Printing callibration service

[W00DY]

Hi Guys,

Anyone know of a company (or person) that will come out and help calibrate everything so home printing is not so dam frustrating

I work on an i-mac (I know, not the best), calibrate my monitor with a Spyder 3, print out of Photoshop on an Epson R1900 printer and even though I think I am doing the right thing the prints are still not as good as I would expect.

Is there a printing company that will come out and profile everything for you?

Alternatively is there any printing gurus out there that wouldn't mind spending some time with me to work this #%%$(&^ thing out

Andrew.

[big pix]

now then...... what stock are you printing on

........ and are you using Epson inks

...... and have you lowered the screen brightness on the iMac........

what profile are you using

and do you let photoshop manage the colour........

and this is only the start

[W00DY]

now then...... what stock are you printing on

Either Epson or Ilford Galleria Soft Pearl

........ and are you using Epson inks

Yes, only Epson inks

...... and have you lowered the screen brightness on the iMac........

Yes, I even downloaded a little app which allows you to dim the brightness less than the default (which i have done by 2 stops)

what profile are you using

Epson - SPR1900 Epson Premium Glossy
Ilford - IGSPP9_EPR1900_PSPPn.icc (downloaded from the Ilford website)

and do you let photoshop manage the colour........

I think so... here is a screen shot of my photoshop settings.



and here is my printer settings.



Are they correct?

and this is only the start

So what is next

Thanks for your help, I hope we can get somewhere.

[big pix]

this is an easy one ......... send me a PM when you are at the computer

[gstark]

this is an easy one ......... send me a PM when you are at the computer

I'd like to see him try to do that when he's not at the computer ... (yes, I know ... )

[big pix]

as usual....... funny

[W00DY]

PM sent...

I hope it is as easy as you think

[W00DY]

Quick update, in case anyone was / will be following this thread.

It seems my printer / printing settings were all correct, I was actually doing everything correctly (for once!!!) so the next step is to get my printer profiled and get some custom ICC profiles done for the paper stock I use.

I'll update once done.

Andrew

[seeto.centric]

Hi Andrew,
just wondering... which company are you using to profile your printer?
im about to profile the Noritsu beast at work... but it's going to cost $200 from Imagescience to get both the matte & glossy stocks profiled (i have to use the 6x4 targets as this will be the stock i will be printing on)

cheers,
-julian

[CraigVTR]

I think so... here is a screen shot of my photoshop settings.


[/quote]

Two things
DaveB (a member here) does custom printer profiles, http://khromagery.com.au/colour.html

I notice your photoshop "Rendering Intent" is set as relative colourmetric. I use 'Perceptual' with custom profiles but still find my prints are darker than what I percieve the screen to be, and I have reduced the screen brightness. I intend to upgrade my screen calibration device in the near future. I use a pc.



and a question

...... and have you lowered the screen brightness on the iMac........

Yes, I even downloaded a little app which allows you to dim the brightness less than the default (which i have done by 2 stops)

What app did you download?

[DaveB]

DaveB (a member here) does custom printer profiles

Thanks, Julian's contacted me by email.

I notice your photoshop "Rendering Intent" is set as relative colourmetric. I use 'Perceptual' with custom profiles

Perceptual is a common default choice. It's what I generally use as a starting point.

but still find my prints are darker than what I percieve the screen to be, and I have reduced the screen brightness.

Matching prints to the screen is not an easy job. For example, part of your problem may be that you're viewing your prints in too-dim light.
Generally we want our monitors set up so the monitor is the brightest thing we're looking at: you don't want bright things around your monitor affecting what your mind decides is "white" (the brightest thing in your field of vision is assumed by your brain to be the sun and resets your internal white balance). Incidentally this is why the walls in my office are painted neutral gray...

So the lighting around our monitors is usually not good for judging prints.
It is possible to set up a print viewing booth beside your monitor so you can do side-by-side comparisons, but the colour of the light needs to be a perfect match for the colour balance of your monitor, and to do it properly requires expensive light setups and expensive monitors.

If your monitor is "too bright", the easiest path is often just to increase the ambient room brightness so the monitor is not _too_ much brighter. In my own office I have the room brightness higher than many monitor setups, but my monitors run at around 160 lumens. Of course the room lighting in my office is with daylight-balanced flourescent tubes so the colour isn't too weird, but not everyone's going to go to that extreme...

...... and have you lowered the screen brightness on the iMac........

Yes, I even downloaded a little app which allows you to dim the brightness less than the default (which i have done by 2 stops)

What app did you download?

A word of caution: any app like that is probably going to do the job by further manipulating the video card's lookup table. Not only can this mess with the table created by your monitor profiler (Spyder/etc) but even if it did that cleanly it will restrict the range of colours available: probably introducing posterisation (e.g. stepping in otherwise-smooth blue skies).