Seriously wrong colors when printing: double printer profiling? Win7/PS CS5

[Iliah]

> Iliah, you'll need to educate me a bit on what can be deduced from the graph you posted.

The profile is made from a target that is not suitable, too few patches, and not covering the problematic areas of the combination of printer and paper too well. You can also see the curves are broken lines and neutrals changing the sign of the derivative. This is a recipe to colour crossovers and posterization. I have this printer by the way.

> The internal printer calibration is something that is not on all the time.

I've never printed on this printer using Windows machine, but on Mac if internal calibration is accomplished the stock profile works as you describe it - while in-printer colour management works well especially if the input is in a reasonably small colour space, like AdobeRGB or sRGB.

For my use I switch off internal calibration and do my own linearization using Argyll printcal utility (target generated using targen from Argyll, 64 patches for each colour) followed by profiling using any tool you prefer. Realistically, based on the stock profile one needs about 1800 patches to make a good profile for the printer.

The point in switching the colour management for a printer in Windows Control Panel is that sometimes the profile listed there by default is still used by the driver, even with all settings adjusted to no colour management. I got into this trap couple of times and decided it is a little effort to take the default profile off while this small action can save a lot of frustration on the next steps.

[CASpyr]

For my use I switch off internal calibration and do my own linearization using Argyll printcal utility (target generated using targen from Argyll, 64 patches for each colour) followed by profiling using any tool you prefer. Realistically, based on the stock profile one needs about 1800 patches to make a good profile for the printer.

I'll have to look into that in detail. While I'm already using Argyll to calibrate / profile my monitors, I have not ventured over to the printer side of the package. I'll also need to see how to switch off the HP 9180's internal calibration (didn't know you could do that). Any pointers for the latter to get me started?

Christian

[Manuel_A]

Hi CASpyr,

How long have you had your Dell U2711?
The Dell - U2410 & U2711, have had color tint problems…

This may help, How to Stop losing Display Calibration with Windows 7

[CASpyr]

I have not been able to dig very deep into the printer calibration issue, Iliah.

The reason for this post is to show a quick scan of prints showing the problem (see attachment) so that whoever kindly contributes to the thread has an impression of what the problem looks like. Never mind the areas in the clothing that appear to be blown out, this is a scanning artefact (they're not blown out in the file nor on paper).
From top left, clockwise:
- print on Hahnemuehle German Etching (HMGeEt), printer managed colors - corresponds very well to what I see on screen (and to what I see in reality, for that matter...it's my daughter after all...)
- print on HP Advanced glossy paper, PS managed colors with canned profile - very good match (on paper, the difference to the HMGeEt print is even less than it appears here)
- print on HMGeEt, PS managed color, CM turned off in printer driver - one of many such prints
- image converted to the HMGeEt profile, print on HMGeEt, 'printer manages colors' in PS, CM off in printer driver. I get some of the red back, but the green tint is still strong, and tones are not correct.

I'll further explore the suboptimal printer calibration / weak profile hypothesis put forth by Iliah, but I am still leaning rather to the hypothesis that no color management is going on.

However, IMO the display and the display profile are not to blame. I've checked the display calibration and profile thoroughly, a check with DispcalGUI yields low deltaE numbers. 

[Iliah]

> - print on HP Advanced glossy paper, PS managed colors with canned profile - very good match (on paper, the difference to the HMGeEt print is even less than it appears here)

Trying to stay sane, the above contradicts the below

> no color management is going on.

Can you try printing on that problematic paper with colour management on in Photoshop but using canned profile for advanced glossy paper or any other profile with which the colour management works?

[CASpyr]

I have tried to print the image on another paper (Hahnemuehle Photo Rag Baryta) letting PS manage the colors and it printed fine.

Conclusion: I don't seem to have a general color management issue (BIG sigh of releave here). However, for whatever reason, this image will not print correctly on HM German Etching paper with the canned profile on my HP 9180 (calibrated by the printer's internal procedure). It amazes me that one can run in such big troubles using the profile meant to be used for this paper/printer combo (see the color shifts in the attachment of my previous post). The appearance of the prints kept me believing that for some reason the profile was not applied.

I have found another solution to print this image, not using this paper, so for this specific problem, I regard this case as closed. I'm not depending on using this paper.
I'll however go ahead and look into printer calibration and custom profiling through Argyll CMS (Iliah, if you don't mind, I'll contact you via PM, trying not to bother you too much).

Thanks to everybody who contributed here!

Regards
Christian