 Pam Kliment |
printing what i see on the monite my photos look wonderful on the monitor, but occassionally when I print them (some, not all), they come out red or not as crisp. I have a canon i960 and photoshop elements.
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robert G. Fately |
Ah, Pam, you have hit the reality of color management here - and there is no simple answer. You must understand that monitors and prints display colors by completely opposite means. Monitors are emissive, and are based on RGB. That is, each pixel is some combination of Red, Green and Blue to create the color you see onscreen. Printers, on the other hand, use 4 basic inks to achieve so-called reflective colors - the C(yan), Y(ellow), M(agenta) and K(Black) inks. The newer printers with 6, 8 or 9 inks work the same basic way. That is, while light passes through the inks/toners/dyes on the paper, reflect off the white paper itself, and enter your eye. So where the white light has all colors in it, the various inks on the paper absorb their respective colors leaving what's left to bounce off the white paper and into your eye. That's why, among other things, you want the whitest possible paper in the printer...it actually has a major effect on color reproduction. Anyway, these two fundamentally different technologies have different color reproducing abilities. There are some colors that a monitor can show that are simply not reproducable on a printer, and vice versa. In addition, there is simply no direct 1:1 ratio of color codes - the translation of the code representing a certain orange onscreen is translated into a code to send to the printer based on the programs involved (including Photoshop). Folks who insist on getting absolute accuracy from monitor to printer use what's called color profilig software - this is a fancier more complete translation table that takes into account these differences. this software (and some hardware) is used to calibrate your equipment, but once it's done you can be generally assured that what you see on the screen is what will appear on the paper. As long as you use the exact inks and paper that your profiled - for if you change papers, a different profile is needed. So, matching monitor and print is not a simple task. In the meantime, you could concievably use Photoshop to saturate the red color so it looks clownish onscreen but just right on paper. As for crispness (I assume you mean sharpness) - monitors have a resolution of about 75dpi, while printers generally are at about 300dpi. So if you have an image designed to work on a monitor, it might now have enough raw information in it (i.e. - enough resolution) to make for a sharp print.
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David M |
There is a lot of good info on this subject already published on smugmug's help section titled "Getting great prints" http://www.smugmug.com/help/red-skin-tones
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Pam Kliment |
sometimes I get better color on plain paper, rather than photo paper-what's up with this, folks?
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robert G. Fately |
So much depends on the inkset used, the quality and color (yes, there are various shades of whiteness for papers) and the subject matter itself, not to mention the lighting conditions (indoors under tungsten, outdoors, etc.) that it's hard to say why one version looks better than another. Photo paper with the proper inks will probably last longer, in terms of fading, but there are many variables as to why a print looks a given way.
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Pam Kliment |
ok, I have another thought. I have a i960 canon printer with 6 inks; cyan, photocyan, yellow, black, photo magenta and magenta. I bet the two photo inks aren't used for the plain paper which is why they are less skewed. maybe the photo ink cartridges are faulty? maybe I should take them out and put them back in? i experiment with papers all the time, so I think color profiling ain't for this person. thanks as usual
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robert G. Fately |
Well, with digital printing, consistancy is the key to getting repeatable results. Every change in the variables - the paper used, the inks used - will potentially effect the final output. If you don't want to do any sort of color profiling, then eliminate any hopes of getting consistent results.
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Pam Kliment |
you are probably right, bob. I should do that. what is your favorite paper? since you last wrote, I did all the possible printer maintenance possible and it seems to have helped some.
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robert G. Fately |
In truth, Pam, I have moved away from inkjet printing altogether and use the Kodak 1400 dye sublimation printer nowadays. SO I don't have a favorite paper per se - I only use the specific papers Kodak offers for this printer (that's the way it is with dye-subs).
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