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DPChallenge Forums >> Tips, Tricks, and Q&A >> color management challenge
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 08/29/2007 02:59:00 PM · #1
I've been sending images to a lab for printing, but really miss doing the printing myself. Best Buy had a great deal on a Canon Pro9000, so I picked one up last night. I ran home, set everything up, printed my first 5x7" portrait and then was hugely disappointed. The print was very washed out compared to my on screen image and a print done by Miller's. I spent an hour or so verifying ICC profiles and photoshop configuration. This morning I thought to do a soft proof in photoshop and there was the image exactly as it printed. I know the printer has the ability to exceed the lab print, so now I have a couple of questions:
- If my soft proof matches the print, can I assume my calibration throughout the system is fairly close?

Using the soft proof I was able to adjust brightness and contrast (oddly enough this worked better than levels) and back off the magenta a bit to get the images to match much closer.
- Why wouldn't the conversion between AdobeRGB and the Canon ICC profile do a better job of matching things up?
- Do I now adjust each image before the final print or do I tweak the output setting in the print driver to compensate?

Thanks in advance,
Dave
 08/29/2007 03:01:21 PM · #2
If having PS manage the colour,

Make sure ICM is disabled on the printer. I think the default in the print driver is to have it enabled.



Message edited by author 2007-08-29 15:02:04.
 08/30/2007 10:55:12 AM · #3
Originally posted by cpanaioti:
If having PS manage the colour,

Make sure ICM is disabled on the printer. I think the default in the print driver is to have it enabled.


Thanks! Your suggestion actually helped me solve part of the problem. The canon drive has three modes, Enable ICC Profile, Linear Tone, and Photo Color. It seems that Enable ICC Profile is tied to the Picture Style Settings and didn't work well for my images. The Linear mode works much better and I would say the image prints exactly has I had edited it.

So fantastic printer, it actually prints my image as edited!

Now the bigger problem... it prints the image as edited. When I went back with clear eyes and looked at my image again, it did indeed have a color shift (towards magenta I believe) as well as being a bit thin. When Miller's printed the image they adjusted and produced a beautiful print with rich browns and wonderful warm skin tones. I adjusted color and contrast six times and never matched the print from Millers, even thought it was clear that the canon printer was more than capable of reproducing the tones. Two more conclusions:

1. A great print lab is a wonderful thing.
2. Color printing is difficult, even if the printer is working right.

I'm going to attach a link to dpc sized version of the original image. If somebody has a moment I could use a little help figuring out how to create rich browns with the RGB controls available for color balance. I just cannot seem to get this right?

Thanks again... my family just rolls their eyes when I try to talk through any of these 'challenges' :-)


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