Printing frustration

[Todd K]

I haven’t seen much discussion on this topic but I’ve been exasperated with printing for some time. I bought a Canon Pro9000 II years ago and could never get a good match of prints to my monitor (a calibrated Dell Ultrasharp 2410 at the time, printing from Aperture), especially with red casts that I could not get rid of. I eventually gave up, knowing that I wasn’t alone in stumbling around in the nightmare that is color management.

I recently took up the challenge again, this time with a BenQ 271 monitor and the same Pro9000II, both carefully calibrated with X-Rite i1Studio. I generated icc printer profiles for 5 different test papers from Red River Papers (very nice and helpful people) and tested both the X-Rite and the RRP in-house profiles for each paper specific to my printer. Despite a lot of tweaking (various monitor brightness settings, rendering intents, multiple papers, etc.) while the prints are greatly improved, I still can’t match the gamut on my monitor, in particular the blues and greens. The BenQ is wide gamut (100% Adobe RGB) but I’m not sure that’s the problem.

So my question is, could I do better if I had a more up-to-date printer? Has anyone seen an improvement in gamut when switching from the Pro9000II to something like the Canon Pro-1000 or Pro-300? Or any other similar printer upgrade? Also, has anyone had success in getting reasonably good matches with their monitor images using a high-quality print lab? I’d greatly appreciate any thoughts this wonderful forum might have.

 

[NorthernFocus]

This is another one of those topics with strong opinions. I'm purely pragmatic about it. I dabbled with home printing and trying to match monitor/printer profiles etc. But it wasn't fun and at any rate IMO you can't truly compare an image that emits light to one that reflects light. At least I can't. So where I ultimately landed was to identify two print shops and then by trial and error printed proofs until I came up with offsets that produced repeatable results. So I work the image until I'm satisfied on the monitor and that becomes my master output file. Then depending on what format and lab it's going to I apply the appropriate offset when I generate the final image file that will go to the printer. It works for me.

 

[Todd K]

This is another one of those topics with strong opinions. I'm purely pragmatic about it. I dabbled with home printing and trying to match monitor/printer profiles etc. But it wasn't fun and at any rate IMO you can't truly compare an image that emits light to one that reflects light. At least I can't. So where I ultimately landed was to identify two print shops and then by trial and error printed proofs until I came up with offsets that produced repeatable results. So I work the image until I'm satisfied on the monitor and that becomes my master output file. Then depending on what format and lab it's going to I apply the appropriate offset when I generate the final image file that will go to the printer. It works for me.

Thanks for your thoughts Dan. I agree that comparing emited light to reflected is problematic. One way to minimize differences according to the experts is to keep your monitor brightness low. This doesn't really help me. Also, many colors in my prints are pretty close to my monitor with the exception, as I said, the blues and greens. I think that the T&E method you used is where I might land. So far I have tried one lab with one trial but without a back and forth work around. I will have to try harder I think.

 

[dabhand16]

Printing is a black art in itself. I only print happy snaps and get anything else done in a lab. I also use their profiles too.

 

[DRwyoming]

I still can’t match the gamut on my monitor, in particular the blues and greens. The BenQ is wide gamut (100% Adobe RGB) but I’m not sure that’s the problem.

That's likely part of the problem. Are you soft proofing and doing gamut checks in your editing tool (e.g. PS) to make sure the colors in your images aren't outside the gamut of your profiled papers? Adobe RGB is a very wide gamut color space and great for editing but easy to process images to have tones beyond the gamut of your paper and print process.

If your paper and print process profiles are accurate and you're printing out of a color managed tool like Photoshop you should be able to use gamut checking and soft proofing to see if your image after processing is exceeding the gamut of your output media which unfortunately is pretty easy to do when editing in a wide color space.

As posted above it's difficult if not impossible to match the brilliance of emitted light from a monitor when printing but the big problems are typically related to printing outside the gamut of your output media which is pretty easy to do when editing in a very wide color space like Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB.

 

[Todd K]

Thank you your thoughts on this DR. I've been printing out of LR using soft-proofing. I've seen very minor areas out of gamut using gamut check for a few of the printer-paper combinations I've tried, but not the greens and blues that are most problematic in the prints. It may be that they will never match my monitor (even with the brightness set to very low) due to the emitted vs. reflected light differences. I may have to try Dan's approach of using a print lab and developing off-sets through trial and error.

It seems that printing is never simple and straightforward, or at least it isn't for me. I may also be a little too perfectionist about it .

 

[PaulBCT]

I was sad to hear about your frustrations with printing, as I think it is fun, just like watching images appear in the developer tray in the darkroom. (How old are you?)
l have a 2 or 3 year old Epson P 800 and a calibrated NEC monitor twice as old, and the prints are dazzling and flawless.
I don’t know hold old your printer is, but perhaps like cameras and computers it is time to update. The new Epson P 700 and P 900 get rave reviews.
Read this : https://photopxl.com/epson-p700-print-at-home-print-them-out-no-excuses/

Also, Matt Kloskowski (Mattk.com) one of the best digital imaging teachers, has a video course called The Perfect Print ($75). I have not watched that, but have purchased and watched other instructional videos which I found very worthwhile.

Good luck

 

[SBurkholder]

Another thing that catches beginners to color management is double color correction. This is where you have your software managing color output and the printer also tries to manage the color output. If you are using color profiles, then by definition you are trying to manage your color correction in software and you should make sure that hardware (i.e., your printer) is turned off. It is turned off through the dialog boxes in the printer management utility. If both are trying to manage your color, you will never be able to dial it in.

 

[Charles Loy]

Not fun, very frustrating for sure. Not to mention wasting ink, paper. I no longer print photos

 

[Todd K]

Another thing that catches beginners to color management is double color correction. This is where you have your software managing color output and the printer also tries to manage the color output. If you are using color profiles, then by definition you are trying to manage your color correction in software and you should make sure that hardware (i.e., your printer) is turned off. It is turned off through the dialog boxes in the printer management utility. If both are trying to manage your color, you will never be able to dial it in.

I always have the printer management off but I agree that dual color management was a good guess.

 

[Todd K]

I was sad to hear about your frustrations with printing, as I think it is fun, just like watching images appear in the developer tray in the darkroom. (How old are you?)
l have a 2 or 3 year old Epson P 800 and a calibrated NEC monitor twice as old, and the prints are dazzling and flawless.
I don’t know hold old your printer is, but perhaps like cameras and computers it is time to update. The new Epson P 700 and P 900 get rave reviews.
Read this : https://photopxl.com/epson-p700-print-at-home-print-them-out-no-excuses/

Also, Matt Kloskowski (Mattk.com) one of the best digital imaging teachers, has a video course called The Perfect Print ($75). I have not watched that, but have purchased and watched other instructional videos which I found very worthwhile.

Good luck

Thanks Paul. I'm old enough to know what you mean about darkroom stuff. It did always seem magical. Sometimes I think that digital photography and inkjet printing has gotten so sophisticated that we've lost perspective on what constitutes a good photo.

 

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

While I fondly remember my times in a dark room with trays, projectors, and safe lights, I would be willing to be that most of our experiences were in black and white. What little color darkroom work I did was pretty hairy, so I avoided it and used a lab back then (and I eventually worked in those labs). Color management is not really a big part of my darkroom history, and even if it was, it wouldn't apply to the digital world very well (except the very basics of color science).

Chris

 

[Silver Eagle]

Are you calibrating your monitor to your printer? I do a lot of printing. I use a Canon Pro-100 printer and my monitors are DEll 2411 Ultrasharp.
I use i1Studio ( formally Colormunki) by Xrite. That is the best investment you can make to get consistent, accurate, what you see is what you get results. Once your initial calibration is done and you created your color profile, the printing is easy.

 

[Deleted member 115]

I have a Canon Pro 300 and an iMac 27 inch 5 K monitor. Soft proof in the Canon utility, with icc profiles from manufacture and it seems pretty good to me. I have not noticed any major color problems with blues or greens personally. But I am a beginner at best when it comes to this level of printing.
I really love this new printer.

 

[PaulBCT]

Are you calibrating your monitor to your printer? I do a lot of printing. I use a Canon Pro-100 printer and my monitors are DEll 2411 Ultrasharp.
I use i1Studio ( formally Colormunki) by Xrite. That is the best investment you can make to get consistent, accurate, what you see is what you get results. Once your initial calibration is done and you created your color profile, the printing is easy.

Monitors are calibrated to computers. Printers have nothing to do with monitor calibration. You CAN calibrate computer to printer, but its a big deal. Thats why there are profiles for paper and printer.
(Of course, monitor must be calibrated so it correctly displays the colors the computer is sending to printer.)

Current printers from Epson and Canon (and probably others) have made printing almost foolproof, easy, and fun...not a black art. See link I included above. It is gratifying to see THE PRINT, not an online file, but the holy grail of photography since day 1, pop out of the printer. Digital printing has made color printing as easy as B & W darkroom printing was...and you dont end up smelling like fixer.

Printing technology has really advanced, and we need to upgrade every several years. Compare/contrast actually the cost of one new state of the art printer with a new lens, of which we all own several.

 

[Ian Hutchinson]

A lot of people when calibrating a monitor forget about the brightness, most monitors out of the box are set at between 180 and 200cd/m2. For photo editing and especially print those figures need to be around 100 - 120 cd/m2.
I run a 27inch iMac with an Eizo monitor attached for editing and use an Epson P600 printer and my prints come out the same as on my monitor, all are calibrated.

 

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

A lot of people when calibrating a monitor forget about the brightness, most monitors out of the box are set at between 180 and 200cd/m2. For photo editing and especially print those figures need to be around 100 - 120 cd/m2.
I run a 27inch iMac with an Eizo monitor attached for editing and use an Epson P600 printer and my prints come out the same as on my monitor, all are calibrated.

Just last week, there was a thread on the Facebook where people complained about prints coming back from the lab that were too dark. It was probably due to overly bright monitors calibrated at the factory for office work under bright lights. (So they were not just too bright, but also too blue.)

Chris

 

[Todd K]

Are you calibrating your monitor to your printer? I do a lot of printing. I use a Canon Pro-100 printer and my monitors are DEll 2411 Ultrasharp.
I use i1Studio ( formally Colormunki) by Xrite. That is the best investment you can make to get consistent, accurate, what you see is what you get results. Once your initial calibration is done and you created your color profile, the printing is easy.

Thanks for your thoughts. Yes, I do calibrate monitor to the printer. I have a BenQ 271 monitor and a Canon Pro9000II, both of which were calibrated with i1Studio, generating an icc profile for each of 5 papers I've tested in the printer. Like you said, I thought it was my best chance to get WYSIWYG results. I've test printed several photos of my own as well as an Atkinson test image. The monitor-print match with the latter standardized image was reasonably good but blues and greens were off (darker in print) in my own photos. As far as I know (but of course I don't know what I don't know ) I believe that I'm covering all the bases here.

 

[Todd K]

Monitors are calibrated to computers. Printers have nothing to do with monitor calibration. You CAN calibrate computer to printer, but its a big deal. Thats why there are profiles for paper and printer.
(Of course, monitor must be calibrated so it correctly displays the colors the computer is sending to printer.)

Current printers from Epson and Canon (and probably others) have made printing almost foolproof, easy, and fun...not a black art. See link I included above. It is gratifying to see THE PRINT, not an online file, but the holy grail of photography since day 1, pop out of the printer. Digital printing has made color printing as easy as B & W darkroom printing was...and you dont end up smelling like fixer.

Printing technology has really advanced, and we need to upgrade every several years. Compare/contrast actually the cost of one new state of the art printer with a new lens, of which we all own several.

Thanks for the thoughts. As it happens, I have done all of the things that you and others have recommended (and a big thanks to all who have weighed in on this!). As you say, printer technology has advanced a great deal and perhaps a printer upgrade is the next step. My Canon Pro9000II, while good for its time, is a bit outdated at this point and I could do better.
My question for this group is has anyone seen an improvement in color reproduction when upgrading from a Pro9000II?

 

[Todd K]

Just last week, there was a thread on the Facebook where people complained about prints coming back from the lab that were too dark. It was probably due to overly bright monitors calibrated at the factory for office work under bright lights. (So they were not just too bright, but also too blue.)

Chris

Thanks for your thoughts Chris. To your point, I have tried monitor-print comparisons even at very low monitor brightness and still seen dull blues and greens in prints vs. monitor.

 

[JohnW]

I may be talking out of school, but have you tried using the paper manufacturers ICC profiles instead of the ones you created?

My understanding is that the i1Studio creates the ICC profile using about 100 patches. The paper manufacturers use spectrometers that are quite a bit more sophisticated and expensive than the i1Studio and create their ICC profiles using 2000+ patches . If the papers own profiles are not getting you what you need try having a service create the profiles for you. I just think that the i1Studio is not cpapable of producing the exacting profile you require.

Have no problem and getting excellent matching prints to my 27" BenQ SW270C and Epson 3800 but then I'm using Epson profiles that I soft proof in LR and adjust. The only time recently that I had problems was in using some of Moabs Metal papers Slickrock Silver is very hard to get right where as their Slickrock Pearl was much easier to get a good print.

 

[Silver Eagle]

Are you using Canon ink or a generic product?

 

[Todd K]

I may be talking out of school, but have you tried using the paper manufacturers ICC profiles instead of the ones you created?

My understanding is that the i1Studio creates the ICC profile using about 100 patches. The paper manufacturers use spectrometers that are quite a bit more sophisticated and expensive than the i1Studio and create their ICC profiles using 2000+ patches . If the papers own profiles are not getting you what you need try having a service create the profiles for you. I just think that the i1Studio is not cpapable of producing the exacting profile you require.

Have no problem and getting excellent matching prints to my 27" BenQ SW270C and Epson 3800 but then I'm using Epson profiles that I soft proof in LR and adjust. The only time recently that I had problems was in using some of Moabs Metal papers Slickrock Silver is very hard to get right where as their Slickrock Pearl was much easier to get a good print.

Actually I have tried both Red River Paper ICC profiles for each of their 5 papers that I tested (and specific for the Canon Pro9000II) as well as the ICCs that the i1Studio produced for my specific printer. The prints were essentially the same whether I used RRPs or my i1Studio ICCs. I also have used Canon Platinum Pro paper with Canon's and my ICCs with similar results. I do soft-proofing in LR and some of the print blues and greens are dull compared to the soft-proof and non-proofed images. I have not, however, tried too much tweaking of soft-proof images. I might try to go down that rabbit hole but haven't yet. Thanks for your thoughts.

 

[Todd K]

Are you using Canon ink or a generic product?

I only use Canon ink