So frustrated.

Robert Eva

Robert Eva

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292
Name
Robert
Edit My Images
Yes
Not for love or money can I get my prints to match my monitor, they are not a million miles off but still not right, don’t know what else to try.
Ok , so I have an imac 27” 4K monitor which is regulary calibrated with my Spyder pro and left permanently connected to monitor ambient light, I shoot with a d850 and trilogy lenses, and my printer is an Epson ecotank et7750.
I have tried exporting from LR and printing the Jpegs using the printer settings and using the print module in LR using the calibrated display settings as well as adobe rgb and Epson rgb , I have tried upping and lowering the brighness and contrast .
I have tried different papers , although Marrut said they didn’t have an icc profile for the 7750 printer , but did suggest a profile which they said should be ok.
I have watched more youtube videos than I have had hot Dinners.
I am using the monthly paid LR and PS , so using the most up to date version.
Dont have much more hair to pull out !
 
Have you tried Epson papers and are you using Epson ink and how do those prints turn out? Please describe in detail how the prints differ from your edit and are they small changes or large changes? The more information the better chance of someone being able to identify the problem. Perhaps a detailed description of your printing process.
 
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Clint said it...

How do they differ?
What is your process?

If you're using Lightroom, can you confirm that in the print module setting you're applying the ICC profile, and in the Printer config, you're not applying a profile. It's a common problem to tell LR to use one profile, then the printer tries to use it's own which can mess things up pretty badly.
 
I would try without the ambient light monitor, not a great feature.

Also give DisplayCal a try, it works with Spyder Pro https://displaycal.net/
Its freeware, but please consider a donation if you use it, a very valuable resource
 
I have my icc set in in print module , but my printer config options don't give me any options for profiles.
The main issue is Greens not being the same saturation .
 
you can see these!
 

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OK, so my thought is that the printer is managing the colour. If there is no option to turn that off, then I would assume that it's on by default. The printer will be taking (for example) pixels that the computer says are "green", and it will be choosing green ink to put down. By putting an ICC profile in Lightroom, you are changing that and that could be part of the problem. Try changing the LR setting to "let the printer manage colour" and do another print.

Sadly, if you have no way to turn off what the printer thinks it should be doing with colours, you're going to struggle to get accurate prints. No calibration will help that.

The final option of course, is to tune your screen colours to the printer so that it looks good. That's probably not a great workaround though.
 
A quick look online has turned up that there is the capability to turn off colour management


P121 states that you have an "off" function so if the above doesn't work, have a read through the manual to see if you can turn it off on the printer.
 
Hi Ian , yes I have read that but I am not seeing the same options on my software, I am going to to hook up a Windows PC to see if the Windows interface gives me the option , failing that going to ring Epson tech on Monday .
 
You have calibrated your monitor; but have you also calibrated your printer/paper? And are you softproofing using that profile? I also think that using the perceptual intent (shift all colors) generally gives better looking results than the relative intent (shift only out of gamut colors).
 
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Robert Eva said:
Hi Ian , yes I have read that but I am not seeing the same options on my software, I am going to to hook up a Windows PC to see if the Windows interface gives me the option , failing that going to ring Epson tech on Monday .
Click to expand...
If you are on a Mac, then you don't need to turn off management by printer when you have chosen an icc profile in Lightroom. It won't let you double profile. It gets turned off automatically.

If you click on the Color matching, you will see it is greyed out

Screenshot 2020-11-07 at 16.32.26-1.jpg
 
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Thanks bebop , I don't have the colour matching option greyed out or not.
 
Nope , clicking on media and quality only gives me the option to change " feed from " " media type" and a " quality " slider.
 
I am starting to think there is some sort of incompatibility with the latest version of Mac .
 
That is interesting - just to be clear - you are clicking on the blue arrow and not on the words themselves? Sorry if I'm flogging a dead horse :LOL: It's hard to believe the options are different, but it may be that different printers do have different options. In any case this doesn't really help your problem - do you soft proof as has been mentioned?
 
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I don't really understand soft proofing , when I click on it in LR and print out all I get is a low quality print.
 
Are you viewing your prints in a daylight balanced environment?, if you are looking at the prints illuminated by an uncontrolled light source you could be chasing this forever.

HTH

David
 
Robert Eva said:
I don't really understand soft proofing , when I click on it in LR and print out all I get is a low quality print.
Click to expand...
Softproofing in LR shouldn't change anything on it's own... it only shows you what can and can't be printed as currently edited. In this image some of the greens are out of gamut for the paper/printer selected so the print would not look the way I might expect it to.

Screen Shot 2020-11-07 at 2.18.59 PM.jpg
 
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Is there any way you can show the print next to your monitor? "they are not a million miles off but still not right" is very subjective. If it's just a case of greens not being saturated enough, that could easily be a "feature" of the paper. Which paper is it? And if it's Marrutt, did they send a calibration control print with the paper? They did that for me with the box I just got. It allowed me to make my own print of the same image and compare it to theirs to see the difference. In my case, it was simply a case of adding a bit of contrast in the LR print module to get it looking good.
 
When you softproof - it shows you roughly what you're going to get when you print. You have to edit it to make it more how you'd like.

In Develop mode click on S for softproof. Make sure that you have chosen your icc profile (top right corner of screen). You then tweak your edit so it looks more like how you would like the final print to appear e.g. pressing S may have made the contrast a bit soft, so you might tweak the contrast. When you make a change, it will ask you if you want to create a softproof copy which will be specific for that paper - I usually do.

I think in the top right of the histogram you can click on the box and this will show the out of gamut colours as @sk66 has demonstrated. You can try changing the saturation or tweaking luminance etc of these colours to try and get them in gamut. (I'm writing this from memory as I no longer subscribe to Lightroom, so cannot check this ) When you choose relative or perceptual you are telling it how you want it to deal with colours that it can't reproduce - this can make a difference to the end result.
 
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Well I knew it would be "my" user error!
In my printers and scanners, my printer was listed twice, the one which was set to default did not have the colour management option or a load of other stuff as well as it turns out.
The other one ( which is now my default ) does have all the settings available including colour management options.
So I'm good to go , thank you to everyone who helped and a mahoosive shout out to Kebbe Johannsen in Sweden who pointed me to my obvious mistake.
 
Robert Eva said:
the one which was set to default did not have the colour management option or a load of other stuff as well as it turns out.
Click to expand...
My wireless Canon printer has a separate "air print" driver/program that is missing color management and other options. Interestingly, if I install it w/o selecting the air print option it still works wirelessly and I get all of the options.
But I still get occasional color issues if I don't soft proof correctly...
Robert Eva said:
The main issue is Greens not being the same saturation .
Click to expand...
And this sounds more like out of gamut colors rather than double/cross profiling IMO.
 
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Robert Eva said:
Hi Ian , yes I have read that but I am not seeing the same options on my software, I am going to to hook up a Windows PC to see if the Windows interface gives me the option , failing that going to ring Epson tech on Monday .
Click to expand...

Good luck with that! I had a problem with my nearly new SC-P700 and after a lot of missed calls where I had to press button 1,2,3,4 or 5 ad infinitum, eventually I did get a human on the end of the line and he was in Barcelona! He in turn had to contact Epson in UK who e-v-e-n-t-u-a-l-l-y E Mailed me, but by that time I had sorted out the problem my self.

I will try to PM you with my solution.
 
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