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Getting your minort to match your printer...


RyanSpaulding
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This is always a problem and unfortunately there is no easy answer. The reason your getting different looking prints from what your monitor displays is because the color range a typical monitor can display is much much larger from what a normal printer can print. The only way to match up your printer with your monitor is to calibrate them. There are calibration tools that are sold that will generate a profile for both your monitor and printer, this will get you as close as possible to matching what you see on screen and what you print. There are other variables that play a part in this like lighting, if your are looking at a print under fluorescent lighting then it will look different under incandescent lighting or day light. I've attached a site that sells the products I've spoke of, we use these in our office and they work well. The only way I have found to actually get a print that is the same as what is displayed on my monitor is to use a printer that uses a photographic chemical process to print. This process is not limited like a CMYK laser printer or RGB inkjet printer is, it costs more but it produces great images.

 

http://www.xritephoto.com/product/

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Ryan,

Is it an LCD-monitor that's off ? Try getting some 2nd hand LaCie (or other good brand) CRT-monitor; that will surely help a lot. I do all my proofing on CRT and get almost exactly the same prints on my Canon i9950 without using any color profiles. You will at least need to adjust the gamma to 1.4-1.5 and a 10-20% hue increase when doing prints from an LCD !! LaCie and Eizo do have some LCD's that come closer to print output but these will cost you an arm ;)

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What steps can you take to insure that what you see on your monitor comes out the same on paper if you OUTSOURCE your large format printing. This is all new to me so I don't know how to communicate this to my repro guys.

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You should be able to download the ICC profiles of the printers that the company doing the printing is using. This will in theory at least get you close to what the expected output will be, I would request a proof image to make sure. When I send out important images to be printed I always include my own proof image for them to go by, that way I don't get back something that is unacceptable and they don't have to re-print anything.

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Go back to the link I posted above I added another post to address your question.

 

Thanks for the information Jeff.

 

FYI, the link to Bruce Fraser colour management book takes one to the 2003 edition, but there is a 2nd edition 2004 also available. A useful tip for anyoine buying from Amazon is to click on 'All Editions' under Product Details, this will display the various versions and ensure you're buying the most up-to-date edition.

 

cheers,

 

-neil

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Thanks for the information Jeff.

 

FYI, the link to Bruce Fraser colour management book takes one to the 2003 edition, but there is a 2nd edition 2004 also available. A useful tip for anyoine buying from Amazon is to click on 'All Editions' under Product Details, this will display the various versions and ensure you're buying the most up-to-date edition.

 

cheers,

 

-neil

 

Damn, I did not see that and I bought the 2003 a few months back. I wonder what changed.

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