Color Cast in Shadows on Print

I've been wrestling with the title problem.

• My monitors are calibrated using the DataColor Spyder4. In fact when the problem surfaced I re-calibrated it (Friday).
  
• I just have an el-cheapo Canon Pixma MG3122 printer. I don't use it to print images for any clients, I use BayPhoto.
  
• I may run a test print to see how my Post Processing looks.
  
• I used the calibrated profile to print, as well as others.
  

From Bay, or your printer, or both?

If it is your printer, I'll guess dirty print head(s) and/or it is just old, possibly cheap paper. Try a black square printed to it from, say, Powerpoint.

Just from my printer. Paper is HP Premium Glossy Photo Paper I picked up at Walmart, so I'll take that into consideration as well.

Thank you for your quick response.

If you are using an HP paper in a Canon printer then you are not going to have a valid colour profile to print with, no matter where you do the colour management. Although you can often get away with using another glossy paper profile where you don't have one for you specific paper there is no garuntee that it will work, even with a reasonable quality paper like the HP one. In my experience it is often in the darker less saturated colours that are more likely to suffer noticeable shifts in hue when the profile is off. Mixing own brand paper between different printer OEMs is difficult, as for obvious reasons they don't provide .icc profiles for others printers, nor even optimum printer settings. Outside the option of creating your own .icc profile, or having one created, is using matching OEM papers, or third party papers that provide a matching profile for you. If you don't use OEM inks though you are even more stuck, as you will need to find a profile that covers all of the printer, ink, and paper that is in use. It is when using none matching inks as well that you are most likely to see a problem, and a custom profile is the only answer.

Alan

Ok, well I do use the Canon OEM inks for my printer. I never thought different paper brands (HP, Canon, ect) would affect it as much as it seems to be. So I guess my next step would be to get some Canon papers.

Thank you Alan.

For an easy life use a brand of paper that matches your printer and then use a printer profile supplied for that combination by the manufacturer. In many cases this will produce good results.

In theory, you should achieve better results with a custom printer profile, however you will either have to create this yourself using a calibrator like a ColorMunki Photo or make use of an online service and follow their instructions precisely. If you Google "remote printer profiling" there are several. Prices vary, but if you print regularly it's a lot cheaper than wasting prints.

Custom printer profiling really pays dividends when using high quality papers like Innova or Hahnemühle on high end printers, but if you have your own calibrator that can profile a display and paper you can create profiles for practically any combination you like.

frozenframe wrote in post #18177308
Ok, well I do use the Canon OEM inks for my printer. I never thought different paper brands (HP, Canon, ect) would affect it as much as it seems to be. So I guess my next step would be to get some Canon papers.

Thank you Alan.

You can get non-OEM paper that comes with a profile for your printer, and they are easy to use if you have LR do the colour management when printing, even for the cheap ranges of printers. I know Ilford brand paper has many .icc profiles for Canon printers. In the US you also have Red River who are supposed to be both good quality and cheap. I find here in the UK the Ilford papers are just as expensive as the Canon, and so I just bite the bullet and use Canon Platinum Pro glossy, which I really like the results from. What is even better is that in my MG5150 printer, which is an A4 multifunction, with OEM ink I get really nice neutral greys, even in monochrome images, which is really good. Black and white images so often seem to end up with a green tint when printing on consumer inkjets.

Alan

frozenframe wrote in post #18177229
I've been wrestling with the title problem.

...

• I used the calibrated profile to print, as well as others.
  

That said, I'm getting a greenish color cast in the shadows. This is not present when viewed on my monitors. I'm trying to print directly from LR, Print Module. I just updated the software and drivers for my printer. Still shows the color cast.

What would be causing this? I know my printer is a throw-away cheapo, but I just want to be sure when I send the image off to the lab, I'm not going to get a print back with the color cast. Could this just be old ink, (which it is, I rarely print images), or something else?

I'd post an image except, like I stated, the image does have the color cast in the shadows while looking at it in my monitor.

What "calibrated profile"?

kirk

kirkt wrote in post #18177549
What "calibrated profile"?

kirk

In LR under Color Management, I selected the Profile produced by the DataColor Spyder4.

One issue people sometimes have with their "CMYK" printers is that some use all four inks to produce black, instead of just the black "K" ink. Don't know if this is true for your printer.

No, I don't have a CMYK printer, just a RGB, and an el-cheapo one at that. I can replace the printer for less than the cost of the ink. It has 2 ink cartridges, black and color.

frozenframe wrote in post #18177593
No, I don't have a CMYK printer, just a RGB, and an el-cheapo one at that. I can replace the printer for less than the cost of the ink. It has 2 ink cartridges, black and color.

I suspect you are mistaken. Inkjet printers use CMYK inks.

frozenframe wrote in post #18177574
In LR under Color Management, I selected the Profile produced by the DataColor Spyder4.

From what I have just read it doesn't look like the Spyder4 produces printer profiles. Are you sure you are not applying the display profile? That would be completely wrong.

Yep, that's what I've done is use the display profile. Which I have now changed that to one that I found using the drop-down menu, Canon IJ Color Printer.

frozenframe wrote in post #18177647
Yep, that's what I've done is use the display profile. Which I have now changed that to one that I found using the drop-down menu, Canon IJ Color Printer.

At least you are using a paper profile now, but you are still likely to see incorrect colours because it's not the correct profile for that paper with your printer. To use that HP paper correctly you would need to have a custom printer profile made. Neither Canon, nor HP will supply a printer profile for this combination.