Printing from Lightroom

[cottagehunter]

I have lightroom 5.3 and photoshop cs6 when printing from lightroom the print is considerably darker than when printing the same file from photoshop. My monitor is calibrated. Any reason why this would happen

Thanks in advance

Pierre

[Schewe]

Any reason why this would happen

What printer? What OS? What CM pipeline (LR managing color vs Printer managing color)?

I get identical results from Photoshop & Lightroom using the same profile...

[Ken Bennett]

I expect you have some different settings in the two applications. That's not hard to do. Take a screen shot of your driver settings and post it.

[cottagehunter]

Jeff: My os  is win 7 pro the printer is a workforce 520 I am printing out 25 calendars for friends and family so do not use the 7900 for this job.In lightroom settings on printer are icm checked, off checked no color adjustment paper epson matt, photo quality, High speed . Same setting in photoshop.   (does not happen when printing on 7900)

Thanks also to K

[Rhossydd]

the printer is a workforce 520 <cut>   (does not happen when printing on 7900)

Just to clarify. Your problem is that when you use a 7900 prints match between LR & PS, but not when you use the 520; correct ?

If so, it seems most likely that you've over looked a setting when printing. Have you tried this more than once and got exactly the same results ?

[cottagehunter]

Paul: Yes that is right, the prints on the 7900 are the same whether using lr or ps. To your second point I get dark prints from my wf520 using lr and this is a constant.

The only difference I see is that when using ps the photoshop Print setting show under printer setup , Printer profile Artisan 50 presentation matte, also it shows under color handling  "photoshop manages colors" .
In LR the initial print gui is "print  " showing the printer selected # of copies etc. no color handling option is available in this tab. only when selecting properties then advances tab under color mgmt you can select ICM check off no color adjustments and under paper and quality selected epson matte as the only option available for matte.
Pierre

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

What are your settings in LR here?

[Rhossydd]

In LR the initial print gui is "print  "

You should be seeing two buttons 'Print' and 'Printer'
If you choose 'Print' LR will use the last printer and settings chosen. The problem may be that the 520 is choosing to use colour management by default and the last driver settings in LR are being forgotten. Printing via the 'Printer'button and double checking your preferences may be the best approach until you resolve any issues.

It may be useful to set the CM to off as a default in the driver, assuming you don't use it on auto in other applications.
You can change the default setting for a printer in Windows by going to 'Devices and Printers' in the start menu > right click on the printer > Printer preferences and making the appropriate choices and closing the dialogues. The choices you've made should stay as the new printer defaults.

[cottagehunter]

Slobodan: here is the print dialogue from lightroom.

Paul: I had noticed from the first that hitting the print button did not allow me to set the preferences but just gave me a print with no way for me to change my settings,  so I have used the printer button and went on and changed my preferences from that. Your advice about setting the preferences thru devices and printers seems to have done the trick.  I had previously only set the preferences thru the printer setting on LR and that was were the problem came from  Thanks to everybody for their help.

Pierre

[Schewe]

Jeff: My os  is win 7 pro the printer is a workforce 520...

Well, I think that might be the problem :~(

It's been my experience that "consumer" printers (and the workforce 720 falls into that category) might not perform exactly as expected regarding color management. You might consider going the route of using Printer Manages Color in LR and control that printer using the Epson color controls. Normally, I would avoid advising this except for the fact that consumer level printers don't always play nice with normal color management based practices.

[Rhossydd]

Well, I think that might be the problem :~(

but you are wrong. It was a simple case of not ensuring the correct settings were chosen.

It's been my experience that "consumer" printers (and the workforce 720 falls into that category) might not perform exactly as expected regarding color management.

Not my experience having spent over ten years running a custom profile building business. On Windows at least, if a driver has a 'no colour management' option (as the workforce 520 does, see above screenshots) it works as expected. Most problems arise because this class of printer is generally bought by less experienced users.

What hasn't helped in this particular case is Lightroom's, less than intuitive, use of two printing buttons that function subtly differently. Useful if you fully understand the differences, but as has been shown here, can cause the less knowledgeable to miss important settings.

[JRSmit]

I experience the two print buttons as very productive.

[Wayne Fox]

The two buttons can be very useful and effective.

If you setup your printer using the Page Setup and Print Settings button on the left, those settings will then be used if you select the Print button.  More useful is that all of those settings are also stored in a preset, with the caveat that the printer dialog must be left to use Default.  If you create a preset within  the print setting dialog box, this doesn’t work as well.

so if you are using a preset, that preset includes those settings and if you hit the print button, that’s what you will get.  If you use the page setup and print settings dialogs before printing even though you aren’t using a preset, hitting print is also what you will get, and you can update the preset to include the changes in those dialogs by right clicking on it

Or you can choose to use a more traditional workflow, where you worry about the print settings at the time you print by choosing the Printer ... button.

But if you create presets that don’t include setting up the print settings dialog, or you are using custom setups within that print setting dialog, clicking print won’t give reliable results because what is stored in the preset probably isn’t what you want.

I haven’t used this in Windows, so I can only assume it has similar functionality, but certainly it may work differently.

I hardly ever use the printer... choice anymore, almost everything I print is through a preset which are organized by printer/paper sizes, orientation, and paper choice.  Pick the image, click the preset, position the identity plate, and click print.