Digital Light & Color

Hi

This question is about the difference in appearance between the screen and the final printed version using my Epson Stylus Photo R2400. Im using PWPPro to control the printer profile when printing, ie colour management is on. Im using the monitor profile set to the profile created from my Monaco Optix 2.0 software. I know windows is loading the monitor profile as I can see the colour change when it is loaded. When I print on Epson Premium Glossy Paper the printed image is virtually indistinguisable from the screen. However using Ilford Glaerie Gold Fibre Silk the image is quite significantly darker. To correct the printed image I adjust the final image by adding a general lightening of the image with control points from the 50:50 point in colour curves to about 70:50 and that seems to just about sort it out.

Yes my display is profiled regularly, I appreciate that the IGGFS is said by the "experts" to have a very deep black, I'm using Ilford's own profile IGGFS13_EPR2400_PSPPn.icc, print driver setting to "Premium SemiGloss Photo Paper".

Im getting by but its a bit frustrating as I sometimes forget to make the final adjustment and end up wasting ink and paper, using A3+ that is not inconsiderable!

Any thoughts or is it just not a very good profile, is it worth getting a profile from the likes of http://digitaldog.net/services.html

Cheers M

It is common for prints to look darker than the screen - usually because prints are not being viewed in bright enough light. If you take your prints outside and look at them in daylight they will likely look fine. Epson has probably deliberately add lightening to their printer profile. If you want them to match the monitor more closely, check out the Monitor Curves feaure in PWP5 which lets you play with your monitor brightness until it matches a test print and then lets you apply the inverse curve when printing to lighten the print automatically.