lightroom softproofs, printer previews, actual prints, not even close

[vanderloo]

Hi All,
Just joined up here and looking forward to collaborating with some like minded people.
I'm using an Epson Stylus Pro 4800 and, when trying to print from Lightroom, I've tried managing colors in printer and lightroom and I'm getting the same, (poor), results.
If my prints turned out anything like my lightroom softproof everything would be fine.
But after trying multiple profile setups in the printer, when I click print, the printer preview is waay off from what the softproof is displaying and the actual print is even worse.
I just had the printer serviced for a week's pay and was really hoping to dive in and get some quality prints. Not happening.
I tried managing colors in lightroom, (and no color management in printer), and nothing changes.
Please see attachment for my printer settings. I'm right in the middle of Jeff Schewes digital print book right now. Not finding any help there so far.
What would be the most logical reason my prints, and print previews don't match the soft proof in lightroom?

[rasworth]

Assuming you want Lightroom to do all of the color management, then in your printer driver you should have Mode set to Off, not ICM.  The Digital Print has a good section on color management, need to study carefully.

Richard Southworth

Added by edit - You didn't say, so I don't know where you are on display calibration/profiling, a necessary component to achieve soft proof and print matching.  Also don't pay much attention to printer previews, not a reliable indicator, stick to working on matching soft proof and final print.  Check out Andrew Rodney's tutorials at the Digital Dog.

[vanderloo]

I tried this on my first attempt Richard. I set the printer to no color management and applied the profile in lightroom. This was the best of 2 prints but it was miles off the soft proof preview.
Thanks for the reply.
I do calibrate my monitor display weekly Richard.

[rasworth]

Assuming you have a properly calibrated/profiled monitor and color management settings correct, then the most common cause of soft proof vs. actual print mismatch is monitor setting too bright as compared to the print viewing illumination.  I urge you to go to http://www.digitaldog.net/ and view his tutorial on "Why my prints are too dark".

You might also provide more detail on your print - soft proof mismatch.  And a better place to seek wisdom would probably be in the Color Management forum.

Richard Southworth

[BAB]

With a newer Epson printer set printer manages, it's all automatic. My prints are exactly the same as my monitor!

[vanderloo]

The actual print is much darker with a greener hue.
I just realized I might have went backwards on the print adjustment in lightroom. I backed off the brightness to -25. I probably should have went the other way if anything but I'm still not sure where the green is coming from.
BAB- I did my first print with printer managing color. With the settings shown in the original post attachment. the output was really bad. Maybe I'll try without ICM
Richard, I'll check out the tutorial.
Thanks

[vanderloo]

Not sure if this attachment will be accurate on other displays but my final print is closer to the printer preview shown here but I want it to be more like the soft proof.

[rasworth]

I'm going into absolute statement mode, have taught and provided color management services for more years than I care to count.  You have color management mis-setting(s) somewhere, the difference is too great to be explained by subtle issues.

There is one correct way to do this - use full color management in Lightroom, and turn off any control in the printer driver, i.e. dumb it down so that it feeds the RGB values from Lightroom directly into the printer with no modification, mode must be set to Off in the printer driver.

You need to provide screen prints of your Lightroom printing setup - what printer, paper, paper profile, rendering intent, etc. 

Richard Southworth

[nma]

First, Mode should be set to "Off (No color adjustment). Second, you did not say what paper you are using. I don't recognize the printer profile "Pro4800 PGPP." What paper is that for? You could try a different paper profile, just for visual evaluation of the corresponding soft proof of your image. In my experience, I expect the soft proof  to be similar to the print, assuming the settings for the printer driver are correct.

[Royce Howland]

I agree with Richard. Simplify your settings, and stop changing them to competing methods while you methodically narrow down where the issue(s) are happening. Something is mis-firing somewhere, and every time you switch to different configuration (e.g. from Lightroom managing colour to the printer driver managing colour), the odds are you may be confusing things further rather than eliminating confusion.

First comment is absolutely forget about looking at the colour in the preview window that is thrown up by the Epson printer driver. This window is displaying raw dump of image colour data, not corrected for display. It's not a "preview" in any meaningful way, other than to simply indicate that you're printing the image file you think you're printing. Ignore it totally otherwise, in terms of tone and colour.

Second comment is that if your softproofed view in Lightroom is looking reasonably correct and if your monitor is calibrated to a reasonable standard then your software setup may be largely correct. But there are some settings that are relevant in Lightroom; Richard has asked for screenshots of that stuff, which will clarify the setup on the source end of the printing pipeline.

Third comment is that printing through profiles is only as good as the profiles you're using. The Epson 4800 is a very old model, and the state of many "generic" profiles back then was mediocre at best. If you're printing on Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper using Epson's own PGPP profile, the results will be suboptimal if the profile itself isn't great.

Fourth comment is you haven't really indicated how you're looking at your print. Depending on how bright you've calibrated your monitor, and what kind of viewing light is present where you're reviewing your print, you may get screen-to-print mismatches. A calibrated monitor is emitting a certain level and quality of light. What kind of light are you looking at your print under? Because the print can only reflect the light falling on it. If the viewing light is dim and/or cast (e.g. nasty fluorescent lighting with a green tinge) then your print would look dark and greenish compared to the screen view.

Fifth comment is I don't see what operating system you're running, or what specific version of Lightroom, or a few other details like that. Sadly, the software and operating system world has been something of a minefield of problems over the years. Sometimes getting correct colour behaviour involves debugging some software and OS interactions that we shouldn't have to worry about. But it's nevertheless sometimes a fact that configuring things correctly and using proper workflow doesn't work because something else is broken under the covers.

Those are a few immediate thoughts. More info can spur some more concrete ideas...

[Rainer SLP]

Not sure if this attachment will be accurate on other displays but my final print is closer to the printer preview shown here but I want it to be more like the soft proof.

Hi,

Forget that preview window in regard to color accuracy. If I would go with that, all my prints would be way off. I have never understood why in that EPSON Print Preview window the colors are totally off.

I check my print result in PS CS6 with the menú of Proof Setup and Proof Colors ...

regards

[vanderloo]

What an awesome forum. I will be posting screenshots of my settings in lightroom soon Richard. As well as the media, operating system and other hardware.
And Royce, on your third comment, what would you recommend as a good starting point profile if many of these epson profiles are obsolete. Should I just use prophoto RGB?
Gonna dive back into the Digital Print book now and I did watch that DD video tutorial Richard. Very helpful.
'Thanks Again

[Royce Howland]

ProPhoto RGB is not a profile for printing with, not as the output profile. There are several profiles involved in a colour-controlled workflow. ProPhoto RGB, like Adobe RGB and sRGB as two other popular examples, are profiles based on synthetic colour spaces. These are good choices for encoding the contents of your digital file, and for choosing as so called "working colour spaces" inside various software apps such as Photoshop that you give the option to choose. Lightroom doesn't give you the option to choose; its internal working colour space is hardwired to something like ProPhoto RGB. (I'm glossing over some details here.)

Devices like monitors and printers need device-specific profiles. You create one for your monitor by running whatever calibration package you use. With printers it's more complicated, because printers produce work on papers, and each paper may have its own slightly or largely different way of rendering tonality and colour. So for printers, you want a profile that's specific to the printer itself (which includes its ink as a huge component) and the paper. In your case, you need a profile for the Epson 4800 with Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper if that's the paper you're printing on. Epson themselves produce the profiles for their printers and papers. But since the 4800 is quite old, those profiles will have been produced a long time ago. If the profiles themselves were not that great at the beginning (which often was true years ago), or your specific printer has drifted away from the factory spec, or the ink formulation has changed (unlikely but not impossible), or the paper has been reformulated in a way that changes its colour & tone rendering (much more likely), then the ancient Epson 4800 PGPP profile may not deliver great results for you today.

If that's part of what's going on, then you'd either need to get a new Epson 4800 PGPP profile created, or find a very similar paper that has a profile for the Epson 4800 that happens to work better. You could try the profile for Ilford Smooth Gloss, for example, if Ilford makes a profile download for the Epson 4800. Those two papers are fairly similar. Using the Ilford profile would tell you if something is going on with the Epson PGPP profile if you switch the profile to Ilford in Lightroom and get noticeably different results with your print. If you use the Ilford profile in Lightroom and get very close -- but wrong -- results, then it tells you the problem most likely lies somewhere else. (Creating a new profile I won't address for now, since it's probably a red herring for where you're at right now.)

A sixth thought I'll add to my original list is to make sure your printer is actually laying down ink correctly. Your printer model is pretty old; if any of the ink cartridges in it are extremely old as well, they may no longer be printing properly. Also, Epson printers clog which means some of the small nozzles in the print head will get blocked and ink will not be laid down properly. This can cause big shifts in tone and more especially colour. So if you haven't run nozzle checks and such to be sure the printer is physically laying down ink properly, you should do that.

[vanderloo]

Royce,
I'll do some checking on other profiles.
As I mentioned in my original post here, I did just have the printer serviced last week and have all new ink cartridges as well.
So I think I can eliminate that.

[Royce Howland]

Serviced or not, all Epson printers are prone to clogging as a side effect of their design. Also heads and/or ink cartridges can malfunction. If you don't know for a fact that your printer is laying down ink fully & correctly, test it. At a minimum, run nozzle checks if you haven't done so.

[mearussi]

The very first thing you ALWAYS do before printing is run a nozzle check. If so much as one nozzle is plugged your color will be off. Also, if I didn't run a nozzle check EVERY DAY on my 4800s they would plug up regardless of how many times I cleaned them. Never assume anything.

[vanderloo]

My belated response to Rasworth and Royce-
Please see attachments for my lightroom and printer settings.
I'm using Windows 7, Lightroom CC, Epson Sylus Pro 4800 with the latest driver
I'm still confused on what resolution setting to use in lightroom settings.
I'm now using Epson Premium Luster Photo Paper 250
Phil

[rasworth]

I don't see anything wrong with your settings.  I do agree with previous posts that you should do a nozzle check, on plain paper, to check your printer operation.

I suggest the next step is to bring in a reference image that most of us are familiar with, and use it for further testing.  It can be downloaded near the bottom of this web page: http://www.outbackphoto.com/printinginsights/pi048/essay.html  It's downloaded as a zip, extract the tif within and use it with no modification in Lightroom.  It has an embedded ProPhoto color space, I've attached a reduced size version so there will be no confusion, don't use my attachment.

Richard Southworth

[rasworth]

And here's my setup, very similar to yours.

Richard Southworth

[Royce Howland]

I agree, the settings look reasonable to me. From a workflow viewpoint, it sounds like things are set up properly. Since the print doesn't match the display with correct settings, one thing to consider is whether the display is correct, or the print.

Printing a known test image would be one way to isolate that. If the the test image referred to above also looks darkish and greenish, then the problem is in the output pipeline. If the test image prints fine without any shifts, then compare it to the image on-screen; any visible difference likely is down to the display then.

A third thing that could be done would be to take a test image file that demonstrates the print shift, plus copies of the monitor profile and the printer profile, and run the combination of these 3 things through some analysis tools to see if anything in the profiles is triggering a shift on either (or both) devices...