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Author Topic: Z3100 prints dark - has anyone found easy fix  (Read 5816 times)

drjdmm

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Z3100 prints dark - has anyone found easy fix
« on: June 28, 2009, 10:41:09 pm »

I love my HP z3100 printer, but I am still frustrated with prints coming out too dark. The problem seems worse with Photoshop CS4.

I have loaded the latest drivers and firmware from HP  - Windows XP  still  (waiting for windows 7)

I manage my monitor calibration with eye one display 2.

I use the very easy printer calibration in  HP z3100 for different papers.

I  use setttings - let photoshop manage color in both photoshop and in the driver options (in windows under printer properties)

I know the brightness on LCD's  is much greater than  printers  - but I am frustrated with getting "what you see is what you get"  on the printer.

Has anyone figured out an easy fix. Currently I just keep adjusting brightness and keep re-printing until it looks right, but I wonder if anyone has an easier method that does not waste as much paper - I mostly use HP Professional satin.

Is there a standard tweak or modification in Photoshop that can be made that makes the lcd image match the print?

Has anyone found a RIP  solution  that works better for HP z3100?
I was hoping the colorbyte     http://www.colorbytesoftware.com/IP_prod_sheet.htm
would come out with one but everytime I check - I see that they have not got a product out.

Apologies if this has already been discussed - I could not find it in the search

Joel Murphy
drjmphotography.com
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howseth

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Z3100 prints dark - has anyone found easy fix
« Reply #1 on: June 29, 2009, 12:50:43 am »

I use a Z3100 printer. I also use eye-one display 2 device to calibrate.

Lower the brightness of your monitors until you get a close match. My LCD's are too bright at the recommended 120. You may try setting your screens to 100 luminance (the crt setting) (use the advanced calibration brightness check - on your EYE One display 2 - do not use the the "easy" printer calibration - use the advanced.)

I get fairly close brightness match to my favorite paper using 100 luminance/  2.2 Gamma/ and 5500 white point. with the advanced setting. following the instruction arrows - set contrast to 100,  set white point to "RGB controls" - and very importantly next do the - "adjust the brightness of your monitor to reach desired luminance" test, and get your screens down to 100 luminance (or even less) it will let you know how bright your screens really are. Than calibrate.  If you still do not get a close match - do that last luminance test over to set your monitor a little lower - or little higher - and calibrate again - until you get a reasonable match with your paper.

Howard
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neil snape

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Z3100 prints dark - has anyone found easy fix
« Reply #2 on: June 29, 2009, 03:01:15 am »

As the above poster said, it must be your monitor calibration/hardware monitor set up causing a too large of difference of monitor to print viewing comparison.

The only other thing would be of course your viewing light is not bright enough either. One of the easiest ways to view your prints with a good print to screen match is to buy some inexpensive Solux bulbs I think the 4700 K bulbs are good. Calibrate your monitor to 6500 K maximum but the better way is to try lower settings with your favorite paper in the viewing light. When you calibrate to what your eyes see as a match in colour, then that is the right temperature for you. Monitor lum should be around 120-140 cd/m2 for many viewing lights. I find with photo papers the white point that corresponds to my Just Normlicht viewing boxes is around 57-5800 K . It will be different for Solux though as there is little UV or spikes, and the native temp is lower than florescent tubes.
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walter.sk

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Z3100 prints dark - has anyone found easy fix
« Reply #3 on: June 29, 2009, 10:31:01 am »

Quote from: drjdmm
I love my HP z3100 printer, but I am still frustrated with prints coming out too dark. The problem seems worse with Photoshop CS4.

I have loaded the latest drivers and firmware from HP  - Windows XP  still  (waiting for windows 7)

I manage my monitor calibration with eye one display 2.

I use the very easy printer calibration in  HP z3100 for different papers.

I  use setttings - let photoshop manage color in both photoshop and in the driver options (in windows under printer properties)

I know the brightness on LCD's  is much greater than  printers  - but I am frustrated with getting "what you see is what you get"  on the printer.

Has anyone figured out an easy fix. Currently I just keep adjusting brightness and keep re-printing until it looks right, but I wonder if anyone has an easier method that does not waste as much paper - I mostly use HP Professional satin.

Is there a standard tweak or modification in Photoshop that can be made that makes the lcd image match the print?

Has anyone found a RIP  solution  that works better for HP z3100?
I was hoping the colorbyte     http://www.colorbytesoftware.com/IP_prod_sheet.htm
would come out with one but everytime I check - I see that they have not got a product out.

Apologies if this has already been discussed - I could not find it in the search

Joel Murphy
drjmphotography.com

You need to have a known and consistent viewing illuminatin before you can judge whether your prints are "too dark" compared with the monitor, and the image that you compare on the monitor is a softproofed version of the file.  The advice to set the monitor luminance to 100 cd/m2 misses the point that that is actually well below what the monitors are designed to handle, and will produce other problems.  

The simplest, but not cheapest, way to go is to get a print viewer that is set at 5000K and has its level of illumination set to replicate visually the lumunance you see on the monitor.  Without a means of standardizing your monitor/print viewing situation you have no idea whether the monitor is too bright or dark, or the prints are too bright or dark.

If you have a specific final viewing situation in mind, such as at a specific gallery, you can set up your print viewer to mimic that situation.  But in most cases, at least having the softproofed display image match the print in the viewer is easy to set up.

You can go with solex bulbs, but again, you will have to adjust the height of the bulbs to your print in order to approximate the leght levels as seen on your monitor.  In my opinion, the easiest and quite accurate way to go is with either a Just Normlict or GTI print viewer with adjustable intensity.
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Geoff Wittig

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Z3100 prints dark - has anyone found easy fix
« Reply #4 on: June 29, 2009, 12:43:48 pm »

Quote from: drjdmm
I love my HP z3100 printer, but I am still frustrated with prints coming out too dark. The problem seems worse with Photoshop CS4.
Joel Murphy
drjmphotography.com

I initially thought that some of my prints were coming out too dark, but eventually I traced it to scaling issues and the light I examined the prints under. I keep my 'digital darkroom' rather dimly illuminated, which tends to exaggerate the brightness of the monitor while making prints look darker than they really are. I finally wised up and now I evaluate prints under a reasonably bright light.

By 'scaling issues' I'm referring to a quirk of human perception by which the percieved brightness and shadow detail of a print varies with its size. The bigger a print you make, the easier it is to see detail into the shadows and the 'brighter' it looks overall. Small prints made with exactly the same settings will always look darker (and contrastier) than larger prints. John Paul Caponigro's website includes an informational PDF on the subject (free subscription). He suggests that for every doubling or halving of total print area a curves compensation of 1% at the midpoint will produce something close to a constant percieved brightness. You make the curve midpoint 1% lighter for a print with half the area of your reference print, and so on. This seems just about on target to me, depending on image content.

If all else fails and you're sure your calibration is good, you can resort to brute force. Make a curves adjustment layer that matches your print to your monitor. Then just drag that curves layer onto any image just before printing. It's ugly, but it works.
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drjdmm

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Z3100 prints dark - has anyone found easy fix
« Reply #5 on: June 30, 2009, 08:30:27 am »

Thank you for your response - I setup a viewing area and that made a huge difference with my perception of the print being too dark.  I can see how you need to print specifically for the area that the photograph is being viewed.  What problems do you get with lowering to 100?

"The advice to set the monitor luminance to 100 cd/m2 misses the point that that is actually well below what the monitors are designed to handle, and will produce other problems. "


Does that cause color aberrations?

Thanks
Joel Murphy
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neil snape

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Z3100 prints dark - has anyone found easy fix
« Reply #6 on: June 30, 2009, 08:40:05 am »

Quote from: drjdmm
Thank you for your response - I setup a viewing area and that made a huge difference with my perception of the print being too dark.  I can see how you need to print specifically for the area that the photograph is being viewed.  What problems do you get with lowering to 100?

"The advice to set the monitor luminance to 100 cd/m2 misses the point that that is actually well below what the monitors are designed to handle, and will produce other problems. "


Does that cause color aberrations?

Thanks
Joel Murphy


Yes the problem lays in the response of the LCD in the end points of it's TRC. Good monitors are all at least 10 bit internally as the 8 bit signal going to the monitor from the video card has to be treated with CLUTS for this aberration. As soon as you blank the luminosity down to 100cd/m2  you're going beyond anything a 10 bit LUT will easily handle. You'll basically start some brutal bumps in it's TRC resulting in serious banding and loss of levels.  IF you have 12 bit LUTS or better 14 bit it can be a lot easier, hence top end monitors can deal with more adjustment and still hold tight in precision.
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digitaldog

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Z3100 prints dark - has anyone found easy fix
« Reply #7 on: June 30, 2009, 08:59:23 am »

One of the big issues here is communication (and I'm not picking on the OP, this "my prints are too dark" is heard throughout the web). Someone's prints can indeed be too dark. Wrong RGB numbers, bad output profile, etc. It would look dark everywhere. What we're hearing (the translation should be) "My prints are darker than my display". I hear this complaint all the time. 99 times out of 100, when I ask "view the prints out doors, under a desk lamp, in your living room, are they dark?" the answer is no. We really need to get this issue resolved. Better communication about the problem and better tools for correlating the display to the viewing conditions NEXT TO the display. Of course, we need everyone to get hip to proper print viewing by the display. There's no reason to worry about the print in another room or across town if you can't compare it to the display, as long as again, it doesn't look too dark there and elsewhere. If so, you do have a problem with either the RGB numbers or how they are getting translated to the print.
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howseth

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Z3100 prints dark - has anyone found easy fix
« Reply #8 on: June 30, 2009, 12:32:45 pm »

I made the comment about lowering monitor luminance to 100. Several people commented that will cause various problems. I have not seen those problems referred to. At least not on my Samsung 213T and Samsung 214 T monitors. I am getting the better overall match with my prints with my monitor set this way, at 100, - when viewed under various lighting conditions. Perhaps, putting the monitors back up to 120 - and adding some kind of curve in Photoshop (I am using Photoshop for every file; I also use the soft proof function) would also work. One could try that too...



Howard
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neil snape

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Z3100 prints dark - has anyone found easy fix
« Reply #9 on: June 30, 2009, 12:46:53 pm »

Quote from: digitaldog
One of the big issues here is communication (and I'm not picking on the OP, this "my prints are too dark" is heard throughout the web). Someone's prints can indeed be too dark. Wrong RGB numbers, bad output profile, etc. It would look dark everywhere. What we're hearing (the translation should be) "My prints are darker than my display". I hear this complaint all the time. 99 times out of 100, when I ask "view the prints out doors, under a desk lamp, in your living room, are they dark?" the answer is no. We really need to get this issue resolved. Better communication about the problem and better tools for correlating the display to the viewing conditions NEXT TO the display. Of course, we need everyone to get hip to proper print viewing by the display. There's no reason to worry about the print in another room or across town if you can't compare it to the display, as long as again, it doesn't look too dark there and elsewhere. If so, you do have a problem with either the RGB numbers or how they are getting translated to the print.


Absolutely Andrew, this is what the problem is these days. We saw so many moves towards correct workflow with ICC profiles and all has gone well except the extraneous last elements such as viewing conditions. When it's right it works so darn well. When it's not quite right a lot of chasing starts happening. It was so long ago I almost forgot that I put ND filters in my light boxes for viewing trannies as it is fundamental to match or approximate the light between sources for comparisons.
Very good advice to take the prints into bright sources to see if the prints simulate the monitor in that case.
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drjdmm

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Z3100 prints dark - has anyone found easy fix
« Reply #10 on: July 07, 2009, 10:16:41 pm »

There is a good article on this subject in the new Shutterbug   August 2009
I downloaded the program from ColorEyes Display Pro   www.intergrated-color.com
So far I have printed 4  photographs and I am optimistic that this may solve my problem until I can talk my wife into letting me buy a Eizo ColorEdge CG222w LCD. I am going to Vegas for a conference this week - I here what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas - so maybe I'll place an order there.

Dr. Joel Murphy
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