Help me understand why my photos aren't wyswyg

I've done many searches here and on the net. I've gotten some good advice but I'm still struggling. Photos I'm printing aren't what I am seeing on the screen. Even the exif seems to agree that my printer just wants to print dark. I turned my LCD monitor brightness down nearly 50%. I'm closer but these compromises seem extreme.

As a test I posted some shots to the forums to see if they too were coming out dark. To my surprise they were just as the image appear on my screen. Am I missing something important here?

Here is an example shot. I'd appreciate any advice.

Is this an example of something that looks good on your monitor but prints too dark?

If so, maybe you are not managing your print correctly. The image looks fine to me -- the highlights are quite bright and the shadows aren't overly dark. And, yes, many monitors are significantly too bright coming out of the factory to do proper photo editing.

So, questions:

Is your monitor calibrated?

What software are you using to view/edit/print? You will get the best results from color-managed software -- Adobe products and, with the right settings DPP as well.

If you are using color managed software do you specify that 1) your software should manage the print color and 2) your driver should not (a setting in the print driver itself)?

WYSIWYG has yet to reach the photography world I'm afraid. Monitor and printer/paper profiling (two distinctly seperate things) followed by soft proofing are neccesary to get an accurate print.

A 50% reduction in monitor brightness is not at all unusual. Good monitor calibration hardware/software is available that will step you carefully through the process. It is recommended that it be redone regularly, I do mine once a month.

Printer/paper profiles are normally available in the printer driver or from paper manufacturers web-sites as downloads. If using commercial printers, then they should offer their own profiles.

After all that, as Tony says it's important to allow Photoshop (or whatever else you use) to manage the printing and not to let the printer driver do it.

Also: be sure to view the prints in good lighting.

In the link from my sig (Color problems?) there are a few links about softproofing and color managed printing.

It all starts with a well calibrated monitor at the proper brightness. Recommended about 120Cd/m^2 max. A lot of monitors are over 300 Cd/m^2 out of the box...
Some need to have their backlight dialed all the way down, so the 50% figure is not that extreme.

Your image doesn't look overly dark to me.

Thanks Tony and Richard for trying to help me.

Yes this photo is an example of something that looks good on my monitor but comes out darker on my printer.

No my monitor isn't calibrated. I just played around with setting my monitor brightness settings much lower to see how my prints turned out. After turning down the brightness 50% I processed my image to look good. I did a test print and its darker than what it looked like on my monitor. If you were to look at the prints the first thing you might say is "ok image but looks dark to me".

I'm used to using CS2 but lately I've been trying to get into Lightroom. Lightroom seems to be where I struggle with dark prints.

I've been setting Lightroom up to do the color management and turning off color management in my printer. I've downloaded the latest profiles from Epson for my printer. Did I miss something?

Thanks again

René Damkot wrote in post #8195759
Also: be sure to view the prints in good lighting.

In the link from my sig (Color problems?) there are a few links about softproofing and color managed printing.

It all starts with a well calibrated monitor at the proper brightness. Recommended about 120Cd/m^2 max. A lot of monitors are over 300 Cd/m^2 out of the box...
Some need to have their backlight dialed all the way down, so the 50% figure is not that extreme.

Your image doesn't look overly dark to me.

Thanks Rene,

The image above looks ok but when I send that same photo to my printer it comes out darker. I must be doing something wrong.

Go to DPReview.com and look up any of the dSLR test reports. At the beginning of page 1 of each test is a step wedge grayscale, which should be adjusted to be visible on your monitor for the widest number of steps to be discernable. You could print that same wedge on your printer, to see how it renders, too.

BTW the posted image looked fine on my monitor, too. Have you tried sending a file out for printing, to see how it comes out there?

It sounds like your issue is the printing. Are you letting Photoshop manage printing? Or is the printer managing the printing?

Printer profiles are a problem with me. Both the Hahnemuhle papers I use print very nicely using the profiles downloaded from their website for my Epson R2880. But Epsons own Premium Glossy paper is hopeless using Epsons very own profile. To overcome the problem I was forced to have a custom profile made.

They are not expensive and it certainly solved the issue for me. I would argue (and did at the time) that Epson have failed in not producing an accurate profile for their own paper and printer, but Epson refused to budge and I needed a printer that would produce gloss prints. They were coming out slightly colour shifted and a touch dark.

This is the second Epson printer I've needed to do this with.

Kuma wrote in post #8195787
No my monitor isn't calibrated.

That *might* be part of the problem, however

Kuma wrote in post #8195787
I'm used to using CS2 but lately I've been trying to get into Lightroom. Lightroom seems to be where I struggle with dark prints.

Meaning that CS2 prints fine with the same settings? If so:
Have a read here

René Damkot wrote in post #8196145
That *might* be part of the problem, however


Meaning that CS2 prints fine with the same settings? If so:
Have a read here

Thanks everybody for giving me help. Its great to be able to come to the forums and have so many people lend me a hand.

Rene your awesome!! The last link you gave me fixed my problem completely. I set my profile for Premium glossy Best Photo in LR then pressed print. I went into the printer software and set the input and printer profiles to the same profile. When I ran a test print it came out exactly like the image I'm seeing in LR. No more darkness. Thanks very much

Wouldn't it be lovely if software companies, printer manufacturers and OS developers would get together and get their act together.

Glad it worked

René Damkot wrote in post #8196708
Wouldn't it be lovely if software companies, printer manufacturers and OS developers would get together and get their act together.

Glad it worked

Some degree of standardization?! Never happen because software is involved.

Just a tip - now that you have the printer settings set up properly, save them as a preset so you don't forget to twiddle that one drop down menu or setting the next time!

Good to hear you got it cleared up.

Kirk