Images printing too dark

[jools230575]

Hi there

Hoping this is the right place on the forum to post this.

If I edit an image in Photoshop on my PC it looks fine. However, when I take it in to get it printed it looks darker than on my screen.

What's going on and is there an easy remedy that's appliable?

Thanks for any help

Jools

[Czornyj]

Hi there

Hoping this is the right place on the forum to post this.

If I edit an image in Photoshop on my PC it looks fine. However, when I take it in to get it printed it looks darker than on my screen.

What's going on and is there an easy remedy that's appliable?

Thanks for any help

Jools

https://admin.adobe.acrobat.com/_a227210/p84783897/

[spidermike]

Hi there

Hoping this is the right place on the forum to post this.

If I edit an image in Photoshop on my PC it looks fine. However, when I take it in to get it printed it looks darker than on my screen.

What's going on and is there an easy remedy that's appliable?

Thanks for any help

Jools

In a nutshell, you need to profile your monitor. Monitors are set for ease of reading and so the brightness is set for this task; added to this each monitor will present colours in slightly different ways. However the way the monitor presents colours is not the same way that the printer software 'sees' them. Think of it like a person who is red-green colour blind describing a scene to an averagely sighted peson who then draws the scene.

The non-techno solution is to firtle with the screen settings until the screen looks like the print. You can then dial-in these changes and before you send a picture to the printer apply these changes to the output. This is a lot of playing and you really need to understand how colours work at both ends. And the balances will change for scenes of different lighting so you can end up using a whole load of paper.
Alternatively you can buy a colour profile monitor (Colorvision Spyder, Pantone Huey etc) and they do the job for you. Try putting 'colour profile' or 'colour monitoring' into google or into the search bar on this site.

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi!

The problem is known to me. There are two sides to it, one is that you need a properly kalibrated monitor. if you don't have that you essentially don't know what you have.

The other issue is that the prints need to be properly illuminated. Many times I just put a dark print under a desktop lamp and it would just "glow" like a transparency.

So I would say that display calibration is a must, rest is option.

A side notice is that many LCD-display (like on the iMac) are far to bright. Display calibration tools have often an "advanced" mode that tell you what brightness you should have under your viewing conditions.

Best regards
Erik

Hi there

Hoping this is the right place on the forum to post this.

If I edit an image in Photoshop on my PC it looks fine. However, when I take it in to get it printed it looks darker than on my screen.

What's going on and is there an easy remedy that's appliable?

Thanks for any help

Jools

[The View]

A side notice is that many LCD-display (like on the iMac) are far to bright. Display calibration tools have often an "advanced" mode that tell you what brightness you should have under your viewing conditions.

Best regards
Erik

They are also uneven lit. You put an image to the right side of your screen, or to your left side, and they differ in the highlights.

I thought this was a damaged panel (I have a 24" matte display), but the new panel has the same problem. Probably because iMacs are not really professional grade equipment.

PS: the new, replaced panel dims down to 120 cd2, so this problem has been solved by Apple.

[Geoff Wittig]

Hi there

Hoping this is the right place on the forum to post this.

If I edit an image in Photoshop on my PC it looks fine. However, when I take it in to get it printed it looks darker than on my screen.

What's going on and is there an easy remedy that's appliable?

Thanks for any help

Jools

1) Calibrate/profile your monitor. You can get a decent hardware/software solution for about $100 U.S. these days; well worth it for saving your sanity.

2) Understand the limitations of the reflective page. Unless a print is very well illuminated, it will look 'darker than it really is'; you won't be able to see into the shadows. But if it's too brightly lit, your D-max black will start looking dark grey.

3) Most images on screen look lighter than they print because they are back-lit. A grey (or worse, black) border around the image will exaggerate this effect. Try cycling through Photoshop's default 'desktops' by hitting the 'f' key; see what the image looks full screen with a pure white border. This will give you a more accurate sense of what the print will look like.