Calibrating Display to Print Output

[danb4026]

is there a way to calibrate what you see on your display to what actually prints out of the printer?

 

I consistenly end up with darker, more saturated prints than what appears on my display.

 

I bought Spyder3D's display and printing calibration software and have gone thru the tests and calibrations. I think I have followed the directions to turn off all other color management software (adobe gamma, photoshop's color management, and my HP laser printers color management), but I am still not getting the disired output.

 

What is the best way to ensure that all the work I am doing with max and photoshop will transform into a quality print? (what i see is what i get).

[AJLynn]

You can try and err, or get professional calibration. There's no really, really good solution. Read this to start.

 

The problem as I see it is that monitors and printers are different. Monitors start with a black screen and add light, printers start with white paper and add dark. Monitors use RGB, printers accept RGB input and translate it into CMYK or C(Lc)M(Lm)YRB(G1)(G2)K(Mk)G or whatever. They have different gamuts, which can't be faked, and by the way there isn't a single standard for mapping those RGB values to actual colors or even a single definition of "white".

 

Sometimes I have to explain this stuff to pre-computer-era partners and we all get headaches.

[SgWRX]

once you profile your monitor, you have to take your image and get it into a program like photoshop - that reads different profiles, icc files, and displays the image on-screen appropriately.

 

you also have to get icc files for your printing device. i have an epson r2400 and downloaded their files from their website for this printer and the type of paper that i'll be printing on. epson premium luster, premium glossy papers etc. crane company has profiles for their paper, silver rag, museo max etc.

 

back in photoshop, you can choose to "soft proof" an image with a particular icc (profile). it tries to mimic what the printer will print in terms of the range of colors and range from darkest black to lightest light.

 

usually it's quite disappointed to see a soft proof on a monitor because it looks washed out. but it can be very helpful when you want to adjust your images for the most detail.

 

for example, i had a black and white photograph that i tweaked so you could just see some details of a brick wall that was in a shadow when the photo was taken. in other words, you could just see that it was a brick wall, the lines of brick. when i soft proofed this with the crane silver rag paper icc profile, you could no longer see that it was a brick wall. everything just lumped into solid black. so on my monitor, it looked great. but the soft proof showed me that if i printed it without making further adjustments it would print out solid black. i was then able to add a curves layer and brighten up shadows - while i was soft proofing - until i could again just barely see the outlines of the brick. i printed the image and it looked great even compared to my monitor.

 

colors are another example. the orange of a sideline marker at a football game won't print, or get captured correctly in a digital camera for that matter. soft proofing with a printer/paper profile will show you a huge shift in color for those sideline markers. you then have the choice of trying to tweak the color to make it more like the original capture or you'll just know what it'll look like when it does print.

 

hope this helps give you some idea of what it's all about.

[Q-Bix]

Interesting thread this, its caused me a lot of grief in the part and i still havent got my head around it.

 

I have just bought a decent LG 227WT monior, that came with screen calibration software. Im getting better results now, i havent really played with the soft proof or colour profiles in PS. Sounds like it would be well worth having a look.

[danb4026]

Thanks Andrew and Steve for the really helpful info.

 

I am attempting to go thru the entire monitor and printer calibration process as was described in your posts.

 

I calibrated my monitors with Spyder3D...I have a dual display system. Then I calibrated my printer with SpyderPrint. Problem is, the software says to turn off all other color management....photoshop, printer, etc. I am confused because this differs entirely from what the links Andrew sent tell me to do.

 

I am attempting to use the "Smoothe" photoshop management settings that are used in the links by Jeff Mottle. Does anyone know how to get in touch with Jeff?

 

Anyway...i went thru all of the color management steps explained in those PDF's links and have been using the "Soft Proof" method and my prints are still much darker and more saturated than my displays view.

 

I have no idea where to go from here...I must be doing something wrong. Possibly having to do with the ICC files. I think I need someone to talk me thru this.

[Q-Bix]

I too have a dual monitor setup, one thing i found is that i could never get both monitors to be the same.

 

I now have one which is corrected and the other is just for Menu bars, email viewing and reference.

 

Getting both to match exactly may be very hard.

[danb4026]

i got them both to match pretty well and one is and apple and the other is pc based. It might have something to do with the ability of the graphics card to operate the 2 displays.

 

Printing is still my problem.

[SgWRX]

i have to do a little research on SpyderPrint, but in the meantime, and i'm just throwing this out... (it may not account for the saturation problems)

 

but for the brightness issue (dark prints), after i print photographs i don't look at them on my desk, i get up and walk over to a white balanced fluorescent bulb i have in a silver shop-light reflector. ideally i would have a desktop viewing booth to place the print in next to my monitor and have a halogen white balanced bulb but you can get close... anyway, or i'll hold the light over the print on my desk. it's only then that i can see all the details as i see on my screen, meaning shades of black-grey.

 

the theory behind that is of course, a print is reflected light vs. a monitor which emits light.

[SgWRX]

ok, so wow you have the whole setup actual printer calibration and monitor profiling.

 

it looks like from within the print program (spyder print) you have the ability to print a target? or, you open up a target image within photoshop. what they want is, no paper profiles loaded up in photoshop when it prints something and no paper profiles loaded up within the printer drivers.

 

my epson for example, in the drivers, advanced button, lets me select ICM off or on. (color management off/on). this is how you want to print the sypder print targets (all color mgmt off) because you want the "raw" data printed, just the ink as the printer hardware translates it when i reads a message that says "PRINT: 128 red, 186 green and 225 blue". the spectrocolor-o-meter, the puck you place on top of the printed image, reads a color patch and the program analyzes it and says, hey that's too red.

 

so if you print the target from within the spyder print program, bring up the printer print dialog box, look for the advanced settings or look for ICM or color management and uncheck it. it IS important however, to select the type of paper that you are printing to, that helps the printer know if it's printing to thick or thin paper, matt or glossy so it physically knows how to handle the ink output. just remember, no color management settings.

 

oh, and it's also important to set the resolution. on my epson i have options like "photo", "photo fine" or "photo highest quality". this speaks to the actual number of ink drops it puts on the paper. it is said that for smaller prints, 4x6 you want the highest printer print resolution because there are a lot of fine (small) details and people will hold that print closer to view it. 12x18 prints it's ok to use the medium setting or standard setting because all of the details in the print are larger anyway and you're likely to be further away. but to each their own.

 

always use the same paper, the same printer resolution settings when printing after calibrating with spyder print. the program gives you the option to save different settings for different combination of papers etc.

 

if you pull up a target within photoshop, you print it with the "print with preview" option (that was what it was called in CS) and uncheck all the options for color management like "let photoshop handle the colors". then again, check the advanced options of the printer print dialog box to make sure those unselected.

 

finally, you don't have to worry about turning off any monitor profiles on the computer as that just handles the monitor's display of images. soft proofing will make the monitor display change to attempt to show you what the print will look like depending on the profile you select. its when you print that you pick that same profile with the "print with preview" in photoshop or whatever other printing program you use.

 

does this help?

[SgWRX]

sorry, forgot to mention... since you have a paper profiling device (!) you don't have to download and install profiles from paper manufacturers! when you soft-proof, you just select the paper profile that you created when you used spyder print. ps - this is also why it's important to do this with different papers and at different printer print resolution settings. you have one profile for matt paper made by epson, canon or crane, red river etc.., another for glossy, another for semi-gloss etc...

[danb4026]

Wow Steve, that was a mouthful and great info. You have made somethings pretty clear to me.

 

I have an HP Laser Printer and it does not have print resolution or quality settings, just paper choices. Not sure why.

 

So if I understand you correctly...Steps:

 

1) I set the paper type in Spyder (is the Print Media Setting the same thing as paper type?)

 

2) I print the target from spyder with ALL color management functions off.

-disable ICM in printer settings.

-turn color management off in Photoshop. (PS CS3 doesnt have the

Print with Preview option anymore)

 

Do I turn color management off from the Print options in PS or in the Color Settings section?

 

 

3) I measure the target with the Spectro.

 

4) I save those measurements to an ICM file. (or is it ICC?)

 

5) The ICM file is named after the Paper Type that i will use with those settings.

 

6) Now I select that ICM from the drop down list for Paper Type selection.

 

7) ALWAYS keeping PS color management off and printer ICM disabled.

 

Does this sum it up or am I missing something??

 

Thanks sooooo much for you great advice, Dan

[jackb602]

I have an HP Laser Printer

 

That might be your problem right there. Maybe the technology has changed recently, but I've never see a laser printer come close to the accuracy of a good ink jet printer.

 

With the older Spyder 2 suite, I'm able to get a nearly perfect match between my good but very old LCD and an Epson 2200 printer. Do you have access to an ink jet printer you can calibrate for comparison purposes? It may just not be possible to get the results you want with a laser printer.

 

Jack

[danb4026]

Jack, unfortunately I think you are correct. I had a terrible ink jet before this laser printer and it went thru ink cartridges every few photo prints. So I got rid of it and got this Laser printer. (HP Color LaserJet CM1017 MFP).

 

I did everything that Steve mentioned in his posts and now have the color coming out pretty accurately. Although the overall quality is just mediocre.

 

My wife has offered to get me an Epson Stylus Pro 4880 for my upcoming birthday. Any thoughts on that?

 

I've seen prints from an Epson Pro 4000 and they were terriffic.

[danb4026]

Steve, since are so versed.....One more thing...

 

When I print from Photoshop, go to Printing Preferences, and then choose Paper Type, how does the printer know to access the appropriate ICM file for that paper type?

 

I created a plain paper Profile in Spyder called "HP Plain Paper". It does not show up as a paper type selection under Printing Preferences in Photoshop. Only "Plain" shows up along with all the other default types. If I choose "plain", does it know to use that "HP Plain Paper" ICM?

[SgWRX]

I have an HP Laser Printer and it does not have print resolution or quality settings, just paper choices. Not sure why.

 

-----that could be, i think some lasers are fixed resolution.

 

So if I understand you correctly...Steps:

 

1) I set the paper type in Spyder (is the Print Media Setting the same thing as paper type?)

 

-----yes, print media is paper type. now it seems to me that spyder doesn't actually have that settings, but rather it's an option after you click print (print target) and the printer dialog box comes up? if it does have a media type, yes than you would set that too. i think, i'll have to read the manual a little more.

 

2) I print the target from spyder with ALL color management functions off.

-disable ICM in printer settings.

-turn color management off in Photoshop. (PS CS3 doesnt have the

Print with Preview option anymore)

 

 

----- yes, you print it from spyder with all CM functions off, disable the ICM in the printer settings, but since you're not printing it from photoshop you don't need to do anything in that program. in fact from what i gather it could be closed altogether. ultimately, you'll print from photoshop with the paper profile you've created.

 

Do I turn color management off from the Print options in PS or in the Color Settings section?

 

-----Yes, for printing the target, but you print this from the spyder program so it doesn't pertain here.

 

 

3) I measure the target with the Spectro.

 

----yes

 

4) I save those measurements to an ICM file. (or is it ICC?)

 

----i've seen it referred to both ways. most of my paper profiles are ICC files, as well as my monitor profile. i believe programs read them interchangeably?

 

5) The ICM file is named after the Paper Type that i will use with those settings.

 

----yes

 

6) Now I select that ICM from the drop down list for Paper Type selection.

 

-----when you print from a program that will allow it (the program) to manage the color output to your printer

 

7) ALWAYS keeping PS color management off and printer ICM disabled.

 

-----no. only during the printing of a target, but again it seems that you can print the target from the spyder program so it doesn't matter. WAIT - well, you have to disable the printer's ICM option when print from a program that handles the color management for the printer, ie photoshop handles the conversion of what it sees to what the printer should be printing.

 

Does this sum it up or am I missing something??

 

Thanks sooooo much for you great advice, Dan

 

 

-----that should sum it up. laser printers can be tricky, i know there are some designed for high quality photographic work, but those were mostly super expensive and large machines for the most part. otherwise there isn't much you can do with them. http://www.wide-format-printers.org/ has a lot of references and links to other sites and general concepts with some printer reviews. but it's kind of scattered. there are some other links they have about dye-sub printing etc...

 

from the images i've seen on this forum, in my opinion, they deserve the highest quality printing devices. for the most part, today, that means ink-jet. epson, canon and hp. the inks are highly reflective, glossy, and coated papers with optical brighteners really make a nice bright image. personally i don't use papers with brighteners for photographs, but that's another whole debate. the fact that you have a laser printer could help explain the darkness to a point as well.

 

one really has to approach this from a "how to print a photograph" point of view. (hehe, not me yet, i'm stuck in 3d rendering 1980's style but learning).

[SgWRX]

oh, sorry just a reminder about the reflectance vs. emitted light. it does still hold true. the light booth for lighting up a print to compare it to a monitor helps a lot. but i'm not sure it would help much with a laser output. i think perhaps the range of black-to-white and range of colors is just too limited compared to inkjet.

[SgWRX]

Steve, since are so versed.....One more thing...

 

When I print from Photoshop, go to Printing Preferences, and then choose Paper Type, how does the printer know to access the appropriate ICM file for that paper type?

 

I created a plain paper Profile in Spyder called "HP Plain Paper". It does not show up as a paper type selection under Printing Preferences in Photoshop. Only "Plain" shows up along with all the other default types. If I choose "plain", does it know to use that "HP Plain Paper" ICM?

 

hopefully the .icc file, i think this is where it might matter between icm and icc, is in the right location on your computer. c:\windows\system32\spool\drivers\color. that's a typical location. photoshop scans that location on load and then you would see them as options. there would also be colormatchrgb.icc, ciergb.icc, srgb etc... this is where you would put your custom profile that you created.

 

as for the name, it could be that the name "hp plain paper" was created as the "save settings" configuration within the spyder program? maybe it just got named with "plain" when the profile was actually created. you can edit the names of profiles both internally and externally - internal requires a profile editor program (but windows has a control panel plug in you can download that will do it too) and externally via the right-click > rename option. it sounds to me that "plain" very well could be the one you created and the spyder program chopped the name or that's what it was named internally?

[SgWRX]

forgot - it's getting late - the printer doesn't know anything about the profile, just the program printing to the printer does. the profile is like an interpretor between the program and the printer. the program says : print red 128, green 254, blue 46 but the profile says : what they really mean is print red 112, green 224, blue 27.

[danb4026]

ohhhhhh...When using Photoshop....not

printing targets:

 

I'm supposed to turn Color Management

in Photoshop back on and select the ICM profile

I created in Spyder.

 

I thought once u do the profiling and

calibration in Spyder you never use any other

color management at all.

 

I stink at this.

[SgWRX]

ohhhhhh...When using Photoshop....not

printing targets:

 

I'm supposed to turn Color Management

in Photoshop back on and select the ICM profile

I created in Spyder.

 

I thought once u do the profiling and

calibration in Spyder you never use any other

color management at all.

 

I stink at this.

 

 

right! you want whatever program you print from to handle the conversion of colors via the profile.

 

you don't stink at it, you've just never done it before

[SgWRX]

ohhhhhh...When using Photoshop....not

printing targets:

 

I'm supposed to turn Color Management

in Photoshop back on and select the ICM profile

I created in Spyder.

 

I thought once u do the profiling and

calibration in Spyder you never use any other

color management at all.

 

I stink at this.

 

 

right! you want whatever program you print from to handle the conversion of colors via the profile.

 

you don't stink at it, you've just never done it before

[danb4026]

I just bought the Epson Stylus Pro 4880!

 

Now I have to figure out how to configure this thing too. Would i do it following the same procedures shown above?

 

I also got the ColorBurst Rip software with the printer, but dont believe it works with Vista 64. At least not there version (5.6) that came with the printer. But I cannot find an upgrade for Vista 64 anyway. That being said, I have no idea how Colorburst works anyhow.

 

It also comes with Spectrovision software that I think is supposed to work with a device similar to my Spyder3 device. Although I dont think it is compatible with Spyder3.

 

Basically it all boils down to being lost again in terms of calibrating this new printer, which has many more options than my HP laserjet.

 

Steve, you still out there????