Profiling Help Needed

[Paul-H]

Hi all

I need some help as this is doing my head in big time

My system is profiled using the latest Spyder products, both monitor and Printer, and the colours of the prints produced is a very close match to whats displayed on the monitor but the brightness is way off, with the prints being very much darker.

When profiling the Monitor Sypder recommend a brightness setting of 120 which is far too bright and the only way to get it close to my prints is to set the monitor brightness to around 60 which then gives a good match to the profiled prints but leaves to monitor too dark for normal computer use.

I have been in contact with Datacolor support who where about as much use as a chocolate fireguard

At present I have the monitor set to 120 which gives me correct looking images on the screen and then boost the brightness of the images before I send them to print, which does sort of resolve the problem but is not a good solution as Profiling is supposed to remove or reduce the amount of test prints and adjustments needed to get a correct print.

i have all the settings for printing with profile correct but just cannot figure out why the profiled prints are so dark.

I know the two different lighting methods Transmisive and reflective make a 100% difficult but I am sure I should be getting closer than I am am. or should I ?

Printer is an Epson 1500W

Thanks for any help with this

Paul

 

[The Hat]

You seem to have a bit of a conundrum with your colours, but I’ll ask the question: is colour management turned off in your print driver...

 

[Paul-H]

Yep

Colour management turned off in the printer driver and Photoshop set to manage colours with the appropriate SpyderPrint generated profile selected.

Soft proofing does show a slight darkening of the image but nowhere near as much as I am getting.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

You may be victim of a pretty typical effect

http://www.colourphil.co.uk/prints-appear-dark.shtml
http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/why-are-my-prints-too-dark/
http://www.colourspace.xyz/why-are-my-prints-too-dark/

There may be other reasons for your situation but looking at the brightness of the ambient light
is the first step in this situation. How do your prints look under higher brightness - daylight - outside - are they still too dark or to they show good balanced and saturated colors ?
It could be as well advisable to increase the gamma slightly at the time of print with a suitable program, you could adjust the brightness of a print to the typical viewing situation - like daylight or indoor/aritifical light and do an adjustment accordingly. You may have as well some of such adjustment possibility to the assumed viewing condition in the profiling software.