 Irene Troy |
Color matching and printing Hi All – I’m going bald from tearing my hair out trying to match what appears on my monitor and what the printer creates. I have calibrated my monitor many times using the Spyder 3 Pro. I’ve calibrated in natural light, in lamp light and in near darkness and yet my images continue to print far too dark. I keep the Spyder active so it can – as the manual suggests – notify me of a change in light conditions that may affect the appearance of printed images. My office lights do not reflect on my monitor screen. I have a Dell XPS system running Windows 7, shoot RAW and use Photoshop 5 to edit my images. My monitor is also a Dell – 22’ and can be adjusted for brightness and also for color, although I mostly use the Spyder for these adjustments. My printer is the Canon I 9900. Does anyone have any suggestions? I’m trying to get ready for a gallery show in a month and this is making me completely crazy! Thanks for any ideas/suggestions.
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Lynn R. Powers |
I had a Dell computer about one giant step less powerful than yours. I used PSElements 4&7 with it. I also have the i9900 printer. When I got an iMac with the 21 inch screen and Elements 8 I had the same problem. The problem is with these large screens, they are too bright. Do not have the Spyder control the screen brightness. Go to dpReview and select any camera or lens review. Scroll down to the bottom of the review and you will see a grey scale that goes from A-Z. Adjust the screen brightness so that you can see each small square as a separate shade of grey. That is when you have the proper luminance for photography. Remember what you see on the screen are the colors projected by the light in the screen directly to your eyes. With a print you are seeing the photo colors with reflected light from opaque paper With my Dell laptop I would make a copy of the photo a little brighter, 10%, than for the web when I wanted it printed. Good Luck
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Irene Troy |
Thank you, Lynn, for the link and your suggestions. What you said about a large monitor being too bright makes perfect sense. Even the newest addition of Spyder seems unable to correct for this brightness. I visited the suggested website and found the scale. Unfortunately, my prints are still coming out too dark. I’ve been fussing with lowering color intensity and increasing brightness/exposure in PS, but this remains an issue. I’ll have to keep futzing in the hopes of finding what will work. Thanks again for your help. Irene
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Christine Pentecost |
It's quite possible your printer settings are wrong when you go to print. You want to make sure Photoshop manages the color, not your printer. You should turn off the printer color management in your advanced settings. And, you need to make sure your paper settings are correct for the type of paper you are using. You can calibrate all you want, but if the output settings are incorrect, you will not get color match. Trust me...this comes from my own experience!!
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Irene Troy |
You know the old expression: when all else fails, read the directions? In this case, when all else failed I picked up Scott Kelby’s new book on CS5 and low and behold, there was my answer! Apparently this issue of trying to match screen image to print image is very common and related, at least somewhat, to the over-brightness of many monitors. After futzing on this for the past week, it was such a relief to run a test print after following Kelby’s directions and find it really works! Here is what he suggests if your print is too dark (my issue): after final editing, press control+J which will duplicate the background layer. Then change the layer blend (at the top of the layer’s panel) to SCREEN. Then lower the OPACITY of the layer to about 25%. This makes everything much lighter and, at least in most cases, matches the screen to the print! He suggests running a test print, which I did and it matched perfectly to my screen image. You may have to futz with the opacity a bit to get it right for your monitor (In my case the 25% was too light, but at 50% it was perfect), but this does work and once you figure out the percentage, the rest is very easy. Once you get it all figured out you can also make this an action and run it before every print. BTW: If, like me, you are self-taught in PS and find yourself getting lost at times, I can highly recommend Kelby’s books. I find them straight forward and comprehensive without being overly technical.
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- Gregory LaGrange Contact Gregory LaGrange Gregory LaGrange's Gallery |
All participants must be 18 or over to futz. Futzing not available to residents of Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and the province of Manitoba, Canada.
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chrisbudny.com - Chris Budny Contact Chris Budny Chris Budny's Gallery |
Irene, I'm puzzled... If you got your image edited just right, looking great onscreen, and then you print--and it comes out too dark on paper... then if you add your new Layer (CTRL-J) as Screen and 25% opacity---that will lighten the image onscreen, no? But that isn't how you wanted the final image to look, is it? (Since you had it "finished" with edits, before you added the Screen Layer.) Does your Screen Layer printout come out sufficiently different from your no-screen-layer print? In my mind it seems like your new version w/ Screen, would appear lighter on screen, and PRINT lighter on paper---but still the two would not match eachother by a similar degree that your original on-screen vs. on-paper didn't match... Know what I mean? And equally puzzling---if today's screens are too bright, how does adding a Screen layer (which brightens!) help overcome this... I'm clearly missing something---yet when I've sent edited files to mpix for printing, often my first attempt comes back slightly too dark as well, so I'd love to get this resolved myself!
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Irene Troy |
Christopher – I am not a PS pro by any stretch of the imagination, so please don’t go by what I say! However, what has saved my bacon more than once is digging out the current copy of Scott Kelby’s PS books. When I first read about this trick (the extra layer and how it lightens the print) I didn’t think it would work for much the same reason you are citing. Nonetheless, it does work. As for why…???? Here’s my theory in the “for what it’s worth” department: the adjustment layer causes the image to lighten on screen to the point it looks washed out (I almost didn’t print the first time thinking it would print very over exposed). Then when you print, the image is printed at the correct exposure and degree of lightness. In essence you are trusting that this time you will NOT get what you see. My printer kept printing the image far too dark and not at all how it appeared on screen. By making the on screen image a bit too light, it now prints exactly right. I wish someone who truly understood all the nuances of PS would chime in with a much better explanation, but for now all I can say is it works. You might try and see if this works for you – it won’t cost you anything, just some ink and if it does work, you now have your work around. Oh…and Gregory, I’ve missed your humor! Glad to see you are still around.
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Rainer and Simone Hoffmann |
Irene - I'm as puzzled as Christopher. The advice in Scott Kelby's book may work for you, but it's not at all what color managment is about. The very idea of color management is, that your prints match your screen, if not 100% then may be 95%, without having to fiddle with the picture itself. Since you calibrated you monitor I assume, that the colors of the print match your screen reasonably well and it is only a brightness issue. To avoid this mismatch you have to make sure, that the luminance of the screen matches the luminance of the light reflected from the print. This is not at all a trivial problem and almost impossible to achive under home office conditions. So you just have to face, that your print brightness will match you screen brightness exactly. If you look at the print under bright light conditions, does it look ok then? If yes, then all is well, right? But there may be another issue: When you say that the print is too dark, does it mean the entire print is too dark or are the dark parts of the picture just black and lacking detail? If the latter is the case, then the brightness and contrast settings of your screen are probably wrong. And one more question: Are you using the correct printer profiles for your printer and the paper you are using? Profile mismatch is a common problem when printing. Hope this helps a bit. Greetings from Germany Rainer
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Rainer and Simone Hoffmann |
Sorry, I haven't yet found a possibility to edit a post. It should read: So you just have to face, that your print brightness will NEVER match you screen brightness exactly. Rainer
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Rainer and Simone Hoffmann |
Sorry, me again. I should think first and then write... One more aspekt: Have you activated the soft proof function of PS (Crtl + Y on Win, Cmd + Y on Mac) ? You may be surprised, how different the picture looks, when the soft proof is on. But make sure you select the correct printer profile for the soft proof. Rainer
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- Gregory LaGrange Contact Gregory LaGrange Gregory LaGrange's Gallery |
True that print brightness doesn't match screen brightness. And it is because as mentioned before, the screen is light by transmission. The print is light by reflection. The same as looking at a slide, the color will never be the quite as grand as looking at a print from a slide. Using a screen layer is way of standardizing how to get a print to come out right. I've always gone by how things feel so I've just adjusted the screen image to how my printer will print. It's really the same thing. My monitor isn't as bright as somebody's monitor who just uses it as a computer, and who doesn't use it for printing photos. So yes using the screen layer way will make the screen image look too bright to print. But it will come out right as a print.
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Irene Troy |
I do understand the argument regarding why the Kelby technique is not “proper color management”. Nonetheless, it does make sense, at least to me. I have calibrated my monitor numerous times. The actual color in the print is correct; however, the lightness or luminance, if you will, is incorrect. Viewing the image under the same light conditions affecting the monitor, it is clear to see the image is too dark – and yes, the entire image is too dark, not just in certain areas. I am using the correct printer/paper profiles for the print. A soft proof also comes out dark. I do believe Gregory has the explanation for this problem – the screen is lit by transmission, the print by reflection. Perhaps this is not “proper color management”; however, since it works and saves me a great deal of aggravation and time, I’m adopting the technique, at least until I learn a better method. However, keep in mind, I am not a Photoshop expert and am always open to a new and better approach.
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- Dayna Cain Contact Dayna Cain Dayna Cain's Gallery |
Whether it's "technically" right or wrong is irrelevant for me. I tried this trick and it worked! Just for the record Irene, I have never heard of the terms "futz, futzed or futzing" but they are now in my vocabulary. LOL When I get done writing this I am going to go use one of those words on my co-workers and see what kind of reaction I get and you are probably wondering why I am futzing around when I'm supposed to be working!!! LOL!!! This is going to be awesome. Oh yeah, I'm over eighteen......
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- Gregory LaGrange Contact Gregory LaGrange Gregory LaGrange's Gallery |
Check local laws and statutes. The same as looking at a slide, the color will never be the quite as grand as looking at a print from a slide. That should say the color will never be quite as grand even if looking at a print from a slide.
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