Color Management Problem

[sterlingb]

I have a Princeton Graphic Senergy 981 monitor which I have adjusted the color on using the Gretagmacbeth Eye One profiler. My printer is an Epson R800, and I have loaded the ICC profiles that came with the printer. I use Photoshop CS, shoot in Raw with my D70, workflow from camera to printer is Adobe RGB. I use the print with preview command in PS, and the output is the ICC profile for the Epson paper I am using, usually premium glossy. In the printer driver box, I select ICC and colormanagement is turned off. I have all settings pretty much as the printer instruction manual suggests for allowing PS to do the color management. Now that the pre-requisites are over, here is my question.

Concerning total color management, I am not terribly concerned at this point if what is on my screen is an accurate representation of what my camera saw. I'll work on that later. I just want a print that looks close to what is on my screen. I know I can never get this perfect, but very close will make me happy. I must say that even now I am closer than I have ever been, but not quite there yet. All colors seems close enough for me except green. The green on my prints are not as saturated as what shows on the monitor, so I have to overly saturate it on the screen to get it to look good on the print. I don't want to have to fiddle with green saturation or hue every time I print some grass, so what are my options at this point? I've ran the Gretagmacbeth thing twice and get it dialed in perfectly, according to the program anyway.

All I've been able to think of so far is have PS up, showing the picture I just printed, and have the printed picture there as well, and go into my RGB controls on my monitor and adjust it manually until the screen looks close to my print. Is this a good way to do it, or is there a better way which takes less fiddling and reduces the risk of me getting all the other colors out of whack?

I appreciate any ideas or suggestions any of you may have...thanks....Sterling

[Asylum Steve]

Hey Sterling, welcome to the site...

I'm no color expert, nor have I calibrated my monitor with anything other than the Adobe Gamma utility, but prints from my Epson 2200 match my monitor very closely. MAybe I'm just lucky...

The only suggestion I can think of is to make sure your PROOF SETUP is Working CMYK (VIEW pulldown menu>Proof Setup), as the printer is a variation of the standard CMYK configuration.

If you had your Proof Setup in Adobe RGB, this change should slightly alter the appearance of the images on your monitor to more accurately reflect what your print will look like.

Hope that helps...

[sterlingb]

Thanks for the reply Steve. I have not been doing the proof thing, but I guess maybe I should. I will try your suggestion tonight, after I read up on it in my Photoshop book.
Sterling

Hey Sterling, welcome to the site...

I'm no color expert, nor have I calibrated my monitor with anything other than the Adobe Gamma utility, but prints from my Epson 2200 match my monitor very closely. MAybe I'm just lucky...

The only suggestion I can think of is to make sure your PROOF SETUP is Working CMYK (VIEW pulldown menu>Proof Setup), as the printer is a variation of the standard CMYK configuration.

If you had your Proof Setup in Adobe RGB, this change should slightly alter the appearance of the images on your monitor to more accurately reflect what your print will look like.

Hope that helps...

[Trevor Ash]

That was a very well detailed post Sterling, I hope you'll get some good answers here.

The problem you're having could very well be that the colors you want to print (saturated greens) are unprintable with your system.

Colors that can't be represented by an output device are called "out of gamut". If you really do have a well calibrated system then the easiest way to determine if a color is out of gamut or not is to use that feature built into photoshop. I don't have my computer in font of me, but what you have to do is select your printer/paper profile as your preview profile and then check the option for showing out of gamut colors. By default, it'll make all out of gamut colors a light grey. At this point, you'll see which colors will have a difficult time printing.

So how to use this information? Well, one way I sometimes use it is to set things up just like I described but then add an additional adjustment layer to my image where I can play with colors and saturation a bit (with proper use of masking!!!! no sense to adjust the whole image just for the out of gamut colors). I just adjust things until they are no longer out of gamut but still represent the general tone and color I originally wanted.

As a side comment; a lot of people expect too much form color management. They expect perfection in terms of color matching and reproduction. It's just not going to happen with today's technology and what we know today. Even if my diagnosis were wrong for you it still happens to almost everyone on a daily basis. Not all devices can reproduce all colors, we just need to remember that eveytime we see a print that doesn't look as good as our monitor. Color management goes a long way in helping though.

One additional thing; you may want to consider replacing the default ICC profiles that came with your printer with something else. There are services out there that will profile your printer for you.....you print out one of their targets using a specific CM process, mail it to them, and they send you a profile back. I've never used this service but I know some people are happy with it.

Oh, and if you have a well profiled system then I don't recommend Steve's advice. While it might mimic your printers output....it's not a representaton of your printers output. It just happens that selecting the CMYK as your preview profile will have a limited gamut similar to your printer so it'll give you a "fair idea" of what to expect. What you should have selected instead for your preview profile is just what I mentioned above....your main printer/paper profile for the printer/paper you intend on printing on. Here's a hint though; don't have any images open when you select your preview profile. By selecting it without having an image open it'll make it easier to select for every opened image in the future. It's kind of like setting it as a default.

Good luck to you.

[sterlingb]

Thanks for the response Trevor. I really appreciate your input. I have never used the out of gamut preview, but I will certainly begin. Another quick question if you don't mind. Let's say I have a great picture but only want to saturate the greens more. In the past I have always created a new adjustment layer for "selective color", and then played around with the sliders until I was where I wanted to be, pretty much effecting only the color in question. Is there a better way to do this? I'm just not PS proficient enough to know what you meant by the proper use of masking to not effect the whole image.

Thanks again,
Sterling

That was a very well detailed post Sterling, I hope you'll get some good answers here.

The problem you're having could very well be that the colors you want to print (saturated greens) are unprintable with your system.

Colors that can't be represented by an output device are called "out of gamut". If you really do have a well calibrated system then the easiest way to determine if a color is out of gamut or not is to use that feature built into photoshop. I don't have my computer in font of me, but what you have to do is select your printer/paper profile as your preview profile and then check the option for showing out of gamut colors. By default, it'll make all out of gamut colors a light grey. At this point, you'll see which colors will have a difficult time printing.

So how to use this information? Well, one way I sometimes use it is to set things up just like I described but then add an additional adjustment layer to my image where I can play with colors and saturation a bit (with proper use of masking!!!! no sense to adjust the whole image just for the out of gamut colors). I just adjust things until they are no longer out of gamut but still represent the general tone and color I originally wanted.

As a side comment; a lot of people expect too much form color management. They expect perfection in terms of color matching and reproduction. It's just not going to happen with today's technology and what we know today. Even if my diagnosis were wrong for you it still happens to almost everyone on a daily basis. Not all devices can reproduce all colors, we just need to remember that eveytime we see a print that doesn't look as good as our monitor. Color management goes a long way in helping though.

One additional thing; you may want to consider replacing the default ICC profiles that came with your printer with something else. There are services out there that will profile your printer for you.....you print out one of their targets using a specific CM process, mail it to them, and they send you a profile back. I've never used this service but I know some people are happy with it.

Oh, and if you have a well profiled system then I don't recommend Steve's advice. While it might mimic your printers output....it's not a representaton of your printers output. It just happens that selecting the CMYK as your preview profile will have a limited gamut similar to your printer so it'll give you a "fair idea" of what to expect. What you should have selected instead for your preview profile is just what I mentioned above....your main printer/paper profile for the printer/paper you intend on printing on. Here's a hint though; don't have any images open when you select your preview profile. By selecting it without having an image open it'll make it easier to select for every opened image in the future. It's kind of like setting it as a default.

Good luck to you.

[Trevor Ash]

By masking, all I really meant was "selective editing". Your approach of selecting certain colors is a perfectly appropriate form of selective editing.

Sorry for that confusion