mind that the whole scene was pretty contrasty. The areas you marked on your screen grab seemed to me to have an acceptable level of shadow detail and there certainly wasn't the blocked shadow which you seemed to suggest you were getting. The barge and everything this side of the bridge is in shadow anyway so there is a quite a dynamic range in the image to begin with. I suspect that had the photo been taken on most cameras the foreground may well have been darker or the sky and buildings lighter, as your 5D has a better DR than most cameras.

Obviously I have not actually seen one of your prints to compare mine with, but I would be happy to send you the 3 prints I have.

I would suggest that if you are unhappy with the lack of shadow detail or the general brightness of your prints then you should attempt to selectively lighten areas using a well feathered selection and curves. Finally it is important that you select the correct printer driver in the Photoshop Print dialogue and not a default one may there, but I'm sure you do that already.