I purchased a R1900 last week and I'm running into some color problem with it. I'm sure it's my fault so I'm looking for some assistance. First, here is some relavent information:
1) Monitor is Dell 2005FPW hooked up over DVI to an ATI 2400XT
2) Camera is a 5D and 1D MKII.
3) Color profile system is the Spyder3Pro.
4) I'm using Epson 4x6 and 5x7 paper. Both papers are "4*" and say "Premium Photo Paper Glossy" on them.
5) I have downloaded and am using the Epson ICC profiles when printing.
First things first, I calibrated my monitor with the Spyder. I reset everything to the factory defaults. However, that gave me a brightness of 232 cd/mm (or whatever the units are). If I turned down the brightness, I could only get down to 157. From my understanding, LCD monitors should have a brightness around 110-120 for photo editing so I had to lower the RGB settings to get something down to that level. I should note I lowered all by the same amount. After I adjusted those to get a value of 113, I went through with the calibration.
Once the calibration was complete, I went into Photoshop CS3 to edit a file. As far as I know, this is a color managed app so I should be OK here. I edit my photo as I like and then I go to print. When printing, I have the following settings:
Color handling: Photoshop Manages Colors
Printer Profile: SPR1900 Premium Glossy (Is this right!??!)
Rending Intent: Relative Coolorimetric
Black Point Compensation IS checked
In side of page setup, I have "best photo" selected. On the advanced tab, I have ICM checked and "Off (No Color Adjustment)" selected.
Long story short, when I print things out, it is definitely not WYSIWYG. The phot I just printed is darker and blues seem a bit purple and so forth.
Any help for an obvious rookie would really, really be appreciated. I am under the impression my monitor is actually fairly good so I don't think it's that.
The problem is that you adjusted the RGB output from the video card to the monitor. Your LCD monitor does not have RGB guns like a CRT monitor. It may have on screen controls, but these do not affect the display, just the video card output and that is the job of the hardware calibrator. The only physical control you have in the LCD is backlight control that raises or lowers the brightness of the cold cathode florescent tubes that light the monitor.
You should reset your monitor to factory defaults, reset the calibration software to reflect backlight only control and re-calibrate. Make sure you do not have Adobe Gamma loaded in your startup files, if you do, disable it. The room that you are using to calibrate your monitor should have no fluctuating ambient light (daylight). If it does, cover the windows.
Your Photoshop color settings may also be affecting your output. It should be set to Adobe RGB for printing, not your monitor profile. Many people make this error. The monitor profile is already figured into the color management.
jerryrock wrote:
The problem is that you adjusted the RGB output from the video card to the monitor. Your LCD monitor does not have RGB guns like a CRT monitor. It may have on screen controls, but these do not affect the display, just the video card output and that is the job of the hardware calibrator. The only physical control you have in the LCD is backlight control that raises or lowers the brightness of the cold cathode florescent tubes that light the monitor.
You should reset your monitor to factory defaults, reset the calibration software to reflect backlight only control and re-calibrate. Make sure you do not have Adobe Gamma loaded in your startup files, if you do, disable it. The room that you are using to calibrate your monitor should have no fluctuating ambient light (daylight). If it does, cover the windows.
Your Photoshop color settings may also be affecting your output. It should be set to Adobe RGB for printing, not your monitor profile. Many people make this error. The monitor profile is already figured into the color management. ...Show more →
Thanks much for the reply! I'll do as you advised tomorrow and hopefully that helps. One quick question: You say to use Adobe RGB for printing. Should I be editing in Adobe RGB as well? I'm working in SRGB at this point. In terms of printing, I should not use the ICC profiles provided by Epson for the paper I am using as wel, correct?
Thanks again for the reply. My only concern here is my monitor (2005fpw) while given a good review on prad.de probably cannot do adobeRGB. I'll give it a shot and see how things come out.
While your monitor may not be able to display the full gamut of Adobe RGB, this has little to do with your print quality.
The Adobe RGB workspace allows Photoshop to work with the full array of color available in the images your camera produces and that your printer can print. Limiting that color gamut by reducing it to sRGB from the start is reducing the image quality by clipping some of the available color.
Your calibrated monitor should give you a fairly accurate representation of your final print. The luminance is never going to be a perfect match because you are dealing with two different light sources. The monitor uses transmissive light to produce color while the print exhibits reflective light. Different factors affect each source including ambient lighting, paper "whiteness" and type of ink (dye vs pigment).
