How to print exactly what seen on monitor

[Gerald McClaren]

I have an Epson R800 photo printer. The Compaq monitor is approximately ten years old. The problem I'm having is that I'm not printing what I had seen on my monitor. For example, I'm enlarging a flower and I had used the curves adjustment layer to brighten up this flower. The flower looks bright on my monitor but when it was printed, it came out a little darker. Can someone please tell me how to print exactly what I see on my monitor in photo.


Gerald McClaren

[Gary Richardson]

First thing to remember is that what you see on the monitor is "painted" with light, which is an additive process, whereas a print from your printer is "painted" with ink, which is a subtractive process.

Because of this the range of colours and brightness (the gamut) you can get with light is much greater than that which you can get with inks.

Sometimes its just not possible to get the picture you see on screen to print out "exactly" as you see it on screen. As long as the colours on your print are true, you've probably done as much as you can do.

You could try experimenting.

1st keep a copy of your original that looks right on screen.

Now take a copy of it and boost the brightness till it looks "wrong" on screen, but right in print (compare print to the "original"). Note the settings it took to get this.

It'll take a bit of trial and error to get things right, but once you've got the "additional" brightness settings, you can apply them to any future picture before printing and they should then come out as you want them.

[Tpage]

Ideally what you see on your monitor should also match what other people see on their monitors as well. Otherwise images posted on the web for example might seem fine to you but could be darker or lighter or have colour casts.
You need to explore using a colour managed workflow. By no means a simple or small topic.

A good starting point is monitor calibration. You could use Adobe Gamma which is part of photoshop, but a better solution is a colour calibration device such as Gretag Macbeth Eye One display 2 or Monaco Optix XR or Colourvision spyder2.

You might have a problem with your 10 year old Compaq monitor which could be well past its sell by date by now.

[tived]

Color managed workflow! is the key

2nd your monitor has probably seen better days and would probably shift its colors alot.

First you need to have a device to measure your monitors color and brightness, aka OneEye from Gretag or X-rite now. You need to remove your Adobe Gamma from your startup folder if you are using a PC!!! otherwise you will be double profiling and this will result in color shifts.

3rdly, you will need to use and icc based workflow when printing, so you need to have profiles for your printer/ink/paper combination which for your printer is available from most paper-suppliers. When you print you need to have NO COLOR CORRECTION enabled and use the appropriate icc profile. have a loook at www.computer-darkroom.com (i think or search Ian Lyon) he has some tuts to show you how to set it all up

good luck

Henrik

PS enjoy your new printing experience with real color

[Gerald McClaren]

Hi! Tived, where do I find NO COLOR CORRECTION? Is it in photoshop or my Epson R800 setup. Thanks for the tips.


Gerald McClaren

[Syd]

Gerald go to the main page of your printer settings. Click on the ADVANCED Tab. In the ADVANCED settings check ICM. Now underneath that check the box Off (No color adjustment)

Hopefully your Printer Settings are similiar to mine. I also have an Epson, although not the same as yours.

Syd

[Swampy]

Remeber too that you are probably working in RGB color space on your monitor and when you print the printer shifts the RGB colors to CMYK. Since CMYK has a much lower color spectrum, you are probably going to be very disapointed in the results especially in the "hot" colors.

In Photoshop, first set your Preferences for "Transparency and Gamut" to a gamut color that will show up well against your subject matter. In the sample below I chose yellow. Then turn on "View->Gamut Warning" to see the areas in your RGB document that are going to most affected by the CMYK color shift.

Obviously, in my RGB picture below, yellow shows the areas that are going to shif when printed as a CMYK or will shift when I save the file as CMYK. The "hot" pinks are way out of gamut. You can control some of the shift yourself by doing a Hue/Sat adjustment and desaturating the pink areas yourself, but they still won't be vibrant when printed. Just the nature of the beast.