Print colours not matching monitor colours

hi folks,

I am having trouble getting my prints to be the same as the photos on my monitor.
I have a DELL U2711 monitor.....calibrated with a Spyder4Pro.....the printer is a Epson R3000, I have installed icc profiles from the paper company who i sent prints of their test images to.....for the printer, ink and paper combinations.

I have tried Lightroom 4 , Photoshop elements 10 and the epson print app.
What do I need to do to get the colour of the prints to match the screen colours?

Any ideas?

You will have to provide a little more information for us.

Firstly, what settings are you calibrating/profiling your monitor to i.e. colour temp and brightness?

Are you soft proofing your image prior to printing?

Are you sure that you are not double colour managing when you print, i.e letting the software handle colour management at the same time as the printer is.

Hi Mark,

I set the colour temp to 6500K and brightness between 80-120 (have tried a few different settings)
I have tried soft proofing in LR4 it just makes the image a little lighter....and it doesnt look like what the print is when i print it out.
I select the icc profile and turn off the printer colour management in the printing settings dialog.

The print looks quite different to the soft proof version?

What is the paper your using? Could you email the ICC file so someone could check it on another system?

Printer maintenance all ok i.e. nozzle check, alignment ok.

Do you have any Epsom paper/ink to do a test with. If the genuine stuff works fine, the printer is ok, something adrift in your paper profile.

yes the print is different....colour is slightly yellow greenish....

paper is PermaJet Oyster 271
printer is brand new.

ok i should test the epson paper - any suggestions? do i need to print of a test batch image and send to epson for scan a specific icc profile? as i did with PermaJet?

Using the Espom paper, just tell the print dialogue what type of paper it is, the printer driver will load the correct profile.

You should do an alignment & if necessary cleaning cycle before testing on the Epsom paper (presumably your using Epsom ink set)

I downloaded the ICC files from The Imaging Warehouse, they look reasonable, perhaps a little bit dark. They have a stock ICC file for your printer using origional inks. Is there a reason you got a profile made especially?

The reason I ask is that you can stuff up the printing of calibration targets by using incorrect print settings and it does affect the profile built off the print.

i will try it ............will buy some epson paper.

i did a course with them and they recommended getting the personalised profiles.

I would be tempted to try one of their general profiles for your printer and the paper/ink combo off their site. That will indicate if their personalized profile is corrupt or not. But, do the tests on your printer with genuine paper to start with. You generally get some paper with the printer, have a look in the packaging.

will try that, thanks.

Don't you have to set your software to do CMYK instead of RGB?

Are you using a Mac or a PC? Reason being, on a Mac there is one more change you might want to check in the OSX print dialog box under "Quality and Media" The paper type you choose can make quite a difference. Most papers will tell you which setting you want to choose, i.e. Photo paper pro, Photo paper Plus, Glossy, Matte, Rag, etc.

Check out the instructions here. http://digitaldog.net/

Show us screen shots of every print dialog and I'm sure we'll be able to tell you what's wrong

Hi maninatree - is your monitor osd moved over to one side so it can't confuse the sensor at all? Sorry if that sounds really basic but I know someone who forgot to do it once!

grahame s

What are your settings in the Print driver for the R3000? Even if you set everything in LR to Glossy (only choice is Glossy and Matt) and use the PermaJet profile, you still need to set up the Print driver. Here are my settings for Epson Premium Luster (8 1/2" x 11" borderless):