 Brandy Wilkinson |
Printing a Photo with Plenty of Black kindly, Brandy
|
|||||||
|
|
||||||||
|
Joe Jarosz |
Hi Brandy, Print horribly how? Also what kind of printer do you have? Joe
|
|||||||
|
|
||||||||
|
Andrew Laverghetta |
I have had something like this happen as well. It's because it's probably not a true photo printer. The printer probably has one or two cartriges like the three color one and maybe a black one. I don't believe that it will use the black one because even though it looks like it, it's not true black. So, it doesn't use the black cartridge and tries to make that near black color with the other three colors mixed together. Look at a photo printer at a good photo shop and check out, maybe, a good Epson or Canon. Maybe the paper could be part of the problem also, but I'm not sure.
|
|||||||
|
|
||||||||
|
Clay Anderson |
To respond to Andrew's comment: your printer will, in fact, use the black cartridge to produce black, for the very reason that the other three colors combined will never produce a true black, because of imperfections in the inks. In color theory, the C (cyan), M (magenta), and Y (yellow) inks should combine to produce true black, but in the real world, this is not possible, hence the addition of the K (black) ink. This is the strategy behind the CMYK color space, which you will see utilized in Photoshop, and which is what is used in "4-color printing", such as magazines. I would suspect that the biggest problem is your paper. If you are not printing on glossy "photo" paper, you will not get attractive blacks -- they will always be a muddy gray. There are also different qualities of black ink cartridges, which may also impact performance. But in all honesty, I'd suggest you steer away from printing photos on your home printer. Because of the cost of inks and photo paper, it's not generally economical, and with so many great online digital photo shops, you've got a lot of great options to get your photos printed at a very high quality. Personally, I use Winkflash.com, which charges 12 cents a piece for a 4x6, and only $1.99 for an 8x10. I've been consistently impressed with their quality and color reproduction. And there are several other online photo shops that are also rated highly. But I would avoid the websites of the major drugstore/retail chains (such as Walmart, etc.), as they generally deliver lesser quality.
|
|||||||
|
|
||||||||
|
Sara L. Tanner |
Would changing the photo to grayscale encourage the printer to use the black cartridge? The black cartridge on my printer is optional so what Andrew said makes sense to me. I think that sometimes what we see as black on the computer screen is sometimes a very dark color to the computer. While trying to reproduce that dark color the computer would tell the printer to mix colors. I'm not sure my theory is right but I'd thought I'd throw it out there. Food for thought, Sara
|
|||||||
|
|
||||||||
|
Andrew Laverghetta |
So, will changing the color space or whatever it is to CMYK help along with some better kind of paper? I have noticed a difference between cheap photo paper and something like Dell photo paper (which still isn't the best, but when I say cheap, I mean CHEAP).
|
|||||||
|
|
||||||||
|
Clay Anderson |
Andrew: Unless you're working with professional print shops, it won't matter too much which color space you're using in Photoshop, because the image will always get converted to CMYK when you print, since that's the scheme used by the printer. However, if your image is in RGB format (Red/Green/Blue, the color scheme used by monitors and TV's), and you print to a CMYK printer, there's a greater possibility that what comes out of the printer won't match what you see on screen. This has to do with the fact that CMYK can't reproduce all of the colors available in RGB. But Sara's also right -- I think some printers have a setting that determines whether or not the black ink cartridge gets used when printing in color. Certainly, for higher-quality blacks, it's best to use the black cartridge.
|
|||||||
|
|
||||||||
|
Ed Heaton |
HI Brandy, I just thought I might throw my 2 cents in the ring. I was unable to print B&W images with a true black. I have an Epson 2200 and use premium paper so I know that my paper, printer and ink is top notch. So I have found that it's issue with the a print drivers. In order to print them in B&W I had to use a rip. A rip is an add on piece of software that I downloaded from the net. It's called Quadtone Rip. Here's a really good over view of what might be happening: http://www.trenholm.org/hmmerk/QTR.html After downloading and running this rip my problems were solved! Best of luck… Regards
Ed Heaton Photography "The question is not what you look at, but what you see"
|
|||||||
|
|
||||||||
|
Brandy Wilkinson |
Thanks for all of the great advice and help! I have an HP 3-in-1 printer, copier and scanner. I use Kodak premuin satin photo paper. I noticed that since I turned down the saturation of my ink the black printed out better except it didn't seem like a true black. I am going to try using glossy photo paper to print all of my art photography. I had been using satin. I am still learning the effects of the different types of papers and I guess the different ink settings.
|
|||||||
|
|
||||||||
|
Brandy Wilkinson |
|
|||||||
|
|
||||||||
|
Banny C. Catolico |
hi brandy, 3-in-1 printer is not a true photo printer. if you use photo paper as you said, you must be very careful on printer paper setting, the setting of your printer (for paper quality) must match with your paper quality if not this things will happen. try to use Epson printer with 6 color.
|
|||||||
|
|
||||||||
|
This old forum is now archived. Use improved Forum here
Report this Thread |
||||||||