IP 4700 colour not same on print as seen on computer screen

[drummond52]

When I print the colours on the paper are not as vivid as I see on the computer screen, can someone list the settings I should have to get a better print. Thanks in advance..............drummond

 

[qwertydude]

If you're using oem ink and oem paper and it still looks wrong, it's your monitor. First and foremost you need to calibrate your monitor, then to get more accurate print colors you need to profile your printer with something like profile prism. Incidentally profile prism has a rudimentary monitor calibration tool. After creating a printer profile I actually printed a few pictures and in a noonday sunlit room used the calibration tool to match the picture. This gets me about as close as I can go without resorting to an expensive screen scanner solution like colormunki.

 

[drummond52]

Thanks for your reply qwertydudue, could you let me know what setting you are using on your printer, can't afford to buy any software right now. Thanks in advance.............drummond

 

[ghwellsjr]

What kind of paper are you printing on?

 

[drummond52]

thanks for the reply ghwellsjr, I use canon Plus glossy, and some times Kodak photo paper, I also print onto discs.................drummond

 

[ghwellsjr]

I'm assuming you are telling the printer which type of paper you are using, correct?

It would be helpful to see a nozzle check, just in case you have a set of nozzles that are not printing correctly. Can you do a nozzle check and if you have a scanner, upload the image (see the link near the top of this page). If you don't have a scanner maybe you could take a picture of the nozzle check and upload that. Otherwise, you want to make sure that it produces nice solid bars of colors. Here is a nozzle check for the iP4000:

And here is a bad nozzle check:

Your printer has more than twice as many nozzles as the iP4000 so the bars may be wider (higher) and their may be more of them.

How does your nozzle check look?

 

[Grandad35]

When I print the colours on the paper are not as vivid as I see on the computer screen, can someone list the settings I should have to get a better print. Thanks in advance..............drummond

A printer does not have the ability to reproduce all of the colors that can be seen on your monitor, but it can generate some that your monitor can't produce. This will be especially evident with very vivid colors. This is a screen shot of a comparison of the color gamuts of a typical monitor (sRGB - the wire frame) and an 8 color i9900 printer (solid). This is actually a 3-D model that can be rotated in space - you can play with this at http://www.drycreekphoto.com/tools/printer_gamuts/gamutmodel.html if you have a VRML plug-in (you can download one from the site).

Color management is a complicated subject, but you can get started by following these links:
http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/color_management.htm
http://www.normankoren.com/color_management.html

As was mentioned previously, calibrating your monitor is a critical part of getting accurate colors. The next time you are in an electronics store, look at the walls of displays that show the same video feed - are they all the same color? Which of the displays is correct? If they were calibrated, they would all be the same. Unfortunately, there is no "zero cost" way to do this. People who do this for a living typically recalibrate their monitors every week to correct for the effects of aging.

 

[drummond52]

Thanks ghwellsjr, ok I ran the nozzle check and scanned it to my desktop as a PDF file, could you please help me get it onto the post. Thanks......
Grandad35 thank you for your post I will have a look at what you have posted, man does this look a lot more complicated than I would have thought.
again thanks ...................drummond

 

[ghwellsjr]

Use the upload link near the top of this page.

 

[drummond52]

Thanks again ghwellsjr, here is my nozzle check;