LCD from DSLR and laptop ok but printout terrible!! Pls help

[photobum]

Above are the real-life testimonies of the saying "A little knowledge is dangerous".

All I can say is color profiling and print is a art and science by itself. There are some people who spend 4 years at a university just to understand its concepts, principles and applications. Trust me, we just cannot muster all these knowledge overnight. It takes time, patience and endless testings.

For me, I just leave it to the professionals. They know better than I do. I am a photographer by profession and my studio does commercial works, therefore, color accuracy is considered first priority to us.

 

[cWc]

like mentioned earlier, printers accepting/processing images in rgb is not equivalent to output in rgb.

if you think printers with cmyk tanks only output in rgb, then tell me how do you think white colour is produced on whitepaper. Output all ink?

With the rgb image, the print driver does limited colour separation to the 4 sheets. if it is outputting in rgb, then it has to use cmyk to first emulate red, then green, and blue, then output all 3 on your paper (it will be quite wet...lol). if outputting in cmyk, it simply says, no ink is needed.

In addition, you can try printing out-of-gamut colours from photoshop (there will be a out-of-gamut warning for those colours, the little triangle), and see if you can see the same colour on paper. Most likely, it will turn dull due to extrapolation to the nearest printable colour.

Note above applies for printers with cmyk tanks. if the printer contains rgb tanks as well, of course it can output in rgb

 

[theRBK]

I think there is quite a bit of problem here... let me try again... for clearity's sake please indulge my longwindedness :embrass:

the actual printing process is always the same whether the printer can accept sRGB, adobe RGB, CMYK, whatever... ink is applied on to paper always, and different colours are added to each other to form new colours, starting with white paper, accumulating density of ink as more ink is layered on, and ultimately resulting in total black printed surface with maximum amount of ink... this is the same whether you use inkjet, dye sub, laser, blood :bsmilie: , whatever... this is the only current process of print, the addition of pigment (pigment used in a general sense of the word, but includes pigment ink, dye based ink, etc.) onto paper, regardless of technology

you cannot do what is called additive colour, what is seen in monitors where green light plus blue light plus red light gives you white light, in printing... as you can read, I use the word light, and it is a function of light, not of pigments...

CMYK is a system to describe the mixing of colours in the printing process to produce a variety or gamut of colours utilizing the basis of 3 colours and 1 tone: cyan, magenta, yellow and black... but modern inkjet printers have additional pigments to facilitate the printing of more colours than what most forms of CMYK can describe... we can say that these printers can produce more colours than CMYK can describe, that they can approach the gamut of colours that can be described by sRGB, but these printers do NOT print sRGB... like I mentioned earlier, printers can only print by adding pigments onto paper to increase density from empty white paper to black... modern inkjets can print more colour than CMYK because they use more than 4 inks, they take the colour depicted in an RGB file and translate it into a format that they can use to map out the colour with respect to its inks... but the actual printing process is still the same... let me state again, printers do not print any form of RGB... but printers DO accept and usually for most desktop printers only accept sRGB images...

what you see on the screen when you convert an image into CMYK is not an actual conversion of the file into CMYK, but a simulation of the image as it would be represented if it were printed in CMYK... the program that did the conversion did not magically convert your monitor into a CMYK device... monitors can only output with RGB... but as the variety of colours that most monitors can display is greater than CMYK can describe, there is no big problem in this simulation... problems in printing arise when the printers variety of colours is not wide enough to reproduce all the colours that an RGB file can describe...

of course this is OT, but just a post to clear some misconceptions

back to topic of this thread, again to the TS, just start by profiling you display and print with defaults, and if still have problem, you can try kgston's method or you can get someone with proper equipment to profile your printer... end of story

 

[lsisaxon]

i found that the exposure and color of the shoots taken and preview from the lcd from DSLR and laptop is good.but when it comes to printout directly from my printers,injet and dye sub;it looks so yellowish[no color correction made].
Pls help
can we get what we see from the laptop to print exactly the same???

Let me guess.. you're using Canon printers?

To verify if your LCD on camera and laptop is ok, send an image for printing in ColourLab Adelphi, tell them no correction, then compare the results.

For inkjet printers, the paper type settings, the ink and the paper used will a difference as well.

 

[wesley]

will it be better to just get the color calibrator for the screen only,the printer no need right?once the screen is accurate,the printer will be accurate liao what...............correct me if i'm wrong.using dye sub and inkjet printer ,both color quite similar but screen is wayoff......................:dunno:

Hi Studiolabmaster,

No unfortunately, most retail printers (dye sub and inkjets) are not calibrated when they leave the factory, so you'll have to calibrate the devices either using a colormeter or spectrometer or self adjust using the trial and error method. I tried the cheaper alternative and though the color was really good, it was about 5% to 10% off, it had a very slight magenta cast that I couldn't get rid off. I was pretty ok with the results at first but I couldn't live with it after a while coz i was doing images that had tighter color tolerances. Even when it was a shade or 2 off, the mood of the image would change.

So I took the plunge and got the Gretag Macbeth Eye One Photo. It wasn't cheap, but I had no choice, and honestly, this device is one of the most powerful gadget a photographer can get, it's highly underrated though coz the cost puts most people off. It produces a ICC profile that takes over the printer driver preferences, and for inkjets, you can produce accurate ICC profiles for different types of paper. Btw, it can calibrate the screen, printer and even the camera if you need to. I think Cathay offers a service to calibrate screen and printer, maybe you can give them a call?

I hope you get your color issues solved, I understand that it is a big pain. All the best.

Regards
Wesley