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Author Topic: Need HELP - Cannot print consistent colours on different papers  (Read 3264 times)

dage007

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Need HELP - Cannot print consistent colours on different papers
« on: September 13, 2010, 07:08:33 pm »

This may be an easy solution but I have struggled with this problem for several years and now am getting more and more into printing prints for people that want them on different mediums.

Currently I have both monitors calibrated with each other using the spider 3.  The monitors match each other and current status is that they are calibrated correctly.  I am running Photoshop CS5 on a mac pro with 2 dell U27 monitors.  The printer I am using is an HP Z3100.  My current paintings have the sRGB colour profile.  If I decide to check out the colour difference on the screen of the painting by changing the profile to "HP ID Glossy paper" GE ON or GE OFF, doesn't matter the digital painting barely changes "and I mean barely that the average person would never notice.  Anyways, when I go to print, I always leave the digital painting on sRGB.  Now in CS5 you have to allow the application to take care of the colour calibration, so this is what I do.  When I go to print if I select HP ID Gloss the prints come out looking identical to my monitor.  "**THIS IS A VERY GOOD THING FOR ME**".

Here comes the problem.... If I select a different paper like the Hahnemuhle Smooth Fine Art paper, the colours come out all washed out..... I mean really greyish.... Almost like the saturation has to be punched up.

As far as paper calibration is concerned, both the ID Gloss and the Smooth Fine Are Paper were calibrated with the printer the same day and as far as the proofing samples on the paper they look fine.

I also checked in photoshop and if I take the painting and preview it with the Smooth fine art paper as the colour profile it does look similar to the washed out or greyish sample that prints out.  I guess I am just a little confused why the ID Glossy turns out identical but not the other paper.

Any advice or suggestions would really be helpful.

thanks.
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Alan Goldhammer

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Re: Need HELP - Cannot print consistent colours on different papers
« Reply #1 on: September 13, 2010, 08:03:42 pm »

If you are soft proofing the two papers that is what you will see.  The Hahnemuhle Smooth Fine Art paper is a matte paper and you cannot get the same color density on a matte paper that you can on a glossy paper.  In my own testing most matte papers have a Dmax of 1.6 where glossy papers go up to anywhere between 2.1 and 2.3 depending on the paper.  Furthermore, if you pick an image with lots of vibrant colors (particularly reds) and do a gamut check you will see lots of out of gamut warnings for the matte paper relative to the glossy paper.  If you are going to be printing on both substrates you need to know that there will be differences in the end result.

Alan
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dage007

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Re: Need HELP - Cannot print consistent colours on different papers
« Reply #2 on: September 14, 2010, 08:18:10 am »

Do you happen to know where I can get instructions or diagrams of what to select for my colour profile input and also output?  I asked the question in another thread:

Is there at least a link somewhere that has images to show exactly how to ensure the proper profiles are selected?  For example someone explain that sRGB is the colour profile for the drawing or painting etc... in CS5.  Then when you go to print, what is the profile for (Document Profile) and then (Printer Profile).

I mean if you intend on selecting a certain paper to print with, is that the profile you select for the (printer profile)?  Do you use the same profile that you have for your image in CS5 as the (Document Profile).
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Alan Goldhammer

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Re: Need HELP - Cannot print consistent colours on different papers
« Reply #3 on: September 14, 2010, 09:00:54 am »

You will need to have someone who runs a Mac OS help you on installation as I'm on a PC and the profiles install automatically for me.  Each paper requires a distinct profile and you can obtain these directly from the manufacturers website.  Once installed they should be accessible within PS for soft proofing via VIEW-> PROOF SETUP -> CUSTOM  The 'Device to Simulate' dialogue box should provide access to all the profiles installed on your computer.  I routinely print from Lightroom because it's easy to pre-configure for printing.  However, Photoshop is pretty straight forward and you just need to make sure that PS is managing the color and that you select the same profile that matches the paper.  Martin Evening's book, Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers gives you all the information you need.
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dage007

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Re: Need HELP - Cannot print consistent colours on different papers
« Reply #4 on: September 14, 2010, 04:44:08 pm »

Thanks.  I know someone helped to answer this question in another post and I will let them know to check this post to see exactly what my issue is.  If you look at the pics attached, I am including 3 pics.  The first shows document and printer both having a profile of srgb.  The image displayed looks identical to what I currently have on my screen.  The second pic shows document with srgb and printer with the HP ID Glossy paper I use quite often.  The preview image is very similar to what is on my screen but a bit darker but I can fix it very easily with a filter to get very close results.  The third image however has the document as srgb and the printer as the Hahnemuehle smooth paper.  As you can see in teh preview, it shows the sky messed up and the players are all grey.  Both papers were calibrated through the HP utility and looked to be fine.  For some reason only the ID papers show up very similar to what is on my screen.  I am just trying to figure out what I am doing wrong.  Also, what the settings typically should be.  Show the document say srgb or adobe rgb and the printer say the paper I am going to be using at the time or the same profile as the document.

thanks.

David
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digitaldog

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Re: Need HELP - Cannot print consistent colours on different papers
« Reply #5 on: September 14, 2010, 08:40:58 pm »

The last and upper screen capture seems odd, the working space is sRGB, the output space is sRGB. So you are not seeing any kind of soft proof.
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dage007

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Re: Need HELP - Cannot print consistent colours on different papers
« Reply #6 on: September 14, 2010, 08:47:43 pm »

I guess my question is that the is it ok to have the document profile as sRGB if that is the working space I use and to set the Printer profile for whatever paper I am using?  It just looks funny to me in the preview if you actually see there is color missing.  I wasn't sure if that was typical but would print out ok.
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digitaldog

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Re: Need HELP - Cannot print consistent colours on different papers
« Reply #7 on: September 14, 2010, 08:51:19 pm »

I guess my question is that the is it ok to have the document profile as sRGB if that is the working space I use and to set the Printer profile for whatever paper I am using?  It just looks funny to me in the preview if you actually see there is color missing.  I wasn't sure if that was typical but would print out ok.

Its OK in terms of CS5 since we don’t have a No Color Management option. This would (in theory and depending on the driver) produce a Null profile (nothing happens).
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dage007

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Re: Need HELP - Cannot print consistent colours on different papers
« Reply #8 on: September 14, 2010, 08:56:16 pm »

So then the question I have is what should I be setting my document profile to and my printer profile to in order to ensure better colour consistency between what I see on my screen and the printer.  I calibrated my monitors to match with the spyder 3.  It created an icc profile for both displays and they basically match the same profile as sRGB so as far as I am concerned whether I select sRGB or the icc profile for my monitor it should not make a huge difference.
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Alan Goldhammer

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Re: Need HELP - Cannot print consistent colours on different papers
« Reply #9 on: September 14, 2010, 10:24:09 pm »

As Andrew pointed out, you are not doing anything in terms of profiling in the first image as the output profile is the same as the screen profile.  One would not expect to see any difference.  Something is definitely off in the third snap as the reds are all washed out.  You expect to see a difference between glossy and matte papers but not like you are seeing.  Perhaps it is a bad profile, hard to tell.  As an example I'm posting to snaps of soft profiles, one with Ilford Gold Fibre Silk (glossy) and the second Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Ultra Smooth (matte).  This is what you should be seeing.  You get a much greater out of gamut warning with the reds in this image with the Hahnemuhle paper than you do with the Ilford (to be expected) but you can see the reds are still there.
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dage007

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Re: Need HELP - Cannot print consistent colours on different papers
« Reply #10 on: September 15, 2010, 07:55:32 am »

thanks Alan,

That is my exact problem.  I ended up doing a convert to profile in cs5 from my sRGB to the smooth fine art paper and yes you can see a good difference in the reds.  Very similar to the pics you provided.  I am just curious do you simply use a filter or adjustment layer in order to compensate for this?  Obviously this will happen to me time to time when someone wants a print on different papers.  I am just looking for suggestions as to if there is already a filter out there in order to help compensate for the colour differences.  Or should I simply do an adjustment layer for saturation above the layer in question "a hockey player jersey or hockey net"...

thanks.

David
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Alan Goldhammer

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Re: Need HELP - Cannot print consistent colours on different papers
« Reply #11 on: September 15, 2010, 08:27:11 am »

thanks Alan,

That is my exact problem.  I ended up doing a convert to profile in cs5 from my sRGB to the smooth fine art paper and yes you can see a good difference in the reds.  Very similar to the pics you provided.  I am just curious do you simply use a filter or adjustment layer in order to compensate for this?  Obviously this will happen to me time to time when someone wants a print on different papers.  I am just looking for suggestions as to if there is already a filter out there in order to help compensate for the colour differences.  Or should I simply do an adjustment layer for saturation above the layer in question "a hockey player jersey or hockey net"...

thanks.

David
David,

I did nothing except to send the image from Lightroom to Photoshop for soft proofing.  No PS changes were done on the matte image to change any of the red saturation.  Your reds look almost totally bleached out compared to what is in my image.  I've never seen anything this bad.  I do see that you have the gamut warning box checked and maybe that's what the problem is.  If you look at the upper left of the sky on the third image you can see it is gray, a sign that the color is out of gamut.  It may be that you are not seeing any of the red because it is gray from the warning.  Uncheck that box and see what happens to the image.  Matte papers cannot take the same extreme vibrancy in certain color ranges.  What happens if you print on the matte paper?  It should be red but just not as bright as with the gloss paper.
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