ICC Printer Profiles

[braddewald]

I've always had a problem with my printer (Epson Stylus Photo R1900) printing out images with more saturated yellows than I see on my computer screen. (There are probably other color distortions but that is the most easily visible difference)

 

So I've been playing around with ICC color profiles to correct for this. I've followed the instructions that seem to be the same on every singe website. ("Let photoshop manage colors", choose printer/paper profile, set to "relative colorometric", under printer preferences set color management to "ICM" and check the "off" box for "no color adjustment")

 

When I print out the image, it's even worse than before. The whole image looks darker and the yellows are even more dark/saturated. Am I missing something? Has anybody else had this problem? How does everybody else handle their color management?

[Brodie Geers]

I've got the same printer and haven't noticed that. Your Photoshop settings sound exactly like what I use (sometimes I use Perception but the difference is very minor). I assume you're using Epson's paper profiles and Epson paper? And that your monitor is calibrated?

 

-Brodie

[Jeff Mottle]

Hi Bradley,

 

A few questions:

 

1) Where did you get the ICC profiles for your printer? Are they specific to the paper/ink/printer you are using?

2) Is your display calibrated and profiled? What white point did you calibrate to?

3) How do you have your Photoshop color settings set up?

4) What profile is assigned to the image you are printing? What working space are you using?

5) What type of lighting are you viewing the printed image under?

6) Are all of your ink cartridges full and none of the nozzles clogged?

7) When you print from PS, are you selecting the the proper printer profile? Are you in document mode in the print menu and not proof.

[braddewald]

1) Yes, I got the ICC profiles from here:http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/support/supAdvice.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&noteoid=98484&type=highlights

2) No it isn't calibrated or profiled.

3) Screenshot attached

4) the image was in sRGB, for workspace I chose "use embedded profile instead of [Adobe RGB 1998]"

5) Fluorescents, sometimes we move into indirect natural lighting for a better view.

6) The printer's good to go

7) Yes, I think. And Yes, I'm not in proof mode.

 

Thanks, Jeff

[Jeff Mottle]

Ok, so everything looks good EXCEPT you can't use color management without calibrating and profiling your display. It's like trying to drive without wheels. EVERYTHING hinges a display profile. I'd recommend getting a color munki. Easy interface and produces reasonably good profiles for displays and printers if you needed to.

[Jeff Mottle]

Here's a link: http://www.colormunki.com/ If you want something higher end and are really keen on the best possible hardware you can get, I can make some other recommendations, but the price will be about 3-4x the price of the color munki.

[Brodie Geers]

One thing that helped me in a similar situation when I was trying to figure out if the problem was my monitor or my printer was to print out a grayscale image from photoshop. Mine was already made but basically it was just blocks of color from 0-255. The point is just that you can see on your screen if the grays are neutral or if they look warm or cool. Same with the print out.

 

-Brodie

[Jeff Mottle]

One thing that helped me in a similar situation when I was trying to figure out if the problem was my monitor or my printer was to print out a grayscale image from photoshop. Mine was already made but basically it was just blocks of color from 0-255. The point is just that you can see on your screen if the grays are neutral or if they look warm or cool. Same with the print out.

 

-Brodie

 

That will certainly be a good way to see how out of calibration the display is, but ultimately is just going to tell you that your display has to be calibrated, unless you want to always apply a correction curve to your images to compensate for what the uncalibrated display is doing. That totally messes up your images for anyone else though. I'm 99% sure it's not the printer. It would be very unlikely an Epson profile would be introducing any sort of color cast and the printer itself should not do this if all of the nozzles are working properly. Without the display being calibrated there is a VERY good chance the display from the factory is too bright and overly blue. To compensate for this blue cast, Bradley has likely made changes in Photoshop to add more yellow to compensate. This is why the yellows are overly saturated. Also dark images are a very common issue in color management that is almost always due to the overly bright displays. From the factory, LCD displays are about 60% brighter than they should be for a color managed environment.

[braddewald]

Jeff, do you mean the "Color Munki Create?"

[braddewald]

It's between that and the Spyder3Pro because they are both in the right price range.

[jinsley]

I just grabbed the colormunki design and I really like it... simple and easy to use and the will pay for itself in a month or two...

[Brodie Geers]

My company bought the ColorMunki design and I happened to win an Eye-One around the same time. I tried them both and the results were different but very close - no way to really tell which was more accurate. Anyway, I really like the ColorMunki as well, highly suggested.

 

-Brodie

[Jeff Mottle]

Yes, you need to get the Design version. The Create Version is just for screen calibration/profiling and measuring color swatches.

[braddewald]

Would the spyder3pro work? http://spyder.datacolor.com/product-mc-s3pro.php

[Jeff Mottle]

Depends what you want to do. The Spyder3Pro is only for calibration and profiling of your display. It can't be used to create profiles for your printer like the ColorMunki Design can.

[Stephen Thomas]

We had a loan of a ColorMunki from one of our other offices to test it and I profiled our monitors and created custom printer profiles for our Epson R1800. Colour has been spot on since, so I can definitely vouch for it. Also the ColorMunki can be used to grab RGB values from swatches or samples as well, which I thought was a cool feature.