My prints are way too dark....help!

[siejones]

I have been messing about wasting ink and paper trying to get this right for too long now and I give in. I need some help!

Right first things first. I have a cheap A4 printer which is the Canon pixma IP4300. I don't expect it produce miracles or be 100% colour accurate but I do expect it to be at least something like what I see on the screen. In fact I havn't even looked at colour differences because I have too much of a problem getting it to print with anywhere near the right luminance.

Now yes I own a LCD monitor (Benq 241W not the best but not a cheap one) and I have read about issues with them being too bright with photographic work. In fact mine is too bright and using eye-one display 2 with brightness set to 0 on the monitor I can't get it to drop below 190 if I set the contrast exactly as eye-one suggests. In fact I have given up trying to do it and in the end I dropped the contrast and brightness just so I found a happy medium by eye then calibrated the rest. So that's the problem then isn't it? Well no...no it isn't. I also have 19 inch monitor that has no such brightness problems and images look only slightly darker on it and in fact images look fine on every monitor at work (which have no calibration). So that's eliminated.

I use genuine inks and have tried papers Canon satin, canon glossy, jessops glossy, jessops satin even some cheapy cheap pcline stuff using all the suggested driver paper settings. They all print the same which is way too dark. Highlights stay bright but shadows turn from near black to black. I have even tried to print other peoples images that look fine on the screen but once printed they are again way too dark.

I have tried printing from all of the supplied printer profiles as well as letting the printer driver trying to match, I have even tried to use the printer drivers in built contrast/colour/brightness slides but with only subtle differences.

Ok I havn't sent off for a printer profile and I know I should but I can't accept it would make this extreme difference.

I have been using quite a difficult image for testing. It has bright highlights too dark shadows but then again I don't expect this to be a problem and this is the kind of image I want to print. That's not asking too much is it?

I have emulated the difference using the said image. It has very delicate shadows I know but that's how I want it.Image on top being the saved image and the one on the bottom modifed to how my print is coming out. This is not an exaggeration and is as close as I can get it by eye.

http://www.thelightcanvas.com/forumpics/printer_image.jpg

I have tried to make extreme changes to midtones in photoshop just for the print but even then it still comes out dark but this time with obvious loss of contrast and saturation e.t.c

There are no warnings error messages of any kind and I have aligned and cleaned the nozzle several times with no apparent banding e.t.c

Surely it can't be down to printer calibration. Surely it can't be this bad "out the box" so to speak. It's not the cheapest printer on the market. Surely it just can't be this bad!

Thanks for any help.

[Doyle Yoder]

You really need to have a control image to print to get a handle on the issue.

I would suggest you go here.

http://homepage.mac.com/billatkinson/FileSharing2.html

or here http://www.gballard.net/dl/PDI_TargetFolderONLY.zip

And download the profile test images. You can then compare them to what your images look like on the screen and compare to your printed images. That will give you a good idea where to start in making proper color management decisions.

[natas]

First off that is a beautiful image.

Now, if I were to print the top image you showed I would boost the brightness a tad before printing. This is just from my own experience and knowing that my monitor is a little on the bright side.

One other issue you maybe running into is a limitation of your printer. I run a epson 4800, but I can not say how well your particular printer can handle those slight variations of darkness in the foreground. Some printers may turn those areas into almost mud...I know my r1800 and 2200 would but my 4800 would handle it well as long as I brightened it a bit which like I said before seems a little to dark.

Hope that helps, I battled the dark prints for 4 months with my older R1800 only to find out that it was actually my printer. It was replaced and all was well, but like I said I know my monitor is on the bright side.

[bill t.]

There is some suggestion of double profiling here, although I don't know where those pitfalls might be in the Canon workflow.

However, the basic problem looks like the print is not set up well for printmaking.  Remember that your monitor has way more dynamic range than your print.  Even when calibrated to so-called low contrast levels it still shows a great deal more micro-contrast than a print can ever achieve.  In particular, most LCD's suggest a lot more tonal separation in the shadows that you can transfer to a print, even a glossy print.  While the image looks interesting on the screen, the arrangement of the various tonal values are not print friendly...subtle separations on your rich, back-lighted LCD screen will collapse too close together on reflective media.

Here's a somewhat opened up version which I think would transfer a lot better to a print.  In general, the more the tonal separation on the image you submit to the print, the better your result will be, provided you don't completely over the top into clipping, hyper-saturation, excessive contrast, etc.  This was done with a highlight luminosity mask, and that same mask inverted for the dark areas, and a little overall steeper PS "Curve".  Also rubber stamped over the blown out sky to the left.

edit...now that I look at my mods, I realize I have taken your subtle intent and dropped it squarely into the middle of lollipop-land. Thomas Kinkade probably has his easel set up just behind one of those rocks.  Other open interpretations are possible.

[David Sutton]

You should be able to get better results from that printer. As Bill said, it looks like a workflow issue. I started printing with a cheapo Epson multifunction, and had no end of problems until I purchased printing software. My workflow went: calibrate and profile the monitor with Spyder2, profile the printer and paper with Spyderprint (the printer was too cheap for paper manufacturers to supply profiles), send the photo to Qimage with the printer colour management OFF and letting Qimage handle colour. Prints matched the screen pretty closely with quite fair shadow detail and colour. The main difference now is I have a bigger printer and I softproof in Photoshop first. Unless I misread your post, it sounds like you are using the Canon software to print. I think it may be difficult to ever get results that you like that way. Cheers, David

[Pat Herold]

If you are using the cheap Canon's canned profiles, it might be that they are not accurate enough to reproduce this level of shadow detail.  A good profile is supposed to scale the image to the printer's ability to print it.  But this kind of scene would stretch a printer or profile to the limit of its abilities.

A few things you don't mention that are important here:
- What rendering intent are you printing with?  (for greatest shadow detail in an image like this, probably perceptual with black point compensation on.)
- Are you soft proofing?  If you have Photoshop you should be able to see what your image will look like on the screen - through the printer profile.  Just viewing it on a calibrated monitor doesn't necessarily get you that.
- How do you know the prints are too dark?  (What lighting are you using?)  
- How do you know the uncalibrated monitors look fine?  (They might also be too bright.)

I always like people to go through the white paper test mentioned in this article from one of our newsletters. A blank white sheet of your printer paper should be able to match a blank white document in Photoshop in brightness and color.  If it doesn't, you need to either increase your lighting or reduce the brightness of the display.

http://www.colorwiki.com/wiki/My_Printer_Is_Too_Dark

[siejones]

You really need to have a control image to print to get a handle on the issue.

I would suggest you go here.

http://homepage.mac.com/billatkinson/FileSharing2.html

or here http://www.gballard.net/dl/PDI_TargetFolderONLY.zip

And download the profile test images. You can then compare them to what your images look like on the screen and compare to your printed images. That will give you a good idea where to start in making proper color management decisions.

Thanks I will try the test patterns and no doubt they will give me a more accurate idea of the differences but it still stands to reason that a normal image is vastly different enough to warrent investigation.

First off that is a beautiful image.

Now, if I were to print the top image you showed I would boost the brightness a tad before printing. This is just from my own experience and knowing that my monitor is a little on the bright side.

One other issue you maybe running into is a limitation of your printer. I run a epson 4800, but I can not say how well your particular printer can handle those slight variations of darkness in the foreground. Some printers may turn those areas into almost mud...I know my r1800 and 2200 would but my 4800 would handle it well as long as I brightened it a bit which like I said before seems a little to dark.

Hope that helps, I battled the dark prints for 4 months with my older R1800 only to find out that it was actually my printer. It was replaced and all was well, but like I said I know my monitor is on the bright side.

Thanks very much. If you are interested it is a view of the last light to hit a peak called Tryfan in Ogwen Vally, Snowdonia, Wales, UK. A favorite peak amongst many including myself.

I was kind of worrying that this maybe the case and I was expecting too much from a cheaper printer. On the other hand I didn't want to shell out for a better one only to find it was something to do with my workflow. Thing is I would expect to brighten print a tadge to cater for the bright screen but unfortunatly this is far from a tadge.

There is some suggestion of double profiling here, although I don't know where those pitfalls might be in the Canon workflow.

However, the basic problem looks like the print is not set up well for printmaking.  Remember that your monitor has way more dynamic range than your print.  Even when calibrated to so-called low contrast levels it still shows a great deal more micro-contrast than a print can ever achieve.  In particular, most LCD's suggest a lot more tonal separation in the shadows that you can transfer to a print, even a glossy print.  While the image looks interesting on the screen, the arrangement of the various tonal values are not print friendly...subtle separations on your rich, back-lighted LCD screen will collapse too close together on reflective media.

Here's a somewhat opened up version which I think would transfer a lot better to a print.  In general, the more the tonal separation on the image you submit to the print, the better your result will be, provided you don't completely over the top into clipping, hyper-saturation, excessive contrast, etc.  This was done with a highlight luminosity mask, and that same mask inverted for the dark areas, and a little overall steeper PS "Curve".  Also rubber stamped over the blown out sky to the left.

edit...now that I look at my mods, I realize I have taken your subtle intent and dropped it squarely into the middle of lollipop-land. Thomas Kinkade probably has his easel set up just behind one of those rocks.  Other open interpretations are possible.

Thanks very much for you explanation and efforts.

I have printed your edited image and my results are such. The shadows have indeed opened up in the print but they have lost a lot of contrast and are beginning to look washed out and even after this extreme edit believe it or not they are still darker than the original. Now the highlights on the print are as washed out as they look on the edit on screen and all my contrast and colour of the peak has been lost. I had previously tried using DXO to brighten all the tones without blowing the highlights and it produced a similar effect

Now I could go on to selectively mask out areas of shadow and highlights and work on them individually until many many prints later I get what I have on the screen but surely.....surely this simply can't be the case. Even my mothers little Canon selphony no frills, auto everything cheap printer gets a much closer match than this.

You should be able to get better results from that printer. As Bill said, it looks like a workflow issue. I started printing with a cheapo Epson multifunction, and had no end of problems until I purchased printing software. My workflow went: calibrate and profile the monitor with Spyder2, profile the printer and paper with Spyderprint (the printer was too cheap for paper manufacturers to supply profiles), send the photo to Qimage with the printer colour management OFF and letting Qimage handle colour. Prints matched the screen pretty closely with quite fair shadow detail and colour. The main difference now is I have a bigger printer and I softproof in Photoshop first. Unless I misread your post, it sounds like you are using the Canon software to print. I think it may be difficult to ever get results that you like that way. Cheers, David

Thanks

I don't have a customised printer profile and the only reason I have gone down that route yet is that I just couldn't believe a printer profile should be required for a printer unless of coarse you are searching for the best colour matching you can achieve. No doubt I will want to do this but surely it can't be that bad without. I would expect subtle differences in tone and colour but not to these extremes. Surely printers arn't this badly matched out of the box? It's pretty much unusable to me at the moment. As I said above "Even my mothers little Canon selphony no frills, auto everything cheap printer gets a much closer match than this". I just presumed there was a problem somewhere.

I do use photoshop to print and have tried many different profile setups from the printer settings to no avail.

For me now I can see only two ways to go. I either just accept I have outgrown this class of printer and I am expecting to much from it. Bite the bullet and dish out for a better printer. Or get it profiled properly and spend time and effort trying to get it too match when I might be just wasting my time with it.

I am not sure what to do which is why I have turned more experianced expertease. Which of coarse is asking you lot

What should I do?

[siejones]

If you are using the cheap Canon's canned profiles, it might be that they are not accurate enough to reproduce this level of shadow detail.  A good profile is supposed to scale the image to the printer's ability to print it.  But this kind of scene would stretch a printer or profile to the limit of its abilities.

A few things you don't mention that are important here:
- What rendering intent are you printing with?  (for greatest shadow detail in an image like this, probably perceptual with black point compensation on.)
- Are you soft proofing?  If you have Photoshop you should be able to see what your image will look like on the screen - through the printer profile.  Just viewing it on a calibrated monitor doesn't necessarily get you that.
- How do you know the prints are too dark?  (What lighting are you using?)  
- How do you know the uncalibrated monitors look fine?  (They might also be too bright.)

I always like people to go through the white paper test mentioned in this article from one of our newsletters. A blank white sheet of your printer paper should be able to match a blank white document in Photoshop in brightness and color.  If it doesn't, you need to either increase your lighting or reduce the brightness of the display.

http://www.colorwiki.com/wiki/My_Printer_Is_Too_Dark

Thanks for your reply

I am using the canon printer profiles as well as trying having the printer driver colour match for me. All produce only subtle differences but all way to dark which is why I haven't gone ahead and had one made. If all these profiles I have tried only make subtle differences then surely the extreme (unretrieveable) differences I am having won't be just a profile.

- I have been using "relative colorimetric". Would the intent be causeing this much difference?
- I have viewed the soft proofed version of all the profiles I have tried. None of them looked close to like the overly dark print I am getting.
- I have viewing the prints up close to artificial lighting direct and under direct daylight with only subtle differences. The differences really as bad as my emulation.
- True the uncalibrated monitors may be too bright (although they acutally look a lot dimmer to mine at home) but my 19" montor was brightness and contrast matched perfectly with eye-one display 2 and again there are only subtle differences in the viewed image on all the monitors regardless of there differences.

Thanks for the link but it's one I have already read it before in my desperation and it is what gave me the idea it may have been monitor brightness.

[David Sutton]

Are you sure you have turned colour management off in the Canon printer dialogue? It sounds like you haven't. It's not always easy to find in the Canon preferences. (In Windows XP it's: control panel- printers and faxes- canon ip4300- printer- printing preferences). Let Photoshop handle the colour.
When you softproof have you got the "simulate paper colour" box ticked, and the "black point compensation" box ticked when you are using the relative colorimetric rendering? The easiest way to to decide between relative and perceptual is to duplicate you image (Image- duplicate) and then hit "Window- Arrange- Tile" twice. Decide whether to to tile horizontally or vertically. You now have two copies of your image open on the same screen. The duplicate will be discarded when you have finished. Click on the top of your original image to select it and then go to softproof, and see which rendering intent suits that photo.
 David

[siejones]

Are you sure you have turned colour management off in the Canon printer dialogue? It sounds like you haven't. It's not always easy to find in the Canon preferences. (In Windows XP it's: control panel- printers and faxes- canon ip4300- printer- printing preferences). Let Photoshop handle the colour.
When you softproof have you got the "simulate paper colour" box ticked, and the "black point compensation" box ticked when you are using the relative colorimetric rendering? The easiest way to to decide between relative and perceptual is to duplicate you image (Image- duplicate) and then hit "Window- Arrange- Tile" twice. Decide whether to to tile horizontally or vertically. You now have two copies of your image open on the same screen. The duplicate will be discarded when you have finished. Click on the top of your original image to select it and then go to softproof, and see which rendering intent suits that photo.
 David

Thanks but quite sure I have turned it off. In IP4300 diaglog it is under colour/intensity set to manual then in it's settings I set colour management to none. The in photoshop I set "photoshop to manage colour" and set whatever profile.

Thanks for the tip on comapring perceptual and relative I will use that in future. Unfortunatly my case is so severe niether setting makes much of a difference.

[David Sutton]

Thanks but quite sure I have turned it off. In IP4300 diaglog it is under colour/intensity set to manual then in it's settings I set colour management to none. The in photoshop I set "photoshop to manage colour" and set whatever profile.

Thanks for the tip on comapring perceptual and relative I will use that in future. Unfortunatly my case is so severe niether setting makes much of a difference.

The only things I can think of now are:
1) do a print with "no colour management" selected in Photoshop (and your printer) to confirm it's not a workfow or .icc profile issue. Print a softproofed version of your image.
2) If "match print colours" is ticked and the results are radically different when printing, try a trial version of Qimage from http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage/downloads.htm
3) If you have profiled your screen to around 100 cd/m2 and the prints are too dark, you may want to try creating your own profiles for your printer/paper combination. I use SpyderPrint 3 but I hear Colormunki is quite good. A very useful exercise to do, but it is more expense and another learning curve.
David

[AlanG]

Have you tried connecting another printer?  Perhaps yours is defective. I've owned 4 of the small Canon desktops - a 990i (6 color), a Pixma ip6000D (6 color), a Pixma ip6600D (6 color), and the multifunction MP780 (5 color - two are black.)

All of them printed very nicely out of the box except for the ip6000D. It was way off and the only way I could get acceptable prints from it was by using the manual controls to adjust the saturation and black.  I had to turn the "intensity" setting to -13. And even using premium glossy, I had to set it to "plain paper."  So maybe you are having a similar problem.

I have owned about a dozen color inkjets (including 3 pro models) and in general, they'll make a fairly nice print in their default high quality photo settings. So if you have a standard test image and send it to the printer with no profile and just have the printer set-up with no adjustments at all, the print should be pretty good.

[viswan]

Sometimes the simplest solution may be the most effective. try this...... just add an "exposure" adjustment layer in Photoshop, and then move the slider to say -.12 to start, you may need more...... print out a print.  i would be surprised if this didn't work.  find your best adjustment, it might be -.15 or so.  then save it, and use that on all your prints..... it might look too light on your monitor, but should print the way you want.

[siejones]

Ok guys once again thanks alot for your replies.

The only things I can think of now are:
1) do a print with "no colour management" selected in Photoshop (and your printer) to confirm it's not a workfow or .icc profile issue. Print a softproofed version of your image.
2) If "match print colours" is ticked and the results are radically different when printing, try a trial version of Qimage from http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage/downloads.htm
3) If you have profiled your screen to around 100 cd/m2 and the prints are too dark, you may want to try creating your own profiles for your printer/paper combination. I use SpyderPrint 3 but I hear Colormunki is quite good. A very useful exercise to do, but it is more expense and another learning curve.
David

Apart from creating a proper printer profile I have tried all of the above and pretty much every combination of settings. Again all only make subtle differences but all are way too dark still and I mean unbearabe dark. I am running out of ink/paper and patience

If you haven't watched the Reichman-Schewe videos about printing, you really should get them. They are excellent.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/videos/camera-print.shtml

Sharon

I have seen this video and most informative it was too but alas (and as I would expect) Reichman-Schewe never had to make the drastic processing changes I have been trying to get anywhere close.

Have you tried connecting another printer?  Perhaps yours is defective. I've owned 4 of the small Canon desktops - a 990i (6 color), a Pixma ip6000D (6 color), a Pixma ip6600D (6 color), and the multifunction MP780 (5 color - two are black.)

All of them printed very nicely out of the box except for the ip6000D. It was way off and the only way I could get acceptable prints from it was by using the manual controls to adjust the saturation and black.  I had to turn the "intensity" setting to -13. And even using premium glossy, I had to set it to "plain paper."  So maybe you are having a similar problem.

I have owned about a dozen color inkjets (including 3 pro models) and in general, they'll make a fairly nice print in their default high quality photo settings. So if you have a standard test image and send it to the printer with no profile and just have the printer set-up with no adjustments at all, the print should be pretty good.

I haven't tried another printer as I don't have another but I think your right it is most probably the printer. I have heard that some lay down too much ink and this probably is the case but it's so bad that no pre-print changes are good enough the counter act it. For me the problem you had with the ip6000D is more than likely similar to what i am suffering but to me this is not acceptable and in my mind this is the defination of faulty. My landscape work tends to use delicate tones that I want just right and this isn't good enough. Maybe I have to go more expensive.

Sometimes the simplest solution may be the most effective. try this...... just add an "exposure" adjustment layer in Photoshop, and then move the slider to say -.12 to start, you may need more...... print out a print.  i would be surprised if this didn't work.  find your best adjustment, it might be -.15 or so.  then save it, and use that on all your prints..... it might look too light on your monitor, but should print the way you want.

Thanks but I have tried this amongst other things such as masked levels, fine tuned shadow and highlights e.t.c All of which go someways to open up the shadows and yet destroy colour and contrast.

I either done one of three things now:

1. Send off for a proffesional profile.
2. Get my image printed professionaly. If it comes back ok then I know it's my printer.
3. Give up and get a better printer.

[AlanG]

You should be able to get nice prints from that machine.  I have a Canon 5 color multifunction machine and it can make surprisingly good prints. (Not quite what my ipf 6100 will do but nice.)  So I suggest you contact Canon and see what they say. Maybe they'll replace it. (Although I'm guessing you've had it for a while.)

Sometimes you can find these printers on sale (especially discontinued models) for about what the ink cost or less.

[AlanG]

duplicate post deleted

[siejones]

You should be able to get nice prints from that machine.  I have a Canon 5 color multifunction machine and it can make surprisingly good prints. (Not quite what my ipf 6100 will do but nice.)  So I suggest you contact Canon and see what they say. Maybe they'll replace it. (Although I'm guessing you've had it for a while.)

Sometimes you can find these printers on sale (especially discontinued models) for about what the ink cost or less.

Thanks

Yes it's way to old to be under warrenty. I have just spotted a second hand Epson 2400 and I am going for it.

Thank for everyones help and suggestions.