Help! Printing woes - deadline coming up

[crockny]

Where to begin - I calibrated my monitor with Spyder Pro 3 ... I print on Epson Photo Stylus R2880 ... I have not done much printing and am trying to print exhibition size prints. I am printing 8.5 x 11 test prints. I let Adobe manage color. The test prints are coming out darker and "hotter" - more pink/red than what's on screen. If I let the printer manage color they come out cooler but still not what's on the screen. I am getting ready to throw it out the window ...and if I bring my file to a printing house how do I know what color I'll be getting?

Also definition doesn't seem to be good ... I'm not sure if my photograph is not as sharp as I thought it was onscreen or if my printer just can't do fine work ...

[Rentham]

I've gone through the same frustrations. My photo printer is now a giant footrest under my desk. For the price of prints through online vendors, it's just not worth the trouble to print yourself in most cases. My monitor is calibrated and stuff from Mpix is very very close. I use that for personal prints and family stuff. Color corrected prints from Miller's Professional Imaging are just about perfect. Their corrected version and the uncorrected versions based on my monitor show almost no difference.

My experience with Nations Photo Lab has been hit and miss. They sent me a photobook in which every single image had a horrid magenta cast. I let them know and they did an immediate reprint and sent the new book overnight. Same exact cast in every image. Ugh. Other stuff comes out looking great though. Its a roll of the dice.

[crockny]

Anybody else have experience with this printer?

[Mso]

I think it may be the settings. Have you disabled the print settings on your pc..

[ravncat]

I have maybe that model of epson, i dont remember, i have the japanese version (Epson px-5600) It`s almost identical to the r2880. A wonderful printer capable of great and work.

Calibrating your monitor doesn`t necessarily mean you will get print / monitor matching. One still has to deal with conversions and color spaces. The CMYK colorspace that you convert your image to for printing may not match the gamut the printer is capable of. The type of paper that you print on also will affect how colors appear - as papers aren't exactly all white, but often slightly blue or yellow.

You should make sure that you don`T set the printer to adobe color space - but in custom controls clearly set the color management in the print dialogue to "no color management". You`ll want to set the color space of the print profile in lightroom / photoshop's printing dialogue. You will get a great variation in color depending on how the color space conversion is performed. (Here we deal with most commonly perceptual and relative methods)

I use a colormunki to calibrate both my monitor and my printer. Printer calibration has to be done with the settings you will print under and I can get very good color on my prints. I often print to a much smaller 3x5 sized paper (of the same stock) to do proofing, and adjustments needed before I get to my final print which then get's printed at a larger size.

What paper and profile are you using? You might try downloading a profile from the manufacturer designed for your printer - that may help somewhat if the spyder is incapable of calibrating a printer.

[crockny]

I have followed Epson's instructions re all of the above and click print preview when I print - even the print preview is much pinker than the photo onscreen ... ?