Printing

[Mark K]

I have encountered colour difference from printing my images. Well I bought this Sony FP65 dye sublimation printer after the salesman showed my all these beautifully print samples. I also bought many printing papers.
Too bad I have never got the colour right. Although I did not calibrate my monitors and printers, I have never got any problem with my Canon bubble jet 9500. I thought dye sublimation is the ultimate printer for photo printing.
Have I done something wrong?

[David Kilpatrick]

CMM, ICC profiles, all working correctly and selected properly when printing?

David

[Bruce Oudekerk]

This printer should have great output but between what you see on your screen and what comes out of the printer, a lot can go wrong.

You have to realize that your images that you are printing are an unknown unless your monitor is calibrated properly. If you are letting the printer manage the colors with your Sony dye sub, or another printer, it should be taking out casts on your print. OR the driver for the Sony might not be as good at resolving minor tonal and color issues as some other brands like Canon, HP or Epson. Find a known good test print…not one that necessarily looks good on your monitor… and print it to resolve this possibility.

Your monitor (or any monitor for that matter) is extremely suspect until proven otherwise by letting PS managing the color and then rendering near perfect prints. I can’t stress this enough. I don’t care how you are calibrating your monitor, much less if it is not calibrated. If you are using a consumer grade LCD, it is all the more suspect to the point that I can almost guarantee this is some sort of culprit. It’s a catch 22, in that you really can’t be sure the monitor is correct until you get perfect prints and you can’t get perfect prints until the monitor is correct.

If you are using Photoshop, and especially if you are letting this or another ‘color management aware’ app manage the colors, your setup is not a slam dunk. I’m fairly knowledgeable, yet set up PS incorrectly when jumping from PS CS to PS CS3. I went through extraordinary self justification, rationalization, and self aggrandizement, complete with convoluted settings to get decent output. Then I had to publicly eat crow when I realized my mistake. There are myriad ways to double profile or otherwise screw up and we are all very clever at finding new incorrect ones:)

If you have the misfortune to have the test print consist of exactly the wrong hues and tones, I suppose softproofing might facilitate removing a tonal or color cast. My experience is that softproofing is invaluable with my Epson R800 and my R1900 and less so with higher end Epsons but still worthwhile. I have no idea where the Sony dye subs fit into this continuum of printer accuracy. You could check it by softproofing, as it would show the issue, but I suspect it is a long shot, and it only works on a critically calibrated monitor.

When all is said and done, the output from your Sony SHOULD be stellar by any standard. If not, the printer might be defective or more likely YOU are doing something wrong, and trust me, setting up your system to let Photoshop manage the colors can easily go astray. Thus I agree with the big three in that they suggest that the ‘average Joe’ should be letting the printer manage the color. Even Epson is showing PRINTER managed colors at the trade shows these last few years and demonstrating how easy it is to get good prints. But even here, the printable image must be within acceptable parameters and those parameters are determined by the sophistication of the driver. Out of calibration monitors or sloppy post-processing can lead to casts that are too excessive for the driver to deal with. But even assuming a great driver and a reasonably calibrated image, letting PS manage the colors is the ONLY way for you to control the subtleties of the print process; it just might not be your first step in your quest for that illusive perfect print.

Bruce

[David Kilpatrick]

Great post Bruce and very true. With dye sub printers, it is generally better anyway to let the printer do the CM. Many of them have direct card slots, and as long as you shoot sRGB, will replicate exactly what the camera took.

David

[Mark K]

Thank you Bruce. I have found fault that my printer property's colour matching was turned off. Now everything looks great, even better than my monitors.
Anyhow, I have great interests in getting my colours correct. I am running Windows 7 64bit on an i7 based PC with 12Gb RAM and a nVidia 285 card driving two Dell monitors, the U2711 and an Ultarsharp 2405. I have three printers connected including a colour laser, a dye sublimation and a inkjet, the Canon i9000 something.

All my images were taken with RAW and the colours set to sRGB. Post processing has always been minimal in Lightroom 3.

Here is a recent shot from A700

[Birma]

Hi Mark - glad to hear that your printing issue is resolved. That is a stunning shot of the bird. What great colours and details . I hope we can look forward to seeing some more of your bird, and any other subject matter, shots.

[Mark K]

Thnx for the kind words Birma.
I have found the RAW conversion of latest ACR very convincicing

[Bruce Oudekerk]

I'm glad you found the problem. ...and very nice shot:)

Bruce

[Dr. Harout]

And congratulations Mark as this shot of yours was included in the Picture of the Week at Dyxum.com

[Mark K]

Dr Harout
thanks. I have just leaned it today.

As for the printing, is there anyone here have any of the large format printer? A very close friend of mine, also an ex Minolta user, bought this huge Canon printer. The reason behind is simple: the printing cost is very good.
My Sony dye sublimation printer is great but my Canon BJ sucks. The i9950 I have uses dye. No matter how good my ink and paper is, the prints usually fade very quickly.

[pakodominguez]

As for the printing, is there anyone here have any of the large format printer? A very close friend of mine, also an ex Minolta user, bought this huge Canon printer. The reason behind is simple: the printing cost is very good.
My Sony dye sublimation printer is great but my Canon BJ sucks. The i9950 I have uses dye. No matter how good my ink and paper is, the prints usually fade very quickly.

Interesting....
I haven't use any Canon printer, but HP and Epson and I haven't noticed any 'fade" or other issue. I do prefer C prints and only consider inkjet if I'll use a special kind of paper (canson, torchon, etc) I have a portable Polaroid Pogo that is really fun to use, but i don't expect good colors from it...

Regards

[Mark K]

Fading was a very common phenomenon years back before the pigment based ink. However, the Canon I bought declares itself as a permanent dye....for years.
Anyway minilab has always been less expensive as far as we can accept their odd colours

[Bruce Oudekerk]

Many years ago I used Epson ESP800, Epson ESP850, Epson ESP 900 and Epson 1520 which all used similar or the same dye based ink sets. At that time Epson made MANY glossy papers and unfortunately some prints faded into worthlessness in a short period of time. Here’s an example of a scan of an old photo of my daughter on her uncle’s shoulders and a print that only lasted two years in a dimly lit bedroom…no direct sunlight. See:
http://home.roadrunner.com/~ozinabox/Fade.jpg

Longevity in prints is an illusive subject but there appear to be two obvious variables; the ink set AND the media used. Modern dye ink sets on THE correct papers can have very admirable longevity. On the other hand some third party dye inks on any media are abysmal; your guess is as good as mine. Pigment inks, by their very nature tend to be long lived but even then, their can be large differences in print longevity depending on the media used. The way I look at it, I go to a lot of trouble, time and expense making my prints, often giving them to friends and relatives. I want them all to last because I do no know which will be cherished. Many are heirloom quality…many ARE heirlooms that have been scanned, restored and reprinted. I want them to last…many generations. Six and a half years ago I bought an Epson R800 and more recently an Epson R1900, both pigment printers, and have not seen ANY fading on any print on any media. For print longevity information, check out:
http://www.wilhelm-research.com/

I believe Canon’s large ProGraph printers are all pigment printers while some medium 13x19 Canons can be either.

It is relatively easy to find labs that use Fuji Frontier printers with Crystal Archive Paper that can have decent quality combined with decent known longevity.

Bruce

[Mark K]

Thanks for the detailed explanation. When I got my Canon, it was the cost which made my decision not going to Epson.
The result definitely proved itself.
My wedding was shot using a dSLR, a Canon 60D. Despite photographer's effort, I could not get the colours right even six months after the event. I went to various labs using Fuji Frontier and had many conversations with Fujifilm technical support. Ever since then, I have stopped comparing colours of prints from minilab to those seen on my own monitors..

[Greg Beetham]

I stumbled over this while looking for ways too double check my monitor calibration http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/moni ... ration.htm and thought it was quite a good read. They have a link to the Gretag Macbeth colour checker chart as well which you can print out on photo paper. If you want you could photograph it and put it through you system and print it out again, you should end up with the same result....right, ha ha lots of luck with that one.
Greg