Way, way OT, printing digital photos (why are they too dark?)

[stanger89]

Way, way OT I know, but I know we've got a few photographer types here so I figure it's a good place to ask. The short version is I got a new printer so I could get some of my digital pictures out into the real world to enjoy without having to go dig them off my computer (not sold on digital photo frames just yet). It's an Epson R2880, and a lot of my photos come out way too dark when I print them.

The slightly longer version is I've got a i1 Display LT, and I've profiled both monitors, and set them as near as I can to 110cd/m^2. And I'm printing with Red River Paper's Epson 2880 profiles from Lightroom. I've done basically everything I've found suggested in my travels around the interwebs looking for a solution, but to no avail.

It's sort of weird, it's not all of them that come out really dark, it's the ones that have mid/dark tones. I did an experiment, I created a montage (actually made it to print on a bunch of different papers to see how they all looked with "standard" content), printed it, and scanned it back in. I attached them below.

On the one hand I'm rather amazed how close they appear, so all that profiling I've done must be doing something positive. Second though I'm sort of more confused in that the differences between the scanned and the original are not nearly as stark as the print vs the monitor. Particularly the upper left pic of the cliff, and pictures of similar tone are the worst, they come out looking very dark from the printer.

So anyway, color me confused, and looking for suggestions.

[Spectrum]

The short answer is it could be any one of about a ga-zillion things. Digital color management is absolutely horrid and is one of the things most photographers that print struggle with a lot.

Just offhand:

Are you soft proofing before you print? Even after you get your icc profiles for monitor and printer there can (and usually will) be a color/brightness shift. Soft proofing helps tremendously.

It looks like your images may be in the pro-photo, aRGB, or LAB color gamut and you are printing into sRGB and getting conversion errors. You mentioned LR which is usually pretty good about conversion, but if you have photoshop you could manually do the conversion in PS then print from there and see if that makes a difference.

Another thing to watch out for is the ambient light. If you profiled your monitors with your lights turned on then work in the dark (or vice-versa), what you see onscreen will be different than what you get on paper. It really can make a huge difference. The color temperature of your ambient light can also play into things. I've seen Solux recommended but I haven't spent the money on their bulbs; they're bloody expensive.

Last thought is it could be your monitor. IPS panels > PVA > TN panels, and most displays use TN panels I have a 26" TN panel that has a very pronounced color shift when viewed from different (non-extreme) angles.

Oh, and you got some good pics in there too

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Spectrum

The short answer is it could be any one of about a ga-zillion things. Digital color management is absolutely horrid and is one of the things most photographers that print struggle with a lot.

Just offhand:

Are you soft proofing before you print? Even after you get your icc profiles for monitor and printer there can (and usually will) be a color/brightness shift. Soft proofing helps tremendously.

I went looking and found a softproofing plugin for LR, but it doesn't show the same difference I'm seeing.

It looks like your images may be in the pro-photo, aRGB, or LAB color gamut and you are printing into sRGB and getting conversion errors. You mentioned LR which is usually pretty good about conversion, but if you have photoshop you could manually do the conversion in PS then print from there and see if that makes a difference.

Yeah, I don't have PS, that's way too much of an investment for my amateur photo designs.

Another thing to watch out for is the ambient light. If you profiled your monitors with your lights turned on then work in the dark (or vice-versa), what you see onscreen will be different than what you get on paper. It really can make a huge difference. The color temperature of your ambient light can also play into things. I've seen Solux recommended but I haven't spent the money on their bulbs; they're bloody expensive.

This seems like a likely cause, but I'm not sure what to do about it. I recalibrated my monitors down to about 110cd/m^2, which is what I've seen recommended and is noticably dimer than I like it. But that still doesn't seem to be it.

What it really looks like to me is that the Gamma is off between the display and the print, but I'm not sure what to do about that either.

Last thought is it could be your monitor. IPS panels > PVA > TN panels, and most displays use TN panels I have a 26" TN panel that has a very pronounced color shift when viewed from different (non-extreme) angles.

Yeah, they're TN's, I've sort of been wanting to replace them with IPS ones, but that's $1000 easy. And I'm not sure how that would help luminance wise.

[Spectrum]

Originally Posted by stanger89

I went looking and found a softproofing plugin for LR, but it doesn't show the same difference I'm seeing.

At least you don't have to troubleshoot that one anymore

Originally Posted by stanger89

Yeah, I don't have PS, that's way too much of an investment for my amateur photo designs.

True, it's way too expensive for hobby use and Gimp just can't compete with the more recent versions. PS Elements is quite a bit cheaper if you do want a pixel editor and it is capable of about 90% of what you need for digital photography work.

Originally Posted by stanger89

This seems like a likely cause, but I'm not sure what to do about it. I recalibrated my monitors down to about 110cd/m^2, which is what I've seen recommended and is noticably dimer than I like it. But that still doesn't seem to be it.

What it really looks like to me is that the Gamma is off between the display and the print, but I'm not sure what to do about that either.

Most use gamma @ 2.20, you could try shifting it a bit and see if that makes a difference. Beyond that, I'm out of ideas.

Originally Posted by stanger89

Yeah, they're TN's, I've sort of been wanting to replace them with IPS ones, but that's $1000 easy. And I'm not sure how that would help luminance wise.

I've seen some wicked sales on some of the Dell's with IPS panels. 22-24" in the $300-$400 range. Heard good things but I don't have any direct knowledge. My problem is I want a 30" IPS but I don't want to drop that kind of cash on it either

[stanger89]

Yeah, that's what I was actually thinking about, but I want a pair of the 24", which tend to be about $500 a piece.

[mephista]

did you calibrate your printer? Either way, it will never be exactly the same, just close.

[stanger89]

Yup, using RRP's ICC profiles for my printer and paper.

[rparker]

Are you using a calibrated setup ?
I am a photographer you have to calibrate you screen and printer to each other. The tools I use cost about 1500 to get it set perfect. Also you need a high end monitor not the $99 20 inch you get at best buy