I consider myself fairly comfortable with color management issues, and have no problems with my NEC3090 and HP Z3100 and CS5. However, a good friend is just starting out and asked if I could help her get going. Looking at her equipment I found the following:
A Windows XP machine with Photoshop Elements 7, a Dell very inexpensive LCD monitor, and a printer given to her by another friend: Epson Stylus Photo 825. These tough economic times have hit her particularly hard and upgrading right now is totally out of the question.
Two days of work and a half bottle of FixYourOwnPrinter's Epson cleaner finally unclogged the heads. I was able to turn her blue-gray on the monitor to neutral gray with the i1Display2 with an acceptable but not excellent profile using 6500K, 120 cd/m2, and gamma of 2.2. She shoots Jpegs with a decent Panasonic camera, which she brings into Elements and converts to Adobe RGB.
I set up the printer driver for Epson Photo Paper Glossy (she has 100-sheet box) and for Color Management>ICM>No Color Management. Back in Elements I set up the Print Dialog for Photoshop Elements Manages Color, and set up Adobe RGB as the source profile. For the Printer Profile I looked for something saying Epson Photo Paper Glossy but there was no such paper profile. I did find e-sRGB, Epson Adobe RGB, and Stylus Photo 825 as choices, and each turned out to be much too blue and much too dark. I also tried letting the printer manage color, and tried its gamma at 1.8(much too dark) and 2.2(much too light and not enough contrast.) Although the color was a bit better it was still too blue, and off in other ways.
I tried the Epson website for specific paper profiles for that printer, but found nothing. I have no idea of what settings to use in this case and she would be happy just to be near the ball park.
Any thoughts, other than to ditch Elements for Photoshop, and ditch the printer for a new one?
