Poor print quality

[mardicar]

I shoot with a 10D and process my photos in Photoshop 7. I print them with a Canon i950, Canon ink and Canon Photo Paper Plus Glossy. My prints do not reflect the vibrant color as shown on my iMAC flat screen monitor. In fact they are often downright dull. I have experimented with print color settings with moderate luck. Color Management in Photoshop is U.S. Prepress Defaults. I am thoroughly frustrated and open to any suggestions for improving the color in my prints.

[Tategoi]

I too spent many months with this problem. i use an EOS 1Ds with the L series lenses and use a Canon i9100 for printing. Using PhotoPro paper from Canon I had the same problems. Top gear, crap prints.

The solution falls into a couple of areas for amazing prints.

I tried many times to calibrate my Mac flat screen but didn't have much luck. this is a problem nearly every amateur has. In the end I bought a LaCie 22Blue IV screen and also got their calibrator (BlueEye X) which works fantastically with Mac OS X. It is competely automatic and any fool can use it. This device is easy to use and I believe changes the internal hardware of the screen so you really do get totally accurate colors on screeen, a must!! The Mac screens just don't do the job if you are serious about getting superb prints which you should from your camera and printer.

The profile this calibration gives you is the one I use in Photoshop (Image, Mode, Assign Profile). In Photoshop color settings, use that profile (once you hace calibrated your screen it gives it a unique name) for your RGB working space (NEVER use CMYK). set Color Managment policies to OFF (otherwise you process the color twice). Under Conversion Engines use Apple ColorSync and also use Relative Colormetric for your Intent. You only have to do this once.

The trick then is when you print to use your profile as the Source Space for Document and important is to use Same As Source for your Print Space. Make sure you select the correct type of paper from the Canon printer driver and away you go.

If you want even better, more lively prints then play around with Curves in Photoshop, it makes a massive difference.

The final solution for me was to start to use an art paper from Hahnemuehle called Photo Rag - you just won't believe how great it is. If I use my normal Canon Photopro gloss paper the results are great and totally accurate in color but using the art paper from Hahnemuehle the results are gob smacking - about 300% better even. not cheap to buy but if you want the very best results then it costs.

Let me know if you need any more help. So, Calibrate your screeen, Set up Photoshop Color Options as above, play with Curves and change your paper type. Enjoy the results - this all took me a year to find out on my own but boy is it worth it.

[davidwalton]

Hi,

I resolved poor print from my MAC by downoading a utility program from Canon support, Easy-PhotoPrint.

This runs on OSX and enables the printer to print in photo quality :)

Since having this, all photo prints on my S9000 are great, even at A3.

I don't know if this works for OS9 or less though, but the software does say it does.

The problem with OSX is that Canon have not developed a fully capable print driver as yet, so printing has to be software controlled.

[Dave I]

The colors going flat sounds like you might be printing to AdobeRGB. The Canon (and most other current photo printers) expects sRGB, and the driver is designed to print that color space properly. Basically, they try to make the printer's color profile as close to sRGB as possible. I had very desaturated pictures with my Canon S9000 because of this issue.

If your images are in AdobeRGB, do this one extra step before printing, and see if it helps:
Image | Mode | Convert to Profile (this brings up a dialog)
Change Destination Space to 'sRGB xxxx' (the name could vary)
Hit OK

There will be no visible change, since Photoshop is tweaking the colors before they reach the screen, so to speak. The values for all the pixels changes quite a bit, though. Now print normally.

You can get better results if you turn off all color correction in the printer driver, and use the printer's color profile as the Destination Space in the Convert to Profile dialog. This actually helps no matter what color space you work with; it's just more noticable as far as the color saturation goes when you're working with AdobeRGB.

There may be some differences in the above procedures due to your using a Mac - I use a Windows box. I imagine the steps should be quite similar, though.