Asking too much of my I960?

[LexLuther]

Up until recently, I was thinking that everything was great with my printer. I did a little monitor calibrating sans hardware as tut'd here http://www.ltlimagery.com/monitor_calibration.html and thought GREAT! Well, tonight I've spent the last 5 hours reading the forums with anything relating to Monitor/Printer Calibration + sRGB/aRGB and also throwing out about 20 4x6 glossy's, all because there's a subtle issue I'm having with my printer/monitor.

It turns out that, the printer seems to print light skin tones as if being blown-out.

What I've figured out so far is,

-adjusted monitor over and over again, based on the above link.
-used http://www.gballard.net/nca.html to help in monitor calibration.
-set adobe to use Adobe RGB colorspace.
-used http://www.photokaechler.com/files/Canon_Profile_Guide.pdf to setup paper for aRGB
-used test image from http://www.gballard.net/nca.html to print out and compare to screen.

Everything looked pretty damn good printing out the test image and comparing it to the screen, but when I got into my own photo's (after converting to aRGB) I had the same problem.

The only thing I changed when printing was picking the 'intent' which was either "Perceptual" which had the blown light skin tones, or "Relative Colormetric" which seems to loose all detail in the darker shades.

Am I doing something wrong? Can someone perhaps point me in a direction which may correct a mistake they've seen me make? I can provide more information if needed. I'd just like to be confident in knowing that what I see on my screen, ends up coming out of the printer. Or maybe, the printer just can't do it, and I'm expecting a tad much from it? I wish there was a way I could show a comparison of what I am seeing, but I don't know if taking a picture of the print would do any good. (taking pictures of pictures.. jeez.)

[LexLuther]

Okay, forget about the garbled post above. Perhaps someone can answer this simple(r) question.

1st, If I purchase a 'Spyder2' to properly calibrate my monitor, how will this ensure that my print will look just like what I am seeing on the monitor?

2nd, Within my printer properties, I see Color Management and I see for example, on my work printer which is a HP720C, "Color Profiles Currently Associated With This Printer" = sRGB Color Space Profile. At home with the I960, there's about 5 different profiles, none of which have sRGB in it. All from Canon or Microsoft I guess.

[PacAce]

I'm not sure if this is going to answer your question or not but maybe it may help with how you do your printer setup.

When you print from, say, Photoshop, there are two ways you can do that, using color management. You can let Photoshop manage the colors or you can let the printer manage the colors. One or the other should manage the color and they should be mutually exclusive (do not let both of them do it). I would point you to a thread here that has a link that explains how to set Canon printers to use ICC color profiles but the search engine has been disabled temporarily. When you get a chance (and search is avaiable again) do a search on 'i9900' and 'profile'. Hopefully you'll find the thread I'm talking about.

Here is another site that may help:

http://www.redrivercatalog.com/profiles/starter_canon.pdf

Regarding the SpyderPro, I have the first version of it with Optical and that's what I use to calibrate my monitor. It does a decent job although I've heard that there are better ones out there. What a monitor calibration device will (or should) do is to calibrate the monitor and then generate an ICC profile so that colors displayed look like they would on any other calibrated device.

Printers also need to have ICC profiles created for them. Pros profile their printers and have profiles made specifically for their own printer and the different types of paper they are using. But for home use, the profiles that are provided with the printer should be more than adequate. The trick is to make sure that the proper profile is used when you do the printing since there are different profiles for different types of papers being used. Where it's loaded depends on who is doing the color management, the printing software or the printer itself.

[LexLuther]

I think you may be referring to this link

http://www.photokaechler.com/files/...ofile_Guide.pdf

and although it makes perfect sense, I think I am heading back to the land of sRGB, so I'm just working on deciphering it.

Also just stumbled across this

http://www.nikonians.org/dcforum/DCForumID36/1078.html

which sort of contradicts the canon pdf if I read it correctly. I guess more paper will be wasted tonight when I get home. :(

[J Rabin]

I used to have this problem. As a poster noted above, it was solved by a combination of, using relative intent for portraits (which is better on light skin. I do use perceptual on shadowy landscapes, there is no rule, just preference), turning off color management in the print driver, especially since I assign the printer profile and use print with preview. Once I turned off print driver color management in the driver, all became reliable and well with my i960.

[CyberDyneSystems]

Lex,

Get some 4X6" paper for testing... :)

[maderito]

Everything looked pretty damn good printing out the test image and comparing it to the screen, but when I got into my own photo's (after converting to aRGB) I had the same problem.

The only thing I changed when printing was picking the 'intent' which was either "Perceptual" which had the blown light skin tones, or "Relative Colormetric" which seems to loose all detail in the darker shades.
I know your head is probably spinning right now - but you've really tried to digest a lot very quickly!

Since you're using the Canon i960, you don't need to use any ICC printing profiles. (You could use profiles, but it's a painful process when starting out.) Let the printer driver do its thing. You just specify the type of print paper. Your print space should be set to "Printer Color Management" in the PS Print Preview dialog.

If your own photos are in sRGB, why are you converting them to aRGB? Just send them to the printer as is. You don't gain more colors by converting to aRGB. sRGB is a subset of aRGB. In the Print Preview dialog, just specify which Source color space you're working in - sRGB or aRGB.

When your print space is Printer Color Management, you have to decide in the printer driver dialog whether to use "auto" or "manual" color adjustment. Try auto first. If you're not satifised, try manual with and without "enable ICM".

Finally - the reference image you're using is excellent. It's in aRGB. You can use the same image for working out sRGB printing issues by simply converting the image to sRGB (Image>Mode>Convert to profile). The reference image really helps with skin tones. Pay attention to the babies in the pic. ( I hope we're talking about the same pic :) )

[LexLuther]

Cyberdynesystems, yes, I'm sticking to the 4x6's. Futureshop sells them for $12.99/50 which is better than the $44.99/120 at Henry's. Referring to the Canon Photo Glossy Pro of course.

Have learned MUCH about all of this, but still not 100% sure of my options. Although as someone just mentioned, switching from Perceptual for Dark Photo's, to, Relative Colormetric for Light Photo's may be my only option. Atleast over the holiday season.

Reading this also helped, http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=25776&highlight=i960+setting

Yesterday I spent 2.5 hours in traffic going to downtown Toronto to purchase the Colorvision PrintFix Suite. Except, it wasn't in stock. Jumped over to another store since I was downtown to see if they had the Monaco OptixFR (whatever it's called) and they were out of stock as well. (still unsure how the Monaco can build an ICC for your printer using "Any Ol' Scanner", because, what if the scanner is way off?)

After being kicked in the teeth, I had time to think about things on the long bumper to bumper drive home. To heck with calibrating anything. Quickgamma and one of these Macbeth colorcards, along with one of those Babies Test Pics will have to do.

[J Rabin]

Lex:
Every user develops their own successful workflow, and opinions vary. I use the Monaco kit on my monitor and results are SUPERB. I have not profiled my i960 because I do not own a flat bed scanner, only Nikon 35mm slide scanner. But, the i960 has been spot on most of the time without profiling the printer. No more or less than pro printer.
FWIW, I differ from Medirito. UNTIL I turned OFF printer driver color management, and "assigned" the ICC profiles that ship with i960 with PhonyShop assigning ICC profile, and then printing with preview, I never obtained consistent reliable results. So, my workflow opinion/experience differs. Color is accurate. Life is good. Use one color management only (PS/ICC or print driver, not both). My vote is choose NO in the printer driver color management dialog box.
J

[maderito]

Lex:
FWIW, I differ from Medirito. UNTIL I turned OFF printer driver color management, and "assigned" the ICC profiles that ship with i960 with PhonyShop assigning ICC profile, and then printing with preview, I never obtained consistent reliable results. So, my workflow opinion/experience differs. Color is accurate. Life is good. Use one color management only (PS/ICC or print driver, not both). My vote is choose NO in the printer driver color management dialog box.
J J --
You're right. Everyone who eventually gets successful and consistent prints develops their own workflow. You do have more control if you use ICC printer profiles and allow Photoshop (and thus you) to manage the conversion from document to print color space. Epson printers really shine in this respect - because there's more good documentation on how to use profiles properly.

If you allow the printer driver to do the color management (via "printer color management" option is PS), it's hard to know exactly what's going on - so you wind up experimenting until you hit on a good solution. Canon documentation is, unfortunately, not typically helpful and sometimes misleading. But for casual users, especially if working with sRGB color space files, results are often satisfactory when sending the file directly to the printer (via PS or otherwise) and letting the printer do its own version of color management.

I've seen some very, very complicated workflows posted. It shouldn't be that hard. Some of the workflows reflect real insight into color managed workflows while others, I suspect, reflect frustrations with uncalibrated monitors, crummy printer drivers, or non-standard print paper.

I once swore never to get involved again with a color management thread. Have I lost my mind. :confused:

[LexLuther]

I've obviously lost my mind, because I'm snowed in at home, and buggering away at printing out 4x6's of color charts and holiday photo's seeing what matches the monitor best.

I've basically narrowed it down to one little problem. I'm getting a decent photo, say even above average in my eyes, except for ONE little thing. In all the photo's I guess I could say it's missing red/pink. Perhaps I could even go so far as to say skin tones?

Take the test picture offered on this web site http://www.gballard.net/nca.html the one with the Shelf with objects on it, and the 4 faces along the bottom. Everything looks great when I print it out _except_ for things that are red/pink. The color chart looks fine, but the lips on the babies along with the red toy soldier/robot and the red apple/pomegrante _and_ the pink/red flower on the top shelf all seem to be suffering the same thing. They need to be _more_ red. But I'm unsure of how to bring more color out of them without ruining everything else in the picture that requires magenta.

[LexLuther]

One more thing, has anyone bothered to purchase profiles from a site like this

http://www.ddisoftware.com/printerprofiles/#i960

and had success with it?