Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Printing: Printers, Papers and Inks => Topic started by: drralph on August 03, 2016, 01:11:17 pm
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After laboring long in post-production to achieve exactly the look I want, I have sometimes been disappointed in the printed results. This usually occurs in images with vivid and saturated colors. Compared to the screen image, the print appears dull and undersaturated.
I keep my monitor calibrated, and use custom profiles for my printer. Indeed, the color fidelity is very good. It's as if there is a dull gray layer over the image that steals the pop.
I'm wondering if this is just the nature of light versus pigment: that no printer can achieve what we see on the screen. I hesitate to jack the saturation in the final image, which would ruin it's screen appearance. I also hesitate to create a special version for print-only, which would quickly become an asset management nightmare. I have not experimented with changing printer settings to increase saturation, as I disable the color management settings in the printer driver.
Many of my images have muted color palates, and none of this is an issue. But for those occasional shots where vibrant color is key, I have trouble achieving my goal.
Any words of wisdom out there?
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Are you soft-proofing the images?
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I am not. Please describe the process.
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Read this link and print the printer evaluation image using your normal workflow, with no modifications to the image:
http://www.outbackphoto.com/printinginsights/pi049/essay.html
If the image looks great, then it's no doubt in your monitor calibration - still too "hot" in one or more parameters.
Pete
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Many of my images have muted color palates, and none of this is an issue. But for those occasional shots where vibrant color is key, I have trouble achieving my goal.
Those colors probably fall outside the display's gamut. So you can't see em. Do you have a wide gamut display? That can help, to a point. But even an Adobe RGB gamut display can't show you saturated colors that fall outside Adobe RGB (1998) no matter how you soft proof.
About soft proofing:
http://digitaldog.net/files/08Soft%20Proofing%20explained.pdf (http://digitaldog.net/files/08Soft%20Proofing%20explained.pdf)
http://digitaldog.net/files/HowToEditSoftProof.pdf (http://digitaldog.net/files/HowToEditSoftProof.pdf)
http://digitaldog.net/files/21SoftProofing%20and%20WYSIWYG.pdf (http://digitaldog.net/files/21SoftProofing%20and%20WYSIWYG.pdf)
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I did as Pete suggested, and printed the Printer Evaluation Image. Overall, it is quite good. But I see the yellows in the aspen leaves appear a bit dull in the print. The deepest color blocks in the bottom row also appear just a bit pale. The red strawberries are brilliant and spot on. The sunset oranges are also fine.
I'm not sure how to interpret these results. Does this mean my monitor profile is off? I use an i1 Display profile device from x-rite, and calibrated just prior to the test. I left the ambient light option disabled.
I'm not sure I understand Rodney's point: if my monitor gamut is the issue, why does the monitor image appear more pleasing than the print?
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Perhaps this video will help...
https://luminous-landscape.com/videos/back-to-the-print/soft-proofing-3/
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To what luminance value did you calibrate your monitor to?
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What paper?
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I'm not sure I understand Rodney's point: if my monitor gamut is the issue, why does the monitor image appear more pleasing than the print?
You wrote: But for those occasional shots where vibrant color is key, I have trouble achieving my goal.
This is all armchair color management, but the statement suggests the issue is the color are out of display gamut. Send me a 300x300 pixel image and your display profile, I can plot the gamut of the two over each other and KNOW.
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After laboring long in post-production to achieve exactly the look I want, I have sometimes been disappointed in the printed results. This usually occurs in images with vivid and saturated colors. Compared to the screen image, the print appears dull and undersaturated.
I keep my monitor calibrated, and use custom profiles for my printer. Indeed, the color fidelity is very good. It's as if there is a dull gray layer over the image that steals the pop.
I'm wondering if this is just the nature of light versus pigment: that no printer can achieve what we see on the screen. I hesitate to jack the saturation in the final image, which would ruin it's screen appearance. I also hesitate to create a special version for print-only, which would quickly become an asset management nightmare. I have not experimented with changing printer settings to increase saturation, as I disable the color management settings in the printer driver.
Many of my images have muted color palates, and none of this is an issue. But for those occasional shots where vibrant color is key, I have trouble achieving my goal.
Any words of wisdom out there?
The colors you are having trouble with may be out of the gamut of your printer. Even with a small space such as sRGB and a relatively wide gamut inkjet printer such as the Epson 3880 outputting to Premium Glossy paper, there are colors that can appear saturated in the sRGB image viewed on an sRGB monitor that appear duller when printed. Soft proofing can demonstrate this when the simulate paper box is checked in the soft proof setup. This is what Jeff Schewe has called "make my image look like crap"
Here is an illustration. The first image shows a flower with saturated colors, shown in sRGB. The second image shows a ColorThink plot. The purple colors are in sRGB gamut, but out of the printer gamut. The printer gamut is larger than sRGB, but there is a gamut mismatch with certain colors. The third image shows the printer gamut in the greens, where the gamut is much larger than sRGB.
Regards,
Bill
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You wrote: Send me a 300x300 pixel image and your display profile, I can plot the gamut of the two over each other and KNOW.
I appreciate your offer Andrew, but don't know exactly what you need: do you want a small sample photo, plus the actual .icc file of my display profile, or an image of the xy plot of the profile? Forgive my ignorance: I need to read your book again!
It sounds like a gamut mismatch is the likely explanation. I am using the iMac Retina 5K, Late 2014. The new one has a much wider gamut from what I read.
I have the "Adjust brightness automatically" box checked in my display preferences. Could that be messing things up? I leave both white point and luminance on the default "native" setting in the i1Profiler software.
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definitely turn OFF the automatic brightness control.
I think Andrew wants the actual shrunken image & the profile so he can plot them against each other using some software.
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I appreciate your offer Andrew, but don't know exactly what you need:
Resample the image in question to about 300 pixels on the long dimension, I need something small. Send the ICC profile for the display. I can plot both in ColorThink Pro to see their respective color gamuts.
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I did as Pete suggested, and printed the Printer Evaluation Image. Overall, it is quite good. But I see the yellows in the aspen leaves appear a bit dull in the print. The deepest color blocks in the bottom row also appear just a bit pale. The red strawberries are brilliant and spot on. The sunset oranges are also fine.
I'm not sure how to interpret these results. Does this mean my monitor profile is off? I use an i1 Display profile device from x-rite, and calibrated just prior to the test. I left the ambient light option disabled.
I'm not sure I understand Rodney's point: if my monitor gamut is the issue, why does the monitor image appear more pleasing than the print?
OK, with a basically good-looking un-modded test print, how does this compare to the monitor image? I expect that the monitor will still show a more vivid, saturated image, and that it's calibration status, not gamut differentials is the primary problem here.
Pete
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Resample the image in question to about 300 pixels on the long dimension, I need something small. Send the ICC profile for the display. I can plot both in ColorThink Pro to see their respective color gamuts.
Here you go, Andrew. I appreciate your help.
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Here you go, Andrew. I appreciate your help.
The image you provided was in sRGB. It is fully contained within your display gamut.