Eric,

I am currently working on this problem many readers are experiencing for my column and the Shutterbug Newsletter.

Actually what you seem to be experiencing involves two somewhat related issues. The dark prints is due in large part because LCD display screens are too bright to provide a match with prints. Because the display is brighter, greater brightness range of luminances than the range of possible reflective values in a print, when you adjust an image on screen the midpoint that controls apparent brightness of the image on screen is set too high relative to a print's range of values which causes the printer output to make a too dark print.

With higher end display calibration sensors and hardware, like Spyder3 and i1 Display 2, you can set the aim target for white luminance to 120.0 CD/m2 which will correct much of the too dark print problem. To avoid going to that expense if your display has a contrast control adjustment, lower the contrast by between a half and a third and then re-calibrate and profile. Then with new images when you edit them and set the image file brightness according to screen brightness appearance, the image should print lighter.

Also with the full version of photoshop CS, CS2 and CS3, the Print Preview dialogue window under output options you can use the Transfer function to put a brightening curve correction into your print output, by for example reducing the 50% value to 40% by dragging the curve line to bend towards the bottom right corner.

The color cast is probably coming from using a canned profile. You don't have to buy a $500 print profiling system to correct this. There are a number of color management service bureaus who will do custom profiles for a fairly reasonable fee. You can either use Google to find "color printer profiling services" or if you buy paper from an internet outlet like InkJetArt.com or DigitalArtsupplies.com paper seller provide canned profiles for their papers, but also have adjunct service bureaus that can make custom profiles for your system.

Wow - an answer in less than two hours, on a holiday, no less! Thanks, David.

The MacBook Pro has no contrast control, but my external display, where I mainly work on photos, does. I'll work with it, and with the Photoshop Transfer function, to see what works best. I sort of think the color cast will be less of a problem in a brighter print, but I may try the custom profile route.

Of course, what I really want is a newer, less low-end-consumer-oriented printer!

Looking forward to your column.

--Eric

Eric,

The way things are going, rapidly downhill, or uphill for gas prices, is there really much to celebrate on this 4th?

Well Epson has a new R2880 printer I have not seen as yet! Don't know that it will displace the print performance of the Canon Pixma 9500 Pro though.

David has covered this topic in his column and you seem to be headed in the right direction but here's my 2 cents worth for your consideration. A couple of years ago I was getting frustrated by the same problem and when I got an Epson R-2400 and still couldn't get faithful color reproduction I decided it was time to get into color management. I had purchased an Epson scanner about the same time and it came with a copy of Monaco EZcolor and two ISO test targets. One was an IT8 print reference and the other was a 4x5 Ektachome of the same target. I had to purchase the actual colorimeter seperate but I now had all the basic tools to profile my monitor and my printer. Using the Monaco software you print out a test reference (with all color management turned off on the printer) on the paper you want to profile. Then you attach the reference target that came with the program in the place indicated on the print you just made. After the print is dry, you scan the whole thing using the Monaco software with the color controls turned off on the scanner too. The software then compares the print you made with the ISO target and creats a profile for that paper and inkset. It is pretty easy to do and it takes more time to explain it than it does to do the profiling. I have compared the results using the factory profiles and the ones I created and find my homemade ones to be more accurate. I am using a CIS with my R2400 so the difference could be due to the non-factory ink.

Dennis

Monaco Systems was a company that was purchased by X-Rite awhile back, so finding Monaco EZ Color in stores may be difficult. The "affordable" print and display profiling system X-Rite is currently marketing vigorously is Color Munki. Jon Canfield has ben testing it but I've not seen any results on it as yet. The inside industry skinny is the Color Munki's odd shape is because the sensor is an adaptation of one used in some wide-format printers (probably HP) for self-profiling.

Using a flat-bed scanner as a print target sensor has also been revived by a new and more affordable option now included in Lasersoft SilverFast for print profiling. The only reservation I have is that some flatbed scanners get strange results when scanning a print made with modern encapsulated pigment inks like Canon and Epson use, which could skew the results. How that is dealt with by Lasersoft may be interesting,. If anyone can make a flatbed scanner work as a print target sensor effectively Lasersoft SilverFast should as they have more experience with the technology than anyone, so its worth giving a look-see. http://www.silverfast.com

The software and Optix XR colorimeter are still widely available over the internet but David is probably right about finding it in a local camera store. I got my Optix XR colorimeter at a Samy's here in California and I don't know if they still carry it or not. It came with a newer version of the software but no ISO targets. I think that the quality of the this system is widely underappreciated primarily due to a lack of advertising and product recognition. Reviewers seem suprised at quality of the profiles the system produces. The software also provides an editing capability in case you want to tweek the profiles even more. See the website below for a pretty thorough test of the Monaco system and a comparison to the ColorVision product. This review (a fews years old) did note that profiling LCD monitors posed a little bit more of a challange than CRTs. Maybe David has some words of wisdom for profiling LCDs or maybe it isn't a concern with the newer displays. I personally have profiled both and am happy with the results so far.
http://www.camerahobby.com/Digital_MonacoEZ_Color_OptixXR.htm
(Excerpt from review) "In all honesty, I wasn

Dennis,

Thanks for the vote of confidence. When Monaco Systems first came out with EZ Color 1.0 I was very impressed myself. But then there were changes at the company and they upgraded to version 2.0 which I found did not work well. I have not dealt with it since. But suspect it will gradually be phased out of X-Rite's product line-up in favor of their own products like the Color Munki.

As I mentioned in another post on this topic, I have received lots of e-mails about display calibration and print matching problems. And have responded with a future Digital Help column devoted to the subject which will also be in a future Shutterbug Newsletter.

I am planning on checking out Lasersoft SilverFast's new print profiling using a flatbed scanner and I suspect I'll write about it somewhere somehow. And am also working on input profiling for scanning Kodachrome, which looks very promising in providing better scans of Kodachrome slides.

As more and more photographers get LCD displays and higher performing printers I suspect more issues and problems involving color management will arise and require a response. Progress does not come without doing some homework to keep up with all dimensions of the process, and Color Management workflow will I suspect continue to pop up as an issue frequently.