Photo printing from PSP vs PS

[BigAl]

Having had my digital camera for a week now, I've decided to make some test prints. I had set up the printer driver to do pretty decent prints from PS. When I tried these settings in PSP, I got really muddy prints. So after wasting much ink and paper in trying to fine tune the settings, out of desperation, I tried the ICM profile for my monitor. I was really stunned by the results. It worked far better than anything I'd ever gotten in printing from PS. PS gave me really awful prints when I tried the ICM profile.

Moral: I think PS tries to do too much...

[Stephen M]

BigAl, I think there are three different ways to send colour to an injet from Photoshop - all of which are slightly confusing to setup and probably mutually exclusive. Photoshop has very deep colour management and print options which may make poor prints if setup incorrectly (not obvious) where other software may not be as deep so success comes easier.

I don't really know about PSP though.

Perhaps with a full understanding of what both print engines are doing or setup to do - things would make more sense. I can hunt up some links on colour managed printing if you like.

Stephen Marsh.

[BigAl]

Don't go to too much trouble Stephen, however, I'm sure everyone would be interested if you do turn up anything. Especially if it's directly related to PS or PSP.

I spent some time on Margulis's Color Theory list, so have some feel for what goes on in the trade from reading the views of the gurus. It is a minefield.

[Stephen M]

Prepress is 'simple' BigAl - it's those inkjets that make things hard. <g>

OK - the links to start as they are easier:

http://www.russellbrown.com/tips/pdf/epsonprinting.pdf

http://www.russellbrown.com/

http://www.rgbnet.co.uk/ilyons/media_profiles/media_print_1.htm

http://www.rgbnet.co.uk/ilyons/

http://digitaldog.net/files/ProfileReadme.pdf

http://www.digitaldog.net/

See if the above makes any sense.

I would need to see screen shots of both PSP print/colour management settings compared to Photoshop print settings.

Just saying you used the monitor profile in PSP and you got better prints does not say much - where was the profile used and how does it affect the chain of events from file open to file print?

There should be a similar way to setup both apps - to get the same/similar colour using the same profiles and sources to the same output settings.

Stephen Marsh.