Ah... There could be any number of things going on there, but at least you seem to have the basics covered quite well. I think the best thing to do now would be to have a new profile made and see if that's the root of your problem. Not knowing exactly how the original started out may be a factor.
I just posed another question, that is to get custom prints. I have learned a lot about printing in the last 5 years, but I am size limited with my current printer and would like to move up a bit in print quality.
I suppose I could also find a local guy to make me a profile. Since I print only one paper, it would be fairly easy. But I would still be size limited.
I'm happy to report that I've tested my new R3880 and as some have noted, it is a jewel of a printer. I've downloaded 3rd party profiles and they are very good and my prints match well my screen. So no need for printer profiles for me, besides those made for 3rd party paper.
@ben: I went from a R2400 to a R3880 because first my R2400 ceased to operate a while back and I picked the 3880 because it goes up to A2. But I'll always be size limited if it's what you meant. If I need bigger size I'll go to a print shop.
A couple of years ago I had the good luck to snap up a deal on a 44" Z3100ps GP photo printer. It has 12 inks total, 1 is a gloss enhancer.
This printer has a built in spectrometer, so you can profile pretty much any media you stick in it. The printer came with an Eye One monitor colorimeter as part of the package.
Overall, everything works very well, until I start playing with the brightness and contrast controls on the monitor when I'm otherwise not working with photos and printing.
I have printed a number of charts with reference colors and swatches and grey scale ramps and keep them on hand as a guide when my eyes are tired and I've been sitting looking at the monitor for long periods of time. I'll pop them up on the screen and compare them to the printed output just to remind me I'm not going crazy.
Getting the monitor calibrated properly ensures your prints won't come out dark. Depending on how anal you want to get, you might calibrate your monitor daily.
Some people spend a great deal of time setting up their processing and printing station, and some go so far as to paint their room a neutral 50% grey and only use daylight balanced D50 fluorescent lights. I haven't done this, because the room I work in has more windows than walls.
If you don't have a the ability to profile your own media on your printer, you can use the custom canned profiles available for the media you've selected. But if your monitor isn't calibrated, everything is hit and miss.
"Overall, everything works very well, until I start playing with the brightness and contrast controls on the monitor when I'm otherwise not working with photos and printing."
As soon as you start "playing" with the monitor controls, it invalidates your hardware calibration and profile, so it's no surprise everything worked well until you started playing.
"I have printed a number of charts with reference colors and swatches and grey scale ramps and keep them on hand as a guide when my eyes are tired and I've been sitting looking at the monitor for long periods of time. I'll pop them up on the screen and compare them to the printed output just to remind me I'm not going crazy.
"Getting the monitor calibrated properly ensures your prints won't come out dark. Depending on how anal you want to get, you might calibrate your monitor daily."
Calibrating daily is completely unnecessary. Monitors don't drift very far or very fast. Once a month is generally more than enough.
"you can use the custom canned profiles available for the media you've selected"
You can have custom or you can have canned but not both. A good canned profile like the ones Epson ships with their printers is often better than a mediocre or worse custom profile from someone who doesn't know what they're doing.
Peter Figen wrote:
"Overall, everything works very well, until I start playing with the brightness and contrast controls on the monitor when I'm otherwise not working with photos and printing."
As soon as you start "playing" with the monitor controls, it invalidates your hardware calibration and profile, so it's no surprise everything worked well until you started playing.
In case you missed it, I said it 'tongue in cheek'. I'm quite well aware that making any changes after calibration invalidates it. It doesn't take long to run a monitor calibration, so I do it weekly.
"you can use the custom canned profiles available for the media you've selected"
You can have custom or you can have canned but not both. A good canned profile like the ones Epson ships with their printers is often better than a mediocre or worse custom profile from someone who doesn't know what they're doing.
I don't think I said you can use custom and canned profiles at the same time.
It's really hard to make a bad profile on the HP Z3100, the printer does most of the work.
The Z3100ps GP printer has HP's Advanced Profiling System built-in to make profiles, made possible by the inclusion of an actual spectrophotometer in the printer head assembly. This spectrophotometer is also used for the linearization process that HP uses to calibrate the printer.
The end result is consistent and repeatable results.
Sorry Shutterbug. I must have missed that tongue in your cheek, because I actually went back and read what you wrote and there was no hint of that. You can check it yourself. Forgive me for taking you at your written word. And for that measure, you did actually say "custom canned profiles" not custom or canned. No confusion there.
The only problem with the HP system is that you have no choice of filters, software and most importantly drying time. It's better than not having it but not better than a high end third party system.
Peter Figen wrote:
Sorry Shutterbug. I must have missed that tongue in your cheek, because I actually went back and read what you wrote and there was no hint of that. You can check it yourself. Forgive me for taking you at your written word. And for that measure, you did actually say "custom canned profiles" not custom or canned. No confusion there.
The only problem with the HP system is that you have no choice of filters, software and most importantly drying time. It's better than not having it but not better than a high end third party system.
Sorry, I'll be more careful choosing my words. I meant to say "you can use the canned profiles available for the media you've selected".
And the title of the thread included "affordable", so why are you discussing high end third party systems?
From my experience, keep it simple to start as several people have said above.. With my colormunki, I can calibrate the monitor and make printer profiles. I calibrate the monitor several times a year and that seems to be far more often than is needed. I am using Epson materials and have not seen a need for custom printer profiles.
ben egbert wrote:
I have the same question as the OP. But I have my camera and monitor calibrated using a made for NEC Xrite and Spectraview. I have an Epson3800 and use Red River paper and a custom profile. I use only one paper. I have used this system for 4-5 years.
I would like a better match between monitor and print. I am thinking of going to the next step of calibrating my printer. The main issue is brightness. My prints are too dark even with the custom profile.
Ben, If your prints are consistently dark then lower the luminance. I have the same setup as you, the Nec/Spectraview, and they're very good. But I lowered my lum from 120 to 90 and no more dark prints.
