Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Colour Management => Topic started by: randal21 on May 19, 2013, 01:17:43 pm
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I am at the crossroads with trying to get my color matching on printing in order. I continually have color shifts and darker prints. I scan some artwork with my Epson 10,000xl and the artwork on my great Lacie 324 gives me an image that is a match to my artwork. Wish one push of the button for my Epson 7900 would give me the print I see on the screen...NOT. I run a Mac OS 10.58 and Photoshop CS5. I am wondering if ... the MAC OS is the culprit who shifts the colors? PC people don't seem to have this as much. AND ... if jumping up to a more updated MAC OS and CS6 has solved this. I believe I have the latest firmware in my 7900 and my color space environment is okay. Any other Mac/non MAc people have this happen and have you solved it? Did you upgrade and see the problem solved. HELP!!!!!!!! This problem has gotten old and wastes alot of paper and ink.
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Certain parts of your media's color gamut may extend well outside the ability of your monitor to represent. So in some cases colors that appear fine on the screen will on a print appear at least over saturated, and quite often too dark. The colors are actually printing correctly, but the monitor is not showing them correctly. For instance most media can show much more saturated yellows, greens, and blues than my high quality monitor can display. So even if your monitor and printer are optimally profiled, you can still see discrepancies on challenging images which will show up the most when you are using very high gamut media.
Or it may be something else. I believe there have been a few color management bumps in the Mac OS's, but as far as I know it's working well now. Have always used PC's, no color related troubles recently.
There is a site called iccview.de that can visually compare the gamuts of two different profiles. It can be very interesting to compare your monitor's system profile with your media's profile. When I first did that, it was kind of a Eureka moment for me, a lot of shortcomings I was seeing with soft proofing were suddenly explained. Unfortunately iccvew only works with type 2 profiles, but it's worth a try in any case.
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Thanks for your response. One thing that I don't get is the scanned artwork on my monitor does match the artwork so the colors are represented. There is a shift in colors when it is printed. Is it an Apple system vs Adobe color issue? Anyone have the same problem and it resolved when you updated. I have to make some major software /filters updates besides in psd and Mac OS so I wanted to find out if it's a possible solution to my issue of color matching.
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There can be a huge difference between what colors your monitor can reproduce verses what your printer and the paper you are using can reproduce. I would suggest making an ICC profile for your printer/paper and using that profile to soft proof on your monitor. If you can not do that you can use the default paper profile (found online) for the paper you are using and using that profile to soft proof.
Please could you take me through your workflow from capture to print?
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Thanks for your response. One thing that I don't get is the scanned artwork on my monitor does match the artwork so the colors are represented. There is a shift in colors when it is printed. Is it an Apple system vs Adobe color issue? Anyone have the same problem and it resolved when you updated. I have to make some major software /filters updates besides in psd and Mac OS so I wanted to find out if it's a possible solution to my issue of color matching.
Understanding color management requires throwing out all the preconceived notions about color, because most of them are wrong.
The obvious conclusion is to say that the colors are represented in your file since the monitor matches the artwork better than the print.
However, many things that seem obvious about color management are completely backwards.
To reiterate what Bill said, just because the monitor matches the artwork better than the print doesn't mean that the artwork's colors are represented in your file, and doesn't mean that it's your printer shifting colors. No matter how much you spend, there isn't a monitor capable of displaying all the colors that today's top end printers can create. What you see on your monitor is not what's in the file. It's (quite) possible that for some of the "color shifts" you're seeing, that the scanner captured them incorrectly, that your printer is matching what's in the file, and it's your monitor that is shifting some of the colors.