Colour Theory Nerd in Toronto Canada

[Carole Jeanne]

Hello - really appreciate opportunity to be part of a discussion on printing art work digitally using an Epson ink jet printer. I just purchased the Epson 'Eco Tank' 7700 and not seeing the subtle colour changes in my photo paper prints.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

not seeing the subtle colour changes in my photo paper prints.

Plesase describe your printing environment - computer/system, software to print, type of paper used, driver settings, with or w/o icm profile, type of image on which you don't see those color changes. How do you compare - against that image on your monitor ?

 

[Carole Jeanne]

Hello, thank you for your response to my first question about not seeing subtle colour shifts in my printing. I am using a PC with Adobe Creative Cloud Photoshop, my current paper is Epson 'Value' Glossy Photo paper. My results from my first attempts to use Photoshop to control printing resulted in very yellowed prints so I resorted to using the EPSON profiles for 'Photo Paper Glossy'. I recalibrated my monitor yesterday and it is now much more vibrant and white (I was using the 'blue' low light for ease on my eyes previously). My monitor is a 'low end' BENQ, GL2780 and Windows only identifies it as a 'Generic PnP monitor'. I did not purchase this monitor for artistic use as I wasn't using Photoshop again until recently. Carole

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Do I understand you correctly that the main issue is a mismatch of the color balance between your monitor and the print output ? This can have several reasons - the monitor is not calibrated - the brightness of the monitor is too high compared to a print - the print output is not correct - and some more issues like different color spaces of monitor and printer.
Please just print a test image on the Epson paper which you can judge very well directly - with the icm-profile active - without other changes before you print - a test image like the Datacolor one from this collection

http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/printer-test-images/

How does the print look colorwise - is there any tint ? - banding ? other strange effects ?

And how does this image look on the monitor ?

 

[Carole Jeanne]

Plesase describe your printing environment - computer/system, software to print, type of paper used, driver settings, with or w/o icm profile, type of image on which you don't see those color changes. How do you compare - against that image on your monitor ?

 

[Carole Jeanne]

Hello again, area of concern is visible in the 'Bass Player' image. On screen I see subtle colour in the wall mural behind the player on the middle right. In my print, the chocolate browns look green and the red and green colours in the decoration are not at all vibrant- I cannot distinguish that there is any colour.
Profile in use = Adobe RGB (1998). Gamma at 2.2

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Please be aware that Adobe RGB is a color space, assigned to the image, but this is not a printer profile, which printer profile are you using ?

There are practically no green colors in this image, this is the image displayed by its color values in the Lab color space - there are no image pixels with any significant -a value - the direction to more or less saturated greens.

And I now make an overlay with a printer profile - for an HP glossy photo paper , this display shows that a significant amount of image pixels are out of gamut at the bottom side, this effectively means that the printer via the profile cannot handle those colors and differentiate them - printing different dark colors.

This is a principal limitation of inkjet printing - not all colors which you can see on the screen can be printed. I don't have a profile of your monitor, but you can find as well the effect that the printer can print colors which you cannot display on the screen - the color spaces of monitor and printer overlap in a rather wide range but don't completely match.

In my print, the chocolate browns look green

This appears to be an indication that you are using no or the wrong icm-printer profile, this needs a separate check, are there other color deviations/shifts in other parts of the test image ?

 

[maximilian59]

Please be aware that Adobe RGB is a color space, assigned to the image, but this is not a printer profile, which printer profile are you using ?

There are practically no green colors in this image, this is the image displayed by its color values in the Lab color space - there are no image pixels with any significant -a value - the direction to more or less saturated greens.

View attachment 12152

And I now make an overlay with a printer profile - for an HP glossy photo paper , this display shows that a significant amount of image pixels are out of gamut at the bottom side, this effectively means that the printer via the profile cannot handle those colors and differentiate them - printing different dark colors.
View attachment 12153

This is a principal limitation of inkjet printing - not all colors which you can see on the screen can be printed. I don't have a profile of your monitor, but you can find as well the effect that the printer can print colors which you cannot display on the screen - the color spaces of monitor and printer overlap in a rather wide range but don't completely match.

Hello ISF,
what software do you use to make these pictures?
Cheers,
Maximilian

 

[stratman]

Welcome to the forum Carole Jeanne.

Color management can be a very complex topic. I will add to their questions, some of it overlapping, to get a baseline of understanding.

1.

My monitor is a 'low end' BENQ, GL2780 and Windows only identifies it as a 'Generic PnP monitor'.

Did you install the BenQ monitor driver or sis you allow Windows to install its generic driver?

Your monitor's driver is at

https://www.benq.com/en-me/support/downloads-faq/products/monitor/gl2780/software-driver.html

Instructions on installation of the driver are in the User Manual which can be found by clicking on the "User Manual" tab on the same page.

2.

I recalibrated my monitor yesterday

How did you do this - with a device or did you manually manipulate the monitor's controls?

3.
The following you may already know but will go over it to make sure.
Printing requires the proper combination of specific printer, specific ink and a specific paper. A printer profile file, called an ICC or ICM Printer Profile file, is a customized file that is made to match the specific printer, ink and paper combination to, hopefully, maximize color fidelity of the printed image. Change any one of the three components - the ink or the paper - and the printed image may be altered, sometimes significantly so. When you choose the Paper Type in the software, eg selecting 'Photo Paper Glossy', you are selecting which printer profile file for the printer to use.

4

Epson 'Value' Glossy Photo paper

Every paper has its own discrepancies when it comes to color fidelity, bronzing, fading, etc. Even though you used the best Printer Profile file available, the Printer Profile was probably not specific to this paper type but a good approximation for the purposes of Epson and most users. Yet there are other things that can alter color fidelity.

5.
The image of the Bass player is of low resolution. This can be a cause of altered color fidelity.Ink Stained Fingers (ISF) has gotten into more specific reasons, eg the color data in the image file and gamut.

6

Adobe Creative Cloud Photoshop

A printer profile can be applied in the Epson driver, Photoshop (eg when using a customized printer profile), or both simultaneously. Double profiling will lead to all kinds of problems, so use either the printer's driver or Photoshop to set the printer profile.

7.
ISF asked you to print a test image - one that is standardized and familiar to him and the forum - so you can see how your printer compares to what you see on the monitor. It would be good if you can scan the printed image and upload it to the forum so we can see as well. I see that the Bass Player is from the Data Color test image he suggested. There may be other portions of the image that have issues that others might notice as well.

The Outback print image is a popular standardized test image. The 38 MB TIF file in a Zip file and provides a higher resolution image. Instructions for interpreting are linked.

I would also request that you print a nozzle check, scan, crop and post here. The nozzle check is the foundation of diagnosing and ruling out various image quality issues.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

@maximilian59

I'm using an age old (XP times) version of the Monaco Profiler suite which includes MonacoGamutWorks, this allows to display multiple profiles - .icm V.2 together with an image .tiff (uncompressed) to create quite illustrating images.
And GamutWorks still runs under W10. There may still be some program files floating around.