Follow up to "Darker Prints and Color Shift" thread

[Jddolbee]

As a follow-up to the thread on "Darker Prints and Color Shift while printing..":

I'm having similar color shift and print quality problems with my HP 698' printer. I've tried to follow an HP version of the tips shown there but get no improvement. In my case, the printer appreantly does not recognize anything from LR2.3. It always reverts back to the default. When I set the system printer defaults to ICM and the correct profile for the paper, the prints are "blaaa", i.e. soft, poor color, etc. This problem only started with LR2.2, prior to that everything printed ok.

I should also add that I tried to uninstall LR2.3 and go back to LR2.' (which worked correctly with my printer), but the Windows uninstall program did not remove all the LR pref. files. Now LR2.' has the problem also. What files do I need to remove when uninstalling LR2.3 to remove all preferences, flags, etc. from the system so LR2.' will establish it's own like on the original installation? Is there a separate "preferences" file that holds printer info that can be deleted and allowed to reset? I've deleted the std preferences file and allowed it to recreate, but that did no good.

I guess the next step is to try another printer. Does anyone have a suggestion as to a mid priced printer that seems to work well with LR without all these problems?

There seems to be an inordinate amount of printing and printer interface problems surfacing in the forums with LR2.2 & LR2.3. Was something changed in the basic printer interface that would have caused this? This is an expensive program to be having all these problems.

Thanks

Jim

 

[Jddolbee]

I've done a considerable amount of addition trouble shooting and have found the following: It appears that LR2.3 incombination with my printer are using some generic print/color profile that cannot be altered. My printer has the following choices:

1. colorsmart/sRGB
2. Adobe 1998
3. Application managed color
4. ICM

No mater what I select this system always reverts to #1 wheither LR has printer managed or LR managed selections. With #1 there are a variety of options for changing brightness, saturation, colors, etc. I can change these to any setting, full scale one way or the other, and the prints are unaffected. Thus it looks like the package of LR and my printer are using some generic profile that will not allow alteration.

When I uninstall LR, remove the preferences file, and reinstall, all my print settings; i.e. Output dpi, relative/percept. etc. are unchanged from before the uninstall/reinstall. Where do these setting reside, and what do I have to do to remove them during an uninstall so the new install will generate a new set-up for printing?

Thanks

Jim

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Just bumping this thread for Jim.....

 

[Jddolbee]

I have some additional information regarding this. At the suggestion of Adobe Support, I again, reinstalled my printer driver, that did not help. Then I created a new catalog and imported photos to it. That one works fine, good prints and printer control seems to be working ok.

I then exported photo from my old catalog to a new catalog. That one works fine also. However, the original catalog still does not work. Does that mean my original catalog is corrupt? If so, how do I recover my information, I have many hundreds of images in the original file?

Thank you Victoria.

jim

 

[Denis Pagé]

One thing you can do then is to import everything from the old catalog to the new one.

 

[Brad Snyder]

Specifically, with the new catalog open, from the File menu, 'Import from Catalog ....' .

You should see a dialog very similar to the normal import dialog, allowing you to choose which photos to import from the old catalog to the new. There are some choices about handling new and duplicate (if any) photos. Perhaps try just a folder or two at first, to see if you're accomplishing what you need.

 

[Jddolbee]

Thanks

I was able to create a new catalog and successfully import images from the old catalog. All seems to be working ok. I found that my back-up file (made by Lightroom backup) and the two copies of the catalog stored on external drives all had the same problem. Once I get the new catalog back-up, can I just delete the folders with the old catalog, or is there something through Lightroom that I have to do to remove the old catalog?

Thanks again for your help.

Jim

 

[Denis Pagé]

Lightroom create the backups but doesn't have any function to manage them. You delete those old ones with the file system (Windows Explorer in your case).

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Fantastic news Jim, great job!

 

[Jddolbee]

I am not sure what this means; but, I went back and checked all my catalog back-ups to see if I could find when the catalog became contaminated. It looks like it happened coincident with the upgrade to LR2.3. The back-up prior to that was ok, and I had the problem when I opened LR2.3 for the first time. And, the first back-up after the upgrade has the problem.

Thanks to everyone for your help.

Jim Dolbee

 

[Jddolbee]

One more bit of info if it will help anyone. I was working with my new catalog and printing things ok, then I applied one of my User Created preset templates for a print format. The printer control issues returned. I reloaded the catalog from the back-up file and found that the contamination was not there. So I deleted (through windows explorer) all the user created templates from the applications folder. Then I recreated the templates in a new User Created folder and all is working ok again.

I don't know if this is the source of the original contamination to the catalog, or if it is a result; but though it might help someone else.

Jim

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Interesting! If you still have that problem catalog and those presets, the engineers may well be interested in them Jim.