Eureka - cracked the printing demon!

Since I have shared some of my woes with the printing demon on the boards here I thought I should also share my "eureka" moment - may be useful to others struggling the same. I looked at a recent Kelby video tutorial and that put everything in place for me - the penny dropped! Despite calibrating the monitor, getting the latest drivers and the correct paper profiles - my prints from my Epson 1800 were still looking terrible. I used to get reasonable prints when I was using my old windows PC but since I changed to an iMac that had really gone to pieces. But there were two things on the video that helped enormously.

1. The iMac has a backlit screen. I thought I was compensating for that in calibrating the monitor - but not nearly enough. I learned I also need to make adjustments to the image. And it is real easy - make a duplicate layer, change the blend mode to "Screen" and then adjust the opacity until you get it right. With a couple of test prints, I found I got the best results at up to 40% opacity (depending on the image) - indicates just how much too dark I was getting! And of course, it is easy enough to mask out areas that are going to burn out with the added brightness.

2. I had a slight colour caste coming through on some images. This was easily fixed as well simply by making a Selective Colour adjustment layer and making the appropriate tweak.

In the video, Scott Kelby interviews a printer guru from Epson and they talk about the products and their differences. Two big time hints they make for getting better prints are: for sharper images - get a better tripod; and if you are not sure about what will work - make a test print!

I'm pretty pleased with having finally beaten this one, so hope my lessons help others too!

Gerald

Gerald,

Thanks for the info. I have not tried the blend mode to screen trick. I'll have to test that next time I make a print. I've learned through experience some small tweaks for the prints I do (mostly lightjet on Fuji Crystal Archive paper). what I need to make the print look closest to the display. The first thing, however, is to use ICC profiles for the printer and paper. That gets very close. But a reflective print will never be the same as light emitted by an LCD.

Roger