Trying My Own Printing........

[Salukis97]

Hey everybody. Please forgive my ignorance on this subject. That is why I am coming to you to hopefully point out something I am simply missing.

I have never done my own printing. In fact the only printer I owned until a month ago was purchased back in 2001. I always go through MPIX when printing for clients, but I decided to buy a printer capable of printing a decent 4x6 or 5x7 so I could make some small prints here and there for myself. I did a little research on what was available at my local Best Buy (I got several Best Buy gift cards for christmas) and settled on a Canon Pixma MG6120. My monitor is calibrated with a Huey Pro, and the prints I get from MPIX are always consistent with what I see on my computer screen and no, I do not allow MPIX to do any color correcting.

So, I set up the printer, installed the software, ran the calibration, yada yada yada.........

Lo and behold, my prints are coming out with a distinctive yellow/redish cast. The printer software installed several paper profiles, so I made sure to use one of the listed papers.

I don't really consider myself the sharpest tool in the shed, so hopefully I am missing something simple.

Any suggestions?

[Janus]

What are you printing from? Have you disabled the printer color control?

[Salukis97]

I have printed from the printer software screen, and straight from lightroom with the same results.

No, I have not disabled the printer color control. I will try that if I can find out how to do it.

[Salukis97]

Ok, I got it pretty close. Thanks for the suggestion.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to keep depending on MPIX for my heavy lifting, though

[ziplock122949]

Printing at a high quality isnt as easy as people make it seem. Double color management is the most common problem (as pointed out above).

[suesue]

A couple of tips that I learned in class (Paducah School of Art )

* Lower your monitor brightness
* Print in a dark room (I lower the blinds and turn off the lights; often printing at night) In the school studio, the walls were painted a neutral gray and we printed 'in the dark.'
* I think monitor calibration was already mentioned as well as matching your paper profiles.

[algalkin]

The problem maybe also your monitor. See, monitors can easily screw up colors, since it's accepting only numerical value of each pixel.
So lets say your monitor is off and where there is actually yellow pixels in your pictures, the monitor shows them as green (as example) and therefore the yellow pixels blend with the green ones on your screen and you simply don't see them. Then, the printer uses profile, which means, the profile "understands" pixels values correctly and prints them "properly" - therefore, if there were yellow pixels in you picture (which you monitor succesfully ignored), it prints them and you get the print completely off from what you saw on the screen.
Now, how do we avoid mismatch between monitor and printer?
Correct answer - calibrate your monitor color profile to match printer's profile. Yes, there is a color profile exist for your monitor as well. Be advised however, that ones you calibrate your monitor, you'd probably have to re-edit your photos, since their colors will be off with new profile.
Also, if you have cheap TN monitor, there is a chance, you will never be able to calibrate it properly and therefore never be able to match prints to exactly what you see on the screen .
Simple problem - your TN screen cannot simply show all the colors on the picture, for example, the average camera can take 12-14 bit pictures (well, 14 - is for pro cameras_, when TN monitor often is limited to 6-bit, if you lucky - 8 bit. It means, the range of colors simply drasticly smaller so some colors will be "interpolated" by your monitor to the nearest values. That might be ok when you look at it on the monitor, but unfortunately print output will alwasy look deffirent, simply that actual file is 12 or 14 bit and has a lot more color "variations" that you monitor could produce.

If you want cheap "calibrateable" monitor, get Dell IPS - something liek this one http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/product...k=baynoteSearch
you won't get a 100% print proof quality with it, but you'll get close enough, at the point where you wouldn't tell the difference between the screen and the print at the daylight (considering that you'll setup both color profiles properly) .

[girliesamuels]

Great information! Thanks for all those helpful replies! I keep that in mind.

[longlivemedia]

I agree, you should still on to your MPIX. Based on experience, it provides great solution for professional quality printing and speed.

[maire]

I would suggest to use Epson printer if you want high quality printing for your photographs, This printer provides a lots of feature that make all the printing process easy and worth experiencing.

Cheap Digital Printing London