Printing on CPN - NOT wysiwig

[Mike Guilbault]

I've printed portraits before, but not necessarily portraits using this background.  The Before photo shows what it's supposed to look like.  I used Soft Proofing, and everything looks ok using Epson's 9900 Cold Press Natural profile.  The skin tones are beautiful and the girl's sweaters are perfect.  But the background looks almost posterized!  I forgot to take a photo of the print while I was at work, but wanted to get your opinions so I made the 2nd image in PS with a drastic curves adjustment to simulate what I was getting out of the printer.  It actually looks worse than this!  The background is supposed to be softer looking like in the before photo.

Any ideas?

 

[bill t.]

One of the biggest soft proofing discrepancies I have noticed on my system is that most of the media I use has a lot more gamut in the yellow range than my NEC 2690 monitor.  Yellowish colors that look pretty calm on my monitor can print like screaming yellow zonkers on the media.  Could be what's happening here.  The yellow discrepancy is most noticeable with matte media which tend to have more gamut available along the yellow axis than elsewhere.  I have learned to experiment with the yellow saturation slider to get an idea of just how much the monitor is clipping the yellows.  When the yellows stop responding on the monitor before the saturation slider is maxed out, I know there's more yellow saturation available in the file that what I can preview.

[Mike Guilbault]

So I guess there's no way to correct this other than selective desaturation of the yellows. Obviously, with the girls blonde hair we can just do an overall desaturation of the yellows. There seems to be so much more contrast too.  I guess if the yellows are 'overprinting' that will cause that.  I'll have to experiment with it more tomorrow but wanted to ask here in case someone else had  the same issues.

As always, thank you for the reply Bill. 

[bill t.]

Or you could have a lousy or wrong profile, or a mismatch between the profile and the media type.  Or Photoshop may not be selected for color management.  Or the file colorspace may be set to something weird.  The list goes on.

[Mike Guilbault]

I don't think it's any of those.  I've been using the same profile for other work with beautiful results and I've checked the other things.  I think it's the actual colour of the background that's causing the problem because it's only this background that I have trouble with. It must be out of gamut or something.  Hmmm... maybe I should try a different rendering.  I've got it set to perceptual.  I'm printing out of lightroom.

[Mike Guilbault]

Switched to Relative Intent and came out beautifully! 

[hugowolf]

Switched to Relative Intent and came out beautifully! 

I really can't see the point in using a perceptual rendering, unless you have largish areas out of gamut. (Or, if you don't check if anything is OOG.)

Brian A

[Mike Guilbault]

I've read - somewhere on Lula I believe, or through a discussion, that one should use Perceptual for most print jobs.  Rendering intent is kinda confusing to me and I'm not really sure what the difference is.  I'm reading through Jeff's 'The Digital Print' so hopefully that'll shed some light on it for me.

[Wayne Fox]

I've read - somewhere on Lula I believe, or through a discussion, that one should use Perceptual for most print jobs.  Rendering intent is kinda confusing to me and I'm not really sure what the difference is.  I'm reading through Jeff's 'The Digital Print' so hopefully that'll shed some light on it for me.

mmm, I seem to recall the opposite but maybe it's bad memory.  I personally default to relative, using soft proofing to see if perhaps perceptual might be better, but end up with relative 80% or better. I think I've seen Michael and others mention they use relative something like 70/30 and I believe I remember someone stating something like relative rarely looks bad but perceptual can really be a problem so relative is a better starting point.

but again as I mentioned, memory isn't what it used to be

[Schewe]

I'm reading through Jeff's 'The Digital Print' so hopefully that'll shed some light on it for me.

Soft proofing is the only way to determine which rendering intent is best for a given image...but most of the time I use RelCol...

[Mike Guilbault]

I must've read it wrong - or didn't pay attention to the 'source'.  

[John Caldwell]

Isn't it the case, then, that Mike's yellow BG is out of gamut, and that his monitor was misleading him during soft proofing, just as Billt suggested. Were there no out-of-gamut issues with the yellow BG, the rendering intent wouldn't have made much difference in the print, true?

John-

[hugowolf]

Isn't it the case, then, that Mike's yellow BG is out of gamut, and that his monitor was misleading him during soft proofing, just as Billt suggested. Were there no out-of-gamut issues with the yellow BG, the rendering intent wouldn't have made much difference in the print, true?

Remember that perceptual rendering intents shift colors whether there are out of gamut colors or not. Rendering intent mappings are built based on device gamuts not on image colors. Everything in the image could be in the output device gamut, but if you use perceptual, there will still be shifts to make room for out of gamut colors that do not exist in the image gamut.

When you build a profile and create the two perceptual tables, you don’t do this with a particular image in mind, the intent has to work for any image.

Brian A

[Luca Ragogna]

I find some media does better with relative and some does better with perceptual. I just switch based on what I printing on.

[digitaldog]

Switched to Relative Intent and came out beautifully! 

And hopefully the soft proof showed this too (or you have an issue with either your printer or display profiles). I think you know about this:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/why_are_my_prints_too_dark.shtml

The soft proof should match the print next to the display pretty well. If not, you've got a few possible issues. In your case, that the Perceptual table did such a poor job, I'm going to ask where did it come from? It is possible there is a disconnect between the two very important tables within a profile: one that affects output, one that affect soft proofing. Or it is the display calibration if you're getting a surprise on the print compared to the display. The take home too is you must always soft proof with both rendering intents! ICC profiles don't know squat about images or color in context but you do.

[Mike Guilbault]

I was looking back at some output and think I may have found another fly in the ointment, so to speak.  It is possible that I had the wrong paper type selected.  I was printing on some Enhanced Matte for a sign just before and it may have been set that way for the CPN... along with the Perceptual intent. I had to load a new roll for the second printing and selected the proper style. I haven't had to print anything since that, but I'll run it though both ways again at some point to see if that's what it was.

Still... learned quite a bit about rendering intent in the meantime.

[digitaldog]

It is possible that I had the wrong paper type selected.

Impossible!

OK sure, it's possible. Wrong media settings can make one ugly print!

[Mike Guilbault]

You sure learn a lot when you screw something up though!