How to get prints that are like what you see on screen

GreenMountainGirl · Feb 19, 2013

I know that my monitor is not the best, but my editing is done as soft proofing, so thought that would help. Example, I have a picture of a squirrel. Processed it from a copy of the original (a jpeg) - First in LR, then in PSE. I could see that my results were different, but both looked pretty much OK. When I printed, one was too green, the other was too yellow.

Of course I could tweak the images and keep printing until I got one I like, but that uses a lot of ink and paper. Any suggestions would be much appreciated so (hopefully) I can get it right without printing it over and over. I do have paper printable on two sides, which helps!

Always shoot in RAW now, but this still happens. These images are now in my gallery, if you want to see them. (I don't know how to insert them into this posting.) On the screen they don't look too bad. But printed there is green in the squirrel's tail in one, and in the other one the bird food is pretty yellow and the squirrel has brown/yellow patches on its face and ears.

Thanks for any suggestions!

beshannon · Feb 19, 2013

Calibrate your monitor and then use the same profile for printing that you are using for the monitor

Chris R-UK · Feb 19, 2013

You get your print colours to match your colours on the monitor you need to calibrate both your monitor and your printer/paper combination.

Calibrating the monitor would be the first step but you will need a calibration device like those made by Spyder. This article may be useful: Monitor Calibration

You can also buy devices for calibrating your printer/ink/paper combinations but as a start you could make sure that you use only your printer manufacturer's paper and ink, select the correct paper in the printer driver and make sure that colour management is carried out by the printer and not your software. This will not be as good as proper printer/paper profiles but it may be better than what you are doing at the moment.

AFAIK soft proofing doesn't help with these aspects of colour management but it does show what colours are outside the gamut of your printer.

Chris R-UK · Feb 19, 2013

beshannon said:
beshannon wrote:

Calibrate your monitor and then use the same profile for printing that you are using for the monitor.

Brian, I think that you have a typo there. I assume that you mean that you need to use the same colour space for both the printer and monitor.

Thorbard · Feb 19, 2013

As others have said, the monitor calibration is letting you down.

The soft proofing only covers making PSE show the colours the printer will be printing, but can't account for the colours of the monitor.

If you don't want to spend the money on a monitor calibration kit, you could buy a factory calibrated monitor.

Skatterball · Feb 19, 2013

Probably the printing process. Either you, if you did your own prints, or the lab if done outside. Most decent labs I've used let you see exactly what you'll get before you print and you can, while standing right there, adjust hue and balance in minute increments.

Steve Throndson · Feb 19, 2013

GreenMountainGirl said:
GreenMountainGirl wrote:
These images are now in my gallery, if you want to see them. (I don't know how to insert them into this posting.)

Clever squirrel !

To insert a photo from your gallery, click on the far-right icon on the top taskbar, as in the photo below.

For help with printing, you might try the printing forum. Tell them your machine's brand and model number and the experts there will try to help you out.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/1003

GreenMountainGirl · Feb 19, 2013

Chris R-UK said:
Chris R-UK wrote:

You get your print colours to match your colours on the monitor you need to calibrate both your monitor and your printer/paper combination.

Calibrating the monitor would be the first step but you will need a calibration device like those made by Spyder. This article may be useful: Monitor Calibration

For some reason I could not get into the CIC website, but will try again later to read the article. Perhaps the signal has trouble crossing the "pond"! The least expensive Spyder I found on B&H is $169, but I just might have to try it. My wish list keeps growing...

Chris R-UK said:
You can also buy devices for calibrating your printer/ink/paper combinations but as a start you could make sure that you use only your printer manufacturer's paper and ink, select the correct paper in the printer driver and make sure that colour management is carried out by the printer and not your software. This will not be as good as proper printer/paper profiles but it may be better than what you are doing at the moment.

My printer is a Canon, and I do use only the Canon ink. However, never heard of Canon paper. I use house brand paper from Staples, and no profile is available for it. I do make sure I select the correct paper type. What are the devices for calibrating the printer combinations?

Chris R-UK said:
AFAIK soft proofing doesn't help with these aspects of colour management but it does show what colours are outside the gamut of your printer.

The gamut warning is quite useful. I was under the impression soft proofing would give a visual impression that approximated what the print would look like. Discovered by experience this is not so...

Thanks for the suggestions.

GreenMountainGirl · Feb 19, 2013

Thorbard said:
Thorbard wrote:

If you don't want to spend the money on a monitor calibration kit, you could buy a factory calibrated monitor.

Is factory calibration standard or extra? How do you determine the factory calibration exists? The least expensive Spyder I saw online is $169, wouldn't a new monitor cost more? I am very interested in learning how to solve my printing problem. Thanks for your help.

GreenMountainGirl · Feb 19, 2013

Steve Throndson said:
Steve Throndson wrote:

Clever squirrel !

Those critters can hang upside down and eat! Anything for a free meal...

Steve Throndson said:
To insert a photo from your gallery, click on the far-right icon on the top taskbar, as in the photo below.

Thanks. I guess I just did not look hard enough. One should always explore the taskbar!

Steve Throndson said:
For help with printing, you might try the printing forum. Tell them your machine's brand and model number and the experts there will try to help you out.

Good suggestion. As a relative newcomer to these forums, I did not think of that. Thanks.

lehill · Feb 19, 2013

GreenMountainGirl said:
GreenMountainGirl wrote:

GreenMountainGirl said:

Thorbard wrote:

If you don't want to spend the money on a monitor calibration kit, you could buy a factory calibrated monitor.

Click to expand...

Is factory calibration standard or extra? How do you determine the factory calibration exists? The least expensive Spyder I saw online is $169, wouldn't a new monitor cost more? I am very interested in learning how to solve my printing problem. Thanks for your help.

Chris R-UK · Feb 20, 2013

GreenMountainGirl said:
GreenMountainGirl wrote:

[snip]

GreenMountainGirl said:
My printer is a Canon, and I do use only the Canon ink. However, never heard of Canon paper. I use house brand paper from Staples, and no profile is available for it. I do make sure I select the correct paper type. What are the devices for calibrating the printer combinations?

That is probably your problem right there - using cheap paper from Staples. Canon make photo paper for their printers so get some of that and see how it works.

By selecting the correct paper I mean selecting the name of the paper, not just whether it is matte or glossy.

I think that the top of the range Spyder will do printer profiles and Colormonkey also has something. So companies will also do profiles for you, especially if you buy their paper.

Try out some Canon paper and see what happens. That might solve your problem.

GreenMountainGirl · Feb 20, 2013

lehill said:
lehill wrote:

The Spyder is really the way to go. You can move it from monitor to monitor and calibrate all of them. My monitor is factory calibrated (LG IPS225) and cost ~$200. That's about the cheapest I found.

Now, they might chase me out of here for suggesting this...but if these costs are too dear and you run Windows 7, you can use the built-in color calibration tool. Even Microsoft says you're better off using a color calibrator like the Spyder but doing a visual calibration is better than nothing.

GreenMountainGirl · Feb 20, 2013

Chris R-UK said:
Chris R-UK wrote:

That is probably your problem right there - using cheap paper from Staples. Canon make photo paper for their printers so get some of that and see how it works.

I have been looking at the Canon website researching dedicated photo printers, and also checked out their papers. Prices seem reasonable as long as stay away from specialty stuff. I can always use the cheap paper for trial runs, etc. I can print on both sides, which is also a savings. But I agree - better paper just might made a noticeable difference.

Chris R-UK said:
I think that the top of the range Spyder will do printer profiles and Colormonkey also has something. So companies will also do profiles for you, especially if you buy their paper.

I will look into this. Was looking at Spyder, but for monitor calibration.

Appreciate your suggestions. Little by little I am learning so many things!

Thorbard · Feb 20, 2013

GreenMountainGirl said:
GreenMountainGirl wrote:

GreenMountainGirl said:

lehill wrote:

The Spyder is really the way to go. You can move it from monitor to monitor and calibrate all of them. My monitor is factory calibrated (LG IPS225) and cost ~$200. That's about the cheapest I found.

Now, they might chase me out of here for suggesting this...but if these costs are too dear and you run Windows 7, you can use the built-in color calibration tool. Even Microsoft says you're better off using a color calibrator like the Spyder but doing a visual calibration is better than nothing.

Click to expand...

Chris R-UK · Feb 21, 2013

GreenMountainGirl said:
GreenMountainGirl wrote:

GreenMountainGirl said:

Chris R-UK wrote:

That is probably your problem right there - using cheap paper from Staples. Canon make photo paper for their printers so get some of that and see how it works.

Click to expand...

I have been looking at the Canon website researching dedicated photo printers, and also checked out their papers. Prices seem reasonable as long as stay away from specialty stuff. I can always use the cheap paper for trial runs, etc. I can print on both sides, which is also a savings. But I agree - better paper just might made a noticeable difference.

With photo printing paper you get what you pay for. Cheap paper will give you very poor results with poor colours. Better paper will make a very big difference and the best paper will give the best results.

If you don't want to pay for Canon's top of the range paper (Photo Paper Pro?) at least buy the next down.

f8BeThereToo · Feb 23, 2013

I think that at least some of your problem is caused by your choice of papers. If you stick with paper made by your printer manufacturer the paper profiles are available via the printer software. When you use other papers with a printer you need to find the appropriate profiles elsewhere or create your own profiles.

Hardware calibration is the state of the art way to go, no doubt about it... But software calibration can yield very good results too. Before you spend a lot of money on a hardware device get some Canon paper and play around with calibrating your display using software.

One last thing: be sure to select either printer software color management or application management, not both. If both are selected you will wind up with prints that have unusual colors... it might be the reason why you are getting such strange prints.

Mark S Abeln · Feb 23, 2013

GreenMountainGirl said:
GreenMountainGirl wrote:

I know that my monitor is not the best, but my editing is done as soft proofing, so thought that would help. Example, I have a picture of a squirrel. Processed it from a copy of the original (a jpeg) - First in LR, then in PSE. I could see that my results were different, but both looked pretty much OK. When I printed, one was too green, the other was too yellow.

What other people said, calibrate your monitor and use print/ink/paper combination that has an ICC profile associated with it. International Color Consortium (ICC) profiles are a standard way of ensuring that colors translate well between devices. If you don’t use it, you won’t get consistent results.

Typically, your camera images, if you shoot JPEG, will be processed according to the standard sRGB color profile, or the same thing will happen if you use a RAW converter on your computer. This sRGB profile will tell your printer precisely what the colors are in your image, which will, to the best of its ability, translate the colors of the image to the color of ink on the paper. Your monitor also should have an ICC profile associated with it: this is created by the monitor calibrator and it too is used to translate sRGB to colors that the monitor can display.

But you also need to understand that sRGB is a standard too, and you need to process your images so that it matches this standard. Be aware that whenever each of the three RGB numbers are equal, then the color is neutral: white, gray, or black. If there is a point on the image that should be neutral in color, then the RGB numbers all must be equal at that point. This is called white balance, and is an important step often neglected, for it is ‘calibrating your image’. You can make exceptional images even without a calibrated monitor if you take care to adjust white balance.

GreenMountainGirl · Feb 23, 2013

Mark S Abeln said:
Mark Scott Abeln wrote:

What other people said, calibrate your monitor and use print/ink/paper combination that has an ICC profile associated with it. International Color Consortium (ICC) profiles are a standard way of ensuring that colors translate well between devices. If you don’t use it, you won’t get consistent results.

Problem is, I cannot find anywhere in my printer drivers, etc. that offers printing with ICC profiles. It just says photo printing, standard, etc. Perhaps it is because I don't have a dedicated photo printer?

Mark S Abeln said:
Your monitor also should have an ICC profile associated with it: this is created by the monitor calibrator and it too is used to translate sRGB to colors that the monitor can display.

I did discover where in my computer to do some calibration for the monitor, but there was no mention of ICC. It did offer AdobeRGB (1998).

Mark S Abeln said:
But you also need to understand that sRGB is a standard too, and you need to process your images so that it matches this standard. Be aware that whenever each of the three RGB numbers are equal, then the color is neutral: white, gray, or black. If there is a point on the image that should be neutral in color, then the RGB numbers all must be equal at that point. This is called white balance, and is an important step often neglected, for it is ‘calibrating your image’.

Mostly I adjust white balance using the controls in LR4, but I have played around with the neutral squares. Just not consistently.

Thanks for the comments. I am gradually getting some of this info into my head!

Susan

MarkInSF · Feb 23, 2013

GreenMountainGirl said:
GreenMountainGirl wrote:

GreenMountainGirl said:

Mark Scott Abeln wrote:

What other people said, calibrate your monitor and use print/ink/paper combination that has an ICC profile associated with it. International Color Consortium (ICC) profiles are a standard way of ensuring that colors translate well between devices. If you don’t use it, you won’t get consistent results.

Click to expand...

Problem is, I cannot find anywhere in my printer drivers, etc. that offers printing with ICC profiles. It just says photo printing, standard, etc. Perhaps it is because I don't have a dedicated photo printer?

GreenMountainGirl said:

Your monitor also should have an ICC profile associated with it: this is created by the monitor calibrator and it too is used to translate sRGB to colors that the monitor can display.

Click to expand...

I did discover where in my computer to do some calibration for the monitor, but there was no mention of ICC. It did offer AdobeRGB (1998).

GreenMountainGirl said:

But you also need to understand that sRGB is a standard too, and you need to process your images so that it matches this standard. Be aware that whenever each of the three RGB numbers are equal, then the color is neutral: white, gray, or black. If there is a point on the image that should be neutral in color, then the RGB numbers all must be equal at that point. This is called white balance, and is an important step often neglected, for it is ‘calibrating your image’.

Click to expand...

Mostly I adjust white balance using the controls in LR4, but I have played around with the neutral squares. Just not consistently.

Thanks for the comments. I am gradually getting some of this info into my head!

Susan

How to get prints that are like what you see on screen

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