Printing appears darker

Cliff.Barnes

Cliff.Barnes

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Edit My Images
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I have a fairly new printer, a Canon Pixma MP640. I just sent 3 photos to it from Photoshop CS4 and they came out lot darker than they look in Photoshop.

Is there something obvious I need to do or should I just make the images lighter until they comes out looking acceptable?
 
It's a common problem. Monitors are usually set a lot brighter than printers. Turn the brightness down on your monitor. :) There is a value somewhere in lumens but I can't remember it off the top of my head but from memory it's alomst a 1/3 of the brightness value on the monitor.
 
Yup as said most monitors are generally way to bright. If you have a calibration device set the brightness to between 120-140 Cd/m2.

OK don't have one, try this very crude check. ( it's done on a Full frame camera so you may have to make some adjustments)

Set the camera to ISO 400 Focal length 50mm ( Full frame ) Aperture F8. Distance from screen 30cm

Now using the Photoshop grey background grey colour, at 130 Cd/m2 the exposure indicated is around 1/13 at F8

Not totally scientific but should give you some idea of how bright your screen is
 
You could try printing a couple of unadjusted files... as if your monitor is too bright - which I'd put money on - you've made the files too dark

http://www.samsphotolab.com/roesbitsandbobs/PDI_Target-DCP-small.jpg

This is an industry standard file. Look at the grey steps down the left. If you can see a big difference in the darkest 3 squares - and the brightest 3 merge your screen is too bright - if the 3 darkest are very close to each other and the 3 brightest are well defined your about right.

Print it

Your print should be neutral - with details in the brightest 3 squares - and the darkest should just be noticeable if you light the print well....
 
Yep printing exactly what is on your monitor is an absolute nightmare.

You can play with the colour profiles and also whether PS or the printer is doing the colour management.

The best solution is to totally colour manage the work flow. The Colormunki is excellent for this but expensive. I borrowed a mate's but am seriously considering getting one myself.

Even after calibrating monitor and printer with Munki I thought the prints were coming out too dark. Waited 5 minutes and they looked OK. Need to wait for the ink to dry! :bonk:
 
also remember the light you look at the finished print also has to be a good standard - have a look at lights in craft shops - they are excellent and 1/2 the price of photo suppliers!
 
hi i gave a canon 6700d printer i find that by changing the settings to light print gives me what i see on my computer. does not affect colour give it a go
 
I had the same problem, have a flat screen. I had a play in menu and found a sRGB setting, once I clicked this option and had ps3 set to sRGB all was ok because I think the printers work in sRGB so everything should match.
 
A custom profile from your paper manufacturer will help but monitor calibration is really required to get decent output 9and I don't mean tweaking the brightness). Doing that is not really the best way. Generally the brightness when calibrating is set to default (not reduced). THe calibrating device and custom profile will help you get the best from your prinjter (custom profiles are free from Fotospeed and Permajet with their papers.)
 
The only way to make sure your prints come out exactly as per your image files is to have a fully colour mangaged set up, calibrated monitor and printer (calibrated to ink and paper).
 
Craikeybaby said:
The only way to make sure your prints come out exactly as per your image files is to have a fully colour mangaged set up, calibrated monitor and printer (calibrated to ink and paper).
Click to expand...

what does this involve? :)
 
Monitor wise you need to calibrate with a hardware device like an Eye one or a Spyder

Printerwise you need a profile for your ink/printer/paper combination there are companies who offer this service, so free when you buy their paper (permajet comes to mind) or you can buy something like a colormonki and do it yourself (this will calibrate your monitor too).
 
darn it... :D I thought I'd got my head around printing/resolutions, all that jazz!

Photobox are doing an offer for BOGOF poster-prints which ends tonight, I was all set to submit some files, but looked at some 6x4 prints of the images I want blown up, and they're quite a bit darker than they appear on screen :(

so now I dont want to get large prints done if they're dark :(

this is frustrating!
 
Ahhh, if you're using someone else to print all you need is a calibrated monitor and a reliable printer. If you want cheap, try somewhere like DSCL, they supply their printer profiles so you can apply them to your prints before you send them.
 
Craikeybaby said:
Ahhh, if you're using someone else to print all you need is a calibrated monitor and a reliable printer. If you want cheap, try somewhere like DSCL, they supply their printer profiles so you can apply them to your prints before you send them.
Click to expand...

cheers craikey... i'm going to have to educate myself in all this now... i feel some homework coming on!

basically, my work flow is typically this:
- take a photo in RAW (so at 240ppi)
- transfer from camera > PC
- open Bridge / Photoshop and make any tweaks
- resize/crop to the print size (eg 6x4")
- save as a JPG
- upload to Photobox (or similar online print place)

can you recommend anything else I should be adding into this... maybe change formats, etc... i'm not really sure!
 
not sure how these will come out on here, but here's the same image... the top one is the 'original' on the PC, the bottom one is a scan of a 6x4 print which is darker...

*edit* lol, there doesn't seem to much difference! though I think you can see the blacks are blacker in the scan? or am i being picky?!



 
bottom one looks slightly brighter on my monitor? the problem is either your monitor, colour space or printer profile.
 
EOS_JD said:
bottom one looks slightly brighter on my monitor? the problem is either your monitor, colour space or printer profile.
Click to expand...

sorry just edited my post as i got them wrong! you were too quick for me ;)
 
haha - yes there is more contrast in the scanned image. the difference is very little though. Some have much darker images when printing. I used to have that until I calibrated my monitor and got some custom profiles.
 
Chappers said:
Yup as said most monitors are generally way to bright. If you have a calibration device set the brightness to between 120-140 Cd/m2.

OK don't have one, try this very crude check. ( it's done on a Full frame camera so you may have to make some adjustments)

Set the camera to ISO 400 Focal length 50mm ( Full frame ) Aperture F8. Distance from screen 30cm

Now using the Photoshop grey background grey colour, at 130 Cd/m2 the exposure indicated is around 1/13 at F8

Not totally scientific but should give you some idea of how bright your screen is
Click to expand...

That really is a crude check but it works quite well. Thanks for that explanation.
 
King_Boru said:
Is that the Spa Gardens in Felixstowe? If it is then thanks for posting. I used to live there before moving to Canada.
Click to expand...

haha good spot King Boru! it is indeed :)
check out my Flickr profile, I've got more of Felixstowe in the snow there:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mybenners/collections/

EOS_JD said:
haha - yes there is more contrast in the scanned image. the difference is very little though. Some have much darker images when printing. I used to have that until I calibrated my monitor and got some custom profiles.
Click to expand...

you're right, looking at them in this post, the difference is pretty small... I just remember getting them back from the printers and thinking they looked pretty dark :(
mind you it was Asda photo service, so they might not be the best quality?
 
benners said:
cheers craikey... i'm going to have to educate myself in all this now... i feel some homework coming on!

basically, my work flow is typically this:
- take a photo in RAW (so at 240ppi)
- transfer from camera > PC
- open Bridge / Photoshop and make any tweaks
- resize/crop to the print size (eg 6x4")
- save as a JPG
- upload to Photobox (or similar online print place)

can you recommend anything else I should be adding into this... maybe change formats, etc... i'm not really sure!
Click to expand...

That seems spot on, the only other thing is to find out what colour profile the printer needs you to send the file in as, then apply that profile, to ensure you are both working in the same colourspace.
 
Craikeybaby said:
That seems spot on, the only other thing is to find out what colour profile the printer needs you to send the file in as, then apply that profile, to ensure you are both working in the same colourspace.
Click to expand...

Ah good to know I'm doing it almost right! Novice question coming up... Once I know which colour profile they're using, hoew do I apply that towhat I'm doing? What are the most likely profiles to encounter?

Thanks for your advice so far, it's really helpful!
 
Most online print companies have a guide to preparing your files for them, that should include a colour profile to use, sRGB and AdobeRGB are the common ones, but they may have special ones for their papers, which they will have available for download.
 
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