Re: Printing far darker than screen...?
- From: Arthur Entlich <e-printerhelp@xxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2009 03:40:13 -0800
The difficulty you are encountering revolves around the process known as "color management", the science of which is both involved and difficult to tackle. Literally dozens of large books and courses exist solely to learn how to properly incorporate these settings. So, first off, know that you are not alone in your frustration with this problem, nor trying to find a reasonable solution
In a perfect world, all devices and software using color would use the same standard, an agreed upon color space, be built in a tight spec and work nicely with each other.
Unfortunately, that isn't the case and although things have somewhat improved in the industry, there is still substantial variability in both models and individual products. It is amazing how well things do compare once you know how much can go wrong.
Even the standards aren't standards. The gamma level (a contrast and brightness standard) for PC monitors differs from that recommended for Macs, and this is why you may sometimes notice websites that seem too dark or two light, because they were designed on a PC or a Mac.
And that's the tip of the iceberg. Every Monitor, scanner, printer, digital camera, graphic card and OS uses slightly different methods are managing color, and worse still, there is variation right out of the factory and also almost all color peripherals "drift" with age, amount of use, warm up time, etc.
So, what's a person to do? It depends somewhat of if you only require managed color within your own location (so-called closed loop) or if you need to be consistent with outside sources, like a commercial printer, or your photo lab. It also depends on how close you need things.
If you access your videocard management (on a Windows PC it is usually accessed through the device manager) and look at the advanced menus they will often allow for some setting changes to provide a starting point.
Then the simplest (and least costly) way of dealing with this is using a tool like Adobe Gamma. It is a small program that comes with Photoshop and probably Lightroom, which allows you to make adjustments to your monitor using a "wizard" and instructions, which sets up your monitor to a close to correct brightness, contrast and color setting. Be sure to read the introductory information regarding how to place the setting for the monitor before running Adobe Gamma. At different points in this program, you will be asked to either have your room lights on as normally used, or have them off completely. This is because things like color balance, and brightness are effected by ambient lighting (the amount and color of it).
If you set Abobe Gamma up correctly, it at east gets your monitor into the ballpark. Adobe Gamma actually runs a little application as the computer is booting up to "correct" the monitor to a more standard contrast and brightness.
If that doesn't help enough, you may need to buy a monitor calibration tool. These are hardware and software kits ranging between about $80-$300 US. They literally read the monitor through a photo spectrometer that is placed over the top of a section of the screen, and then a profile and program are made to standardize the monitor's gamma and color performance. Some of these kits (the more costly ones) will also allow you to test and correct scanners, printers, and other color peripherals. Some will even standardize your color output so it will match industry standards which should allow you to provide a file to a commercial printing company and they will print what you see on your screen. Some can even make paper profiles so that your printer will reproduce accurate colors on a variety of paper types.
The way these work is by creating something called an LUT, or Color Lookup Table. This program takes a color that is showing on your monitor, and translating that to a set of printer ink colors which when mixed in certain proportions will reproduce that color on your screen.
On Windows PCs, color management is a bit of a mess because they never incorporated it into the OS (Mac's have a basic one internal to the OS even before the Mac had a color screen). As a result, every piece of hardware or software dealing with color input or output has built into it some form of color management, and if you turn the wrong ones on, they will fight one another by "double color management". Your best bet is to read any tutorials on color management on line or via Abode's website or manuals.
How deep you want to get into this is basically determined by how deep your pockets are, and how much time you devote to it.
Art
If you are interested in issues surrounding e-waste,
I invite you to enter the discussion at my blog:
http://e-trashtalk.spaces.live.com/
Hari Seldon wrote:
Ok,.
I work with Adobe Lightroom 2.2 and have a HP Photosmart D7160.
I am far from happy the way the photo's leave the printer, they are wáy darker than at my screen.
Any ideas on how to check this infuriating problem?
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- From: Hari Seldon
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