Help! print to warm and dark

Windward... You seem to be at the point where you are just trying random things. I would suggest stepping away from it for a while. Then start fresh by resetting your monitor AND video card to all factory defaults.

IMO, that open source software is fine for the hardcore geeks, but not for the general population. Let me suggest downloading the trial of ColorEyes Display Pro. The user interface is very easy.

ChasP505 wrote in post #11843036
Windward... You seem to be at the point where you are just trying random things. I would suggest stepping away from it for a while. Then start fresh by resetting your monitor AND video card to all factory defaults.

IMO, that open source software is fine for the hardcore geeks, but not for the general population. Let me suggest downloading the trial of ColorEyes Display Pro. The user interface is very easy.

ChasP505 you are soooo right. Desperation has struck and I am close to emulating Keith moon and defenustrating the monitor. Trouble is I have stepped away from this a few times over the last 9 months and I have a stock of images that I want to print.

I have taken your advice and if ColorEyes Display Pro is compatible with the Huey colorimeter I will strip out all the setting to their factory defaults and try the software at the weekend. Listen to the crash of breaking glass about 11am GMT you may just hear it on your side of the pond.

I have received a comment in the last few days regarding the colours being out of gamut, which set me wondering.

I loaded both the print shop image I have being using and the other test image someone recommended into photoshop/bridge and both the images (allegedly) had an sRGB profile. When I hit the Gamut warning (shift/Ctrl/Y), lo and behold most of the colours on the screen were out of gamut. I have downloaded the images again and one has a prophoto profile and the other is untagged. When I convert these to my printers profile (Fuji Frontier) the colours are not so far out from the print and they are all within Gamut.

I guess to take Chasp505's advice I am going to strip every setting back to default on all devices, re-read and work through the tutorials on photoshop colour management and see what happens when I recalibrate.

I don't understand why the sRGB images were all so far out of gamut, but this is proably my understanding of (I admit) is a baffling subject for an amateur.

When you do the gamut warning it is warning you in a soft-proofing sense. What profile do you have photoshop set to use in soft-proofing? If you select your printer profile it is fully possible some colors in sRGB will be beyond your printers gamut. However, if you have a sRGB image and softproof to sRGB(note: Pointless) you can't possibly exceed sRGB unless you edit the colors.

Sdiver2489 wrote in post #11854012
When you do the gamut warning it is warning you in a soft-proofing sense. What profile do you have photoshop set to use in soft-proofing? If you select your printer profile it is fully possible some colors in sRGB will be beyond your printers gamut. However, if you have a sRGB image and softproof to sRGB(note: Pointless) you can't possibly exceed sRGB unless you edit the colors.

I have stripped all settings back to factory defaults, removed all profiles and re-calibrated and profiled the monitor with its native white point etc. I have a closer match to all my prints but not close enough. The brightness is cranked right down and the greens and aquas are still far too bright.

I am soft proofing using the print shops (fuji frontier) profile. Their test prints colours are still showing as out of gamut. So I can only admit defeat and accept that the monitor is not up to the job.

But thanks for all the advice from those who tried to help.

And what color space is the image in. You should not be getting out of gamut warnings if it's sRGB, or very very little.

Soft proofing out-of-gamut warning has nothing to do with the monitor. Think about what soft proofing is - Photoshop looks at the image colors and its color space. Then it looks at the profile for the printer. And it thinks, "If the master asks me convert from one to the other, this color here and that one and the one over in the corner aren't gonna' make it. I'll have to work my butt off remapping them. Maybe if I sound the OOG alarm he'll delete the ugly thing." Nothing to do with display, he'll turn on that alarm whether you're using an Eizo Super-duper or a 12 in. Zenith TV from 1950.

tzalman wrote in post #11923158
Soft proofing out-of-gamut warning has nothing to do with the monitor. Think about what soft proofing is - Photoshop looks at the image colors and its color space. Then it looks at the profile for the printer. And it thinks, "If the master asks me convert from one to the other, this color here and that one and the one over in the corner aren't gonna' make it. I'll have to work my butt off remapping them. Maybe if I sound the OOG alarm he'll delete the ugly thing." Nothing to do with display, he'll turn on that alarm whether you're using an Eizo Super-duper or a 12 in. Zenith TV from 1950.

As was suggested by my print shop and others on this forum, I took my image processing out of the equation and used the test print provided by my print shop. This image is untagged and so (rightly or wrongly) on opening I assigned a working profile of sRGB and then viewed a 6 X 4 print (from the print shop) against the colours on the monitor. If I then soft proof against the Fuji Frontier profile sent by the print shop I get the out of gamut warning. See thread 35# for the test image.

An alternate test image suggested by someone else on the forum was tagged as colourmatch RGB and again if opened and edited in its embedded profile and then soft proofed against the printers profile, most of the colours were out of gamut.

If I have got this right, sRGB is a viewing profile and may/will be a wider gamut than the fuji frontier profile which is a printing profile. This is why when I soft proof an image with an sRGB profile, PS looks at the test image and says these reds and blues can't be printed accurately by the printer and so I shall highlight them as "out of gamut".

Should the print shop have told me to assign their own profile (Fuji Frontier) to the image when I opened it, so that I could compare the screen image to the printed output correctly. I have tried this and it is the closest I have got in a year.

When I use my own images, edit them in sRGB and the soft proof, I rarely get an out of gamut warning.

If we definitely know what how an image is to be printed, why should we not edit in the colour space of the printer rather than sRGB or Adobe RGB? I suppose the correct work flow would be to edit in a "universal" colour space and then tweek a copy in a printers colourspace after soft proofing in the printers colourspace.

Incidentally, I have stripped out all profiles on monitor and pc and recalibrated using the native settings of the monitor. Having started with fresh untagged images and edited them to what I think they should look like and then printed them, I have compared the soft proofs to the prints and we are almost spot on. However the LCD monitor brightness has to be turned down as low as it can go to get the white point etc. and image brightness correct. So I guess I am back to the monitor not being the best for the job. I can make do and get almost there, but I think I need to ditch the monitor in favour of one that is up to the job. I think from all the helpful comments and (much) reading I have a better grasp of the workflow/colour space issues and can go on from here? Thanks all

Windward wrote in post #11947116
I suppose the correct work flow would be to edit in a "universal" colour space and then tweek a copy in a printers colourspace after soft proofing in the printers colourspace.

That would work pulling out of gamut colors back into gamut but I really do not bother since the result is usually, if not always, the same as if you tried to do it yourself, editing the image.

Windward wrote in post #11947132
Incidentally, I have stripped out all profiles on monitor and pc and recalibrated using the native settings of the monitor. Having started with fresh untagged images and edited them to what I think they should look like and then printed them, I have compared the soft proofs to the prints and we are almost spot on. However the LCD monitor brightness has to be turned down as low as it can go to get the white point etc. and image brightness correct. So I guess I am back to the monitor not being the best for the job. I can make do and get almost there, but I think I need to ditch the monitor in favour of one that is up to the job. I think from all the helpful comments and (much) reading I have a better grasp of the workflow/colour space issues and can go on from here? Thanks all

I have no experience with your monitor, but the mere fact that it needs the brightness to be turned far down, doesn't make it bad, IMO.

That seems to be a pretty standard requirement (as long as the colors hold well).

Windward wrote in post #11947116
...Should the print shop have told me to assign their own profile (Fuji Frontier) to the image when I opened it, so that I could compare the screen image to the printed output correctly. I have tried this and it is the closest I have got in a year. ...

Some labs do ask you to convert to their profile, but most don't. You should use the profile for your softproofing. And, I get the sense from your replies that you are still not clear on softproofing technique and the difference between a color space and a printer/paper profile.

Here's a printer test image in sRGB:

http://howland.smugmug​.com …zbx9w#31637495_​HKhES-O-LB

Here's a recorded web seminar on softproofing:

https://seminars.adobe​.acrobat.com …ncher=false&pbM​ode=normal

Windward wrote in post #11947132
...However the LCD monitor brightness has to be turned down as low as it can go to get the white point etc. and image brightness correct.

If you're using native white point it just is whatever it is. No right or wrong, whether it is 6000K or 9000K.

Here's an alternative method for achieving a lower luminance that some people say works with low end LCDs. Set the Brightness to 50%, then lower the Contrast control until you get in the range of the target luminance.

Windward wrote in post #11947132
Incidentally, I have stripped out all profiles on monitor and pc and recalibrated using the native settings of the monitor. Having started with fresh untagged images and edited them to what I think they should look like and then printed them, I have compared the soft proofs to the prints and we are almost spot on.

Not sure what you mean by "fresh untagged images", but the rest sounds good.