Monitor vs Printer, where's the problem?

[NgaiHill]

I have a Samsung something LCD monitor, bought in 2009 and a Canon iP3300 inkjet printer bought about 2007. Love the printer in that it gives great clean prints and the ink is fairly economical. But I find that it prints photos darker than they appear on my monitor. I have fiddled with the settings for the monitor regards contrast etc and feel like I have them fairly right. If I adjust them to look like the photos that I print then everything looks dark and horrible, not just the picture I am working on. So I have adjusted it to where it looks good. Colours look good and I noticed that photos on here that I view look right - contrast etc - if someone was to make a comment on a photo being too dark or too blue I would usually see it on my monitor too. So I don't feel the monitor is the problem maybe it is the printer. Is there a way of calibrating the printer so that it prints truer to what I am seeing on the screen. I usually use the Canon brand inks but lately have been using refills, this doesn't seem to have made a difference.
Hoping someone will have a suggestion that will help.
Here is an example, a photo that I printed today....
First is how it looks on my monitor,


And this is pretty much what it looks like printed....


Thanks in advance

[ravncat]

We're going to need a little bit more information to really help out.

-What's your color management look like?
What is doing the color adjustments for your printing - is it photoshop / lightroom, is it the printer drivers? Are you using both?

If you have two things both trying to do color management, the results tend to not be so great, and often result in muddied color or darker prints.

-are you using any ICC profiles for your monitor? Are you using the correct profile for the paper you are printing onto?

Using the wrong paper profile usually most often affects colors, but can affect the brightness of the print. If your monitor is using an ICC profile, it may be feeding data about brightness to whatever is managing color, and making your monitor darker would just make the prints darker... if you want to match monitor to print, a calibration device is recommended.

-What program are you printing from? What is the gamma of your workspace, your monitor and what gamma is the printer driver assuming?

Lightroom assumes a gamma of 1.8 Certain printer drivers can assume a gamma of 2.2 - which necessarily leads to darker prints in the mid-tones.

-Are you using any hardware calibration devices?
Darker prints often come from incorrect calibration, either by setting the wrong gamma, having no ambient light during correction, or some other user error. If you had to print a color patch chart did you wait for the ink to dry down before taking measurements of the ink?

[NgaiHill]

Thanks for your reply, most of which has gone over my head i'm afraid.
I usually use Picasa as the program I print from, even if I have used Photoshop to make adjustments. When I have printed from PS the colours are worse - darker and looking 'wrong'
I'm not sure how much control the printer has over the colours, not sure how to check that. I make any colour/contrast adjustments in either PS or Picasa, and use Picasa to print. About the only printer settings I adjust are to do with print size, paper etc.
I use a generic brand of photo paper for A4 which gives good results. I use the Canon "Photo Paper Plus Glossy II" for 4x6 prints, both sizes produce the same picture as far as colours and shades go. I will often print a 'test' print in 4x6 before any larger print, to confirm I have the colours etc right, and I often find I pick up any other issues with the print - sharpness, random blobs that I may not have noticed on screen.
I have tried to check the gamma on my monitor but it only shows me Mode 1, 2 or 3 without a rating. I have no idea how to check the gamma on the printer, I will have to look into that.
I have seen screen calibration programs but am not sure how that will help with the problem with the printing, any recomendations there would help.

I appreciate the time you've taken to reply, hopefully the answers I have given with enable you to make further suggestion.

Cheers

[ravncat]

I don`t know a lot about Picasa, from the quick search I did, Picasa is not color managed - So I`m not sure why your monitor brightness is affecting the prints. I would guess, that since you are using an LCD monitor, that it is back-lit. The back light brightness setting, is probably too high or it has to do with your viewing angle. (The apparent brightness of your monitor may change depending on the angle you look at it).

If your prints from Photoshop have bad colors, look wrong and are darker, I suspect Photoshop is trying to manage color, and your printer is set to manage color. So - if you want to print from photoshop, you need to either go through the printer dialogue options and somewhere in the printer preferences find a way to "turn off color management" or "no color management" OR find the option in the photoshop preferences that says "Let printer manage colors" - Both trying to manage colors at the same time will result in prints like that which you described.

You`re using a good paper, which is probably a nice brightness, and the test print method is good. I don`t know enough about your particular monitor to have advice on the monitor gamma - it is likely 2.2 or 1.8 those are the two main standards. Since Picasa is not color managed, it could be the issue - To change your gamma - is probably software, so you can go into the advanced settings for your display options.

possible solutions
as far as I can guess from here, your best solutions are likely


1 to either try turning the backlighting down, on your monitor and or changing viewing angle, (though your pictures above, the first looks a bit too bright in the foreground and definitely too dark in the second)

2 Do more test prints, and raise the brightness of the foreground to levels that might look silly on your monitor, but come out ok in the print. Your skies in both images look to be at about the same brightness - so its just the dark tones and low mid tones being affected - which make me think it may be a gamma issue - you can counter this with a curves adjustment in photoshop, or levels - and move up the shadows a ways, and the midtones a little bit. - you may have to play around with this until you get a print you like. If you do this, set your print quality to low, and use a low resolution to waste as little ink as you can on the "test prints"

Or you could go with color management - this is the most time involved and expensive of the options - as you`ll have to learn about color spaces, make sure which programs are doing what, and how the options interact with each other. You`ll probably also want to get some hardware. The X-rite, Colormunki is pretty simple to use for this, but it will cost about 500 and is pretty comprehensive, it'll calibrate your monitor and make printer profiles... There are other cheaper options like the colorspyder etc... How deep to go into color management depends on how much accuracy you need and how much money you want to spend. You can get good results, maybe with some online websites and a good knowledge of how to control your monitor settings, graphics card, and software color management - For that I`d recommend investing in a book - im sure you can find a billion different sources, maybe even free materials online.

You might try checking in the settings to get the colormanagement set up properly between photoshop and your printer, you may see better results from photoshop than picasa, once you get the color management settings in order..

The light in which you look at your prints will also affect how you see your prints

good luck!

[NgaiHill]

Thanks for your reply, much less of that went over my head!
I will have a look at the screen brightness and see how I can adjust it. I realised that the viewing angle changed the brightness and may try adjusting that too. When I have a look at the gamma setting on the monitor it just has Mode 1, 2 & 3 when I select them they change the brightness of the screen very slightly, but not enough I'd think to create the problem I'm having.
I'll have another look at the printer settings for anything to do with colour management. As I said, I don't like the results I get from printing straight from Photoshop so always print from Picasa. But I'll revisit the printer settings in PS and see what results I get. I might take a photo into a lab to get printed and see how that looks - that may give me a better idea on what end the problems is.
Again, thanks for taking the time to reply, I could save a lot of ink and paper if I could get this right
Cheers

[Thunder_o_b]

Sounds to me that you need to balance your monitor with a Spyder or the like.

[NgaiHill]

Originally Posted by Thunder_o_b

Sounds to me that you need to balance your monitor with a Spyder or the like.

I thought they were more for just the monitor, didn't realise it would calibrate the printer as well. Will look into it. Thanks for the suggestion.

[ravncat]

Some will calibrate your monitor and profile your prints, some wont, depends on which version you get and what software it comes with - I don`t know enough about the spyder, but I do know that there are multiple packages , the pro, elite and something else - the basic ones don`t mess with your printer.

Since Picasa isn`t using color management - you`re not likely to get very different results when calibrating your monitor with such a device. It might help a little (as in help you get the correct brightness setting for your monitor - but you`ll still have to adjust monitor brightness on its own.)

Here is a pretty good site, LCD monitor test images
if you look through it and all the images - you can get an idea if your monitor is really out of whack, or is "ok" - It won`t help you with really small and precise adjustments or for proper color balance, but it can give you an idea if your monitor settings are terrible or problematic. If they aren`t terrible, you`re likely in the "good enough" region, especially when printing without color management.

If you do get something to calibrate your monitor - you`re going to want to learn color management in the software you use, both for printing and editing. This way you can actually let photoshop use the profile you create after you calibrate your monitor. This will help you get screen to print matching. Just calibrating your monitor, will be good for editing and looking at things on your monitor, but you need to do more to get screen/print matching.

Here`s a couple sites for that about color management in photoshop

Color Management: Photoshop Color Settings - Photo Tips @ Earthbound Light
How to Setup Photoshop Color Management | eHow.com


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[NgaiHill]

Thanks for those links, I will have a look and see what I can do.
Appreciate your help.
Cheers!