p.1 #1 · Help - Very Messed Up Colors when Printing
I'm at my wits end. My Epson P800 has been outstanding since I purchased it several years ago. But I've started to notice some serious differences in what I'm seeing on my screen and the output from the print.
I even recently purchased a "photography" monitor Ben Q SW270C figuring that had to be the problem. I've calibrated using both the Datacolor Spyder and the Calibrite CC that was sent with my new Ben Q.
You can see in the attached image, I have the outputted Jpeg on the left monitor, the file that I printed from Lightroom AFTER using the soft proofing tool and selecting the ICC profile of the paper that I printed with, and then the result that came out. It's like Magenta threw up all over the image. My ink levels are fine (Epson will very much let you know where your levels are and when you need to buy more).
Any advice or thoughts? I should say that I don't have this problem with most other prints. There are some times where it looks off (usually not to this extent) but generally I get what I think I'm going to get or close to it. Thanks in advance.
p.1 #2 · Help - Very Messed Up Colors when Printing
I can understand your frustration! For trouble shooting, I would go back to basics.
1. Double check your ICC paper profile for the paper you're using.
2. Try printing the image letting the printer manage the colors, leaving Photoshop/Lightroom out of the mix.
3. If no luck, try printing a test file without color management, which will show if your printer is at fault. If you don't have a test image, try Keith Cooper at Northlight Images.https://www.northlight-images.co.uk/printer-test-images/
p.1 #3 · Help - Very Messed Up Colors when Printing
First things first. Ink levels mean nothing without doing a nozzle check. Every Epson printer needs to have a nozzle check done before each and every printing session. Clogged nozzles can certainly cause this. Secondly, there are plenty of reports of specific printing issues with certain versions of Adobe products and certain versions of operating systems. I can't tell from the photo whether you're on a Mac or PC. Photographing monitors from an oblique angle like this will never give you an accurate idea of what the monitor looks like from your viewing position. Thirdly. Did your color issues start showing up before or after the BenQ showed up or after? And which Spyder are you using, the 4 or the 5? If it's not the 5, then get that version and chuck the 4. And finally, are you sure you're not double profiling, which can cause this type of thing.
A standard test target image with images that have memory colors like green grass, blue skies, apples, oranges, skin tones and neutral gray steps from white to black can tell you a lot about how well your monitor is calibrated and where the issues might be but the first step is always your nozzle check.
p.1 #4 · Help - Very Messed Up Colors when Printing
Well this is embarrassing - sort of. I cleaned everything (it was clean) and tried the suggestions listed below. I also tried printing through the DXO print module. Nothing worked. But when I was in DXO and trying to let them manage the color it prompted me to ensure that I had color management turned off in the printer properties window. While in that dialogue box I noticed that I had the color output set to sRGB, which happens to be the default. I changed it to Adobe RGB and Bob's Your Uncle - fixed. It might be worthwhile for LR to prompt people to make the change as well.
Another thing that I learned in all of this is that the ambient light in the room significantly impacts how I see a printed image. Maybe this is common knowledge but I think it's important to view the images in the same ambient lighting in which you calibrate your monitor (for the sake of comparing the images). Even when the new print came out with Adobe RGB it looked over saturated. When I turned down the lights to the same setting I used when calibrating, it looked extremely close to what I was seeing on my monitor.
Thanks for your suggestions. Helped me get where I needed to!
p.1 #5 · Help - Very Messed Up Colors when Printing
You also need a good calibrated viewing light like a Solux or equivalent. Viewing prints is very critical in terms of the light you use and in general fluorescent and generic LED's are horrible for judging color. There's something called Color Rendering Index (CRI) which is sort of a measure of the spectrum of light coming from your lights. If you have or have access to a color temperature meter, you can usually see a graph of that CRI result for any given light you've measured. What you find is that most LED's are deficient in reds even though they're nominally daylight in color while most standard fluorescents are just missing whole swaths of color - mostly reds - even though they might measure to be more or less daylight-ish. These things can have massive effects on how you see your prints. The aforementioned Solux, which is an MR16 halogen which is run at a higher than normal voltage to boost its natural color temperature to about 4700Kelvin has a full continuous spectrum of light and is really ideal for print viewing, but the absolute best is to view the print exactly in the light it's going to be displayed in.
p.1 #6 · Help - Very Messed Up Colors when Printing
Peter Figen wrote:
You also need a good calibrated viewing light like a Solux or equivalent. Viewing prints is very critical in terms of the light you use and in general fluorescent and generic LED's are horrible for judging color. There's something called Color Rendering Index (CRI) which is sort of a measure of the spectrum of light coming from your lights. If you have or have access to a color temperature meter, you can usually see a graph of that CRI result for any given light you've measured. What you find is that most LED's are deficient in reds even though they're nominally daylight in color while most standard fluorescents are just missing whole swaths of color - mostly reds - even though they might measure to be more or less daylight-ish. These things can have massive effects on how you see your prints. The aforementioned Solux, which is an MR16 halogen which is run at a higher than normal voltage to boost its natural color temperature to about 4700Kelvin has a full continuous spectrum of light and is really ideal for print viewing, but the absolute best is to view the print exactly in the light it's going to be displayed in. ...Show more →
Great info here. It's incredible how the ambient light plays a role in how we see things. This seems very intuitive and I'm not sure how it escaped me. But printing in Adobe RGB vs sRGB is really what fixed it. It's not perfect, and I plan to implement some of the ideas you guys have provided, but it at least looks like what I intended.
p.1 #7 · Help - Very Messed Up Colors when Printing
gunmetal wrote:
Great info here. It's incredible how the ambient light plays a role in how we see things. This seems very intuitive and I'm not sure how it escaped me. But printing in Adobe RGB vs sRGB is really what fixed it. It's not perfect, and I plan to implement some of the ideas you guys have provided, but it at least looks like what I intended.
Not really sure what happened here as you never actually print in Adobe RGB, sRGB or any other standard RGB working spaces. So maybe you can either describe specifically what you did and changed or post screen shots of the dialog boxes so we can all get to understand exactly what happened and why, and maybe help others who have similar issues.
p.1 #8 · Help - Very Messed Up Colors when Printing
My bug report to Adobe PS regarding off colors:
PS print dialogue, Color Sync issue causes double profiling
PS 24.1.1 / Ventura 13.2.1 (22D68) / Apple M1 Ultra 128 GB
In the print dialogue, under Printer Options / Color Matching the Color Sync setting is grayed out. In the following, the Default shows the radio button set to Color Sync as it should since PS will provide the ICC profile. The setting is copied to a new preset "Han Luster Sheet". When viewed, the new preset is no longer set to Color Sync, but to Epson Color Controls. This results in double profiling with colors grossly off. Since this dialog box is grayed out, it cannot be set back to Color Sync.
This is still occurring having deleted the printer in MacOS and via Epson's Uninstall, and then reinstalling.
Printer driver is Epson 12.62 (current for Ventura) for P7000.
p.1 #9 · Help - Very Messed Up Colors when Printing
Peter Figen wrote:
Not really sure what happened here as you never actually print in Adobe RGB, sRGB or any other standard RGB working spaces. So maybe you can either describe specifically what you did and changed or post screen shots of the dialog boxes so we can all get to understand exactly what happened and why, and maybe help others who have similar issues.
See attached. When I selected to "Color Management by DXO" it prompted me to "Turn Off Color Management in the Printer Properties window". When looking for that, I saw this "Mode" drop down and noticed that sRGB was selected. I changed it to Adobe RGB and that greatly improved the output. So I'm not sure what's going on.
As I indicated and you expounded significantly on, the ambient lighting conditions plays a massive role in how we view the images. I never gave that enough stock. That said, there was something extremely wrong with my magenta output and this appears to have fixed that.
p.1 #10 · Help - Very Messed Up Colors when Printing
gunmetal wrote:
See attached. When I selected to "Color Management by DXO" it prompted me to "Turn Off Color Management in the Printer Properties window". When looking for that, I saw this "Mode" drop down and noticed that sRGB was selected. I changed it to Adobe RGB and that greatly improved the output. So I'm not sure what's going on.
As I indicated and you expounded significantly on, the ambient lighting conditions plays a massive role in how we view the images. I never gave that enough stock. That said, there was something extremely wrong with my magenta output and this appears to have fixed that. ...Show more →
I think you've probably stumbled on a setting that seems to work but is not really the right solution. I just read through the Epson manual for your printer and it's a bit vague at best but it seems like you probably had double profiling going on previously.
Here's the Epson definitions from the manual for the driver settings:
Color Management Options - Windows
You can adjust the Mode setting to fine-tune the colors in your printout, or turn off color management in your printer software.
EPSON Standard (sRGB)
Increases the contrast in images. Click the Advanced button to use advanced color controls.
Adobe RGB
Matches image colors to the Adobe RGB color standard. Use this setting if your source file was captured in Adobe RGB. Click the Advanced button to use advanced color controls.
PhotoEnhance
Lets you choose from various Scene Correction settings to automatically analyze your photos.
Note: PhotoEnhance uses a sophisticated face recognition technology to optimize photos that include faces. For this to work, both eyes and the nose must be visible in the subject's face. If your photo includes a face with an intentional color cast, such as a statue, you may want to turn off PhotoEnhance to retain the special color effects.
ICM
Automatically adjusts colors based on the printer’s ICC profile and the selected Media Type setting, using the Image Color Matching system. Click the Advanced button to choose the input profile and other settings.
Note: In most cases, you get better results by applying color management in your application, rather than in the printer driver.
Off (No Color Adjustment)
Turns off color management in your printer software so you can manage color using only your application software.
Note: An ICC profile is required if color management is turned off.
What *should* work correctly is have that set to No Color Management and then go back to the first part of the driver and set it to Application Manages Color and choose the correct paper profile. That is how it's supposed to work, plus, read what Epson actually say about sRGB Mode - that it increased the contrast, but they don't actually tell you what's really going on behind the scenes. Those are big red flags to pay attention to and while it might seem to be working now, I think it's going to be a problem with other images down the road.
p.1 #11 · Help - Very Messed Up Colors when Printing
Please read carefully what Peter Figen has taken the time to post. He is spot on!! All color management should be turned off for the 'Printer' and let the host software (PS, LR, DXO, etc) control the color as per the icc profile you have specified for the paper you are printing to.
p.1 #13 · Help - Very Messed Up Colors when Printing
Bernie wrote:
My point in the bug I reported (above) to Adobe was that it was impossible to turn off the printer's color management, thus resulting in color issues.
Bernie - I totally appreciate where you're coming from and bringing it to attention. I think that in this thread it's only confusing because the O.P. here is on a completely different operating system and it doesn't appear that this is the same issue, although it's possible there's some common ground.
I have found the people at Adobe somewhat worse than useless when it comes to help with this. It's incumbent on us as end users to do as much troubleshooting as possible to try and figure out where the problems really are, and whether they lie with Adobe, Epson, or Apple, or worse, some combination of two or all three.
Have you, just for grins and giggles, tried going back a version in Photoshop to see what happens there. In Mac OS Monterey, that's all it took to get rid of a huge color issue when printing to Epson's.
p.1 #14 · Help - Very Messed Up Colors when Printing
Unfortunately the print dialogue is still the same version even in PS 23 with the same problems.
I've been able to create the preset in PS, tweak and verify in other apps like OpenOffice. As long as I don't do anything with the print dialogue in PS, the image prints as it should.
Regarding other OS, I've been noticing a lot more Adobe printing issues written up in in various websites....
