Printing Problems - in LR/ CS3 ONLY!

[Sorbz62]

Only me again!

I thought I had my printing woes sorted - managed by printer not LR/ CS3 and then adjust to get the best print. But I want to use the extensive capabilities of LR and CS3. No matter what I do, all prints from these 2 come out dark and over saturated.

Before you say anything I have not calibrated as I do not have the cash for any more equipment. I have used my eyes to scan something in and adjust the screen to where it is like the hard copy.

The frustrating thing is that I can print from Windows (XP) and the prints are exactly the same as the screen - every time!

I have a suspicion that I may be double profiling - using both LR and the printer driver to print even though in the Epson software I have set it to 'ICM - no colour management'

Please help because this is very, very frustrating. I have 1'''s of beautiful pictures that I can't print off accurately using my preferred software.

Thanks, in anticipation.
Jim

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Can you tell us which printer for a start Jim?

 

[Bruce J]

It sounds as if you may have no profiling instead of double. If you tell LR that you're using 'managed by printer' and then tell the printer via the printer driver to use 'ICM - no colour management', then neither one is doing color management. Try setting your printer driver back to one of its internal managed modes w/o changing anything in LR and see if that doesn't at least get you closer.

In the end, there's really no way to get accurate color results w/o calibration. Best of luck,

 

[Sorbz62]

Thanks for the replies,

I will get my monitor calibrated but the question is ... why do all my prints look great when printed via Windows (ie from the Windows picture viewer) and not from LR or CS3.

I am using one profile or the other actually. Maybe I mistyped my original post.

Thanks,
Jim

 

[petertang]

I have a different but yet similar problem with my prints too. While using a HP C628' printer with no ICC profile supplied by HP, the output from Windows picture viewer is alright. However, when print using LR, I got greenish print!

 

[Sorbz62]

It's actually an Epson rx62' All in one thing. It normally prints beautifully but this is really confounding me!!

Jim

 

[Kiwigeoff]

It's actually an Epson rx62' All in one thing. It normally prints beautifully but this is really confounding me!!

Jim

I think with this level of printer you need to let the printer manage everything. I have an Epson PictureMate and it prints fine with printer management.

 

[Packhorse-4]

Thanks for the replies,

I will get my monitor calibrated but the question is ... why do all my prints look great when printed via Windows (ie from the Windows picture viewer) and not from LR or CS3.

I am using one profile or the other actually. Maybe I mistyped my original post.

Thanks,
Jim

I have a different but yet similar problem with my prints too. While using a HP C628' printer with no ICC profile supplied by HP, the output from Windows picture viewer is alright. However, when print using LR, I got greenish print!

From what I am reading in both of these posts, I think the difference between printing in LR or printing with Windows Picture Viewer is the color space used by each program. LR is using ProPhoto RGB and Windows Picture viewer is using sRGB.

Color Management is not a one step process. Even those not interested in going through all of the steps for a fully color managed workflow need to be familiar with the process. If your workflow includes exporting your pictures to an sRGB JPEG to print in Windows Picture Viewer, and you're pleased with the output, that's certainly an option that works for some. I send my pictures to SmugMug and MPix for online viewing and printing. In both cases I export to an sRGB JPEG file.

If your goal is to have a fully functional color managed workspace, then you have to accept the fact that you will need additoinal tools in order to do so. That doesn't mean you can't still get great prints from Lightroom, but you might not be able to get them by pressing the print button.