Accurate color printing with CS3+i860?

jennifer

I'm having problems getting accurate color printing of some fireworks shots I took this July 4th. I have CS3 and a canon i860. The pic looks great in PS but when I print it out (8x10) the color seems dull. For example, I have a lot more red/pink in my purple on the print than I do in PS where the purple looks much more blue. I generally haven't noticed this on shots I've printed in the past, but not many of those have the vibrant colors present in the fireworks shots. Is there a technique I can use in order to get the printer output to more accurately match what I'm seeing in PS?

arodney

Is your display calibrated and profiled? Do you have an ICC output profile for this printer and are you using Photoshop's soft proof to view the document before printing?

rdlugosz

There are a lot of variables that come into play...

What kind of paper are you using? What profiles, etc?

I used to have an i860 (since upgraded to a i9900) and I got some nice stuff out of it, however I'm not sure that I can recall just how far it could be pushed compared to a more modern printer (which has more colors). For example, you won't get the same "super greens" out of the i860 as compared to the i9900 or later, since you don't have the dedicated cartridges.

I'd recommend that you play with a bunch of different settings by printing out small crops of the most important area. This way you can test a variety of settings on a single page and make a decision on what works best. Be sure to label each attempt so that you know what is what!

jennifer

It would seem part of the problem then may be I don't understand profiles. I really don't know a whole lot about photoshop other than some minor post processing techniques. As for paper, I was just using regular glossy photo paper I picked up somewhere along the line. These are just prints for my own personal use. I have thought about upgrading printers but it's so hard when I have a perfectly good working printer already. But perhaps it's something to think about in the future!

Does anyone have a suggestion as to what profile I might try or how to set one up? Here is an example of one of the photos I was trying to print. Using an action, I resized it to 5x7 and included a double mat making it 8x10. Thanks!

MarkR

jennifer wrote:

It would seem part of the problem then may be I don't understand profiles. I really don't know a whole lot about photoshop other than some minor post processing techniques. As for paper, I was just using regular glossy photo paper I picked up somewhere along the line. These are just prints for my own personal use. I have thought about upgrading printers but it's so hard when I have a perfectly good working printer already. But perhaps it's something to think about in the future!

Does anyone have a suggestion as to what profile I might try or how to set one up? Here is an example of one of the photos I was trying to print. Using an action, I resized it to 5x7 and included a double mat making it 8x10. Thanks!

One easy pitfall is to have Photoshop AND your printer drivers both trying to manage your color profiles. In PS Print Dialog box there should be an optiion to have PS manage your colors. Choose that, then turn off color management in your printer drivers. You may have to dig through some menus to do it.

windoze

i can help somebody finally on this stuff - check this out:

i had to do a lot of research on this myself!
http://www.sns.ias.edu/~jns/files/Canon_ICC_Profile_Guide.pdf


troy