Printing problems

[mrbee]

Can anybody help me, I am having problems printing which has only recently started. what I see on screen as a good picture in photoshop cs4 what i am printing out is very dark. I have have played around with all the different settings and nothing has changed the result. although if I allow the printer (Epson PX720wd) to control the colours the picture closer to that seen on screen. Any ideas?

[KeithT]

I don't do my own printing, but it may be that you need to edit your picture to suit the printer profile. If you have Photoshop it is possible to pop your profile into the profile folder (it may be there already) and then proof your image with that profile turned on. Once your image is then up in Photoshop you can click on View on the menu and set Proof colours, then Custom, - set Rendering Intent to Relative Colorimetric and then in the drop down menu Device to Simulate you will see a long list of profiles. Scroll down till you find your printerprofile and sellect it. Now go back to your image and adjust the gamma if needed until any greyed out areas have gone. When you have done that go back in and reset everything back to where it was before and don't be tempted to touch anything. You can run a test print to see if that has done the trick. What ever you do you must match your image to the printer profile for it to print correctly. I hope this long winded post helps in some way.

[AndyStevens]

Some good advice from KeithT there. Something to add; CS4 doesn't allow you to turn off colour management in the printer which means the image gets double colour processed which generally results in very dark images (2 lots of adjustments applied where one needed). Depending on your printer, you should be able to turn colour management off in the printer dialgue box.

So, Print with Preview.

Let Photoshop Manage Colours

Select the paper profile from just belkow that.

Then use the printer dialgue interface and turn off colour management - you might need to consult the manual for this.

then print.

Hopefully you'll see an improvement.

Or the easier way, and is what I do, is edit in CS5 and print from CS2 as this allows you to say let Photoshop manage colour and just say no to the printer.

[mrbee]

Thank you both for your excellent help, this problem happened in-between two prints, the profiles setting have always been sRGBIEC61966-2.1 and have achieved excellent results.
I have followed your instruction and also changed my printer profile to that of the Epson PX720wd glossy paper and the results are a lot better. They just need a tweak in brightness/contrast.
Thanks again for your help