Why don’t my prints match my screen?
This is the number one question I am asked by students and workshop attendees. It’s a source of endless frustration for those asking the question and further proof to those of us being asked the question, that color management for the masses is still not a reality.
This is the first in a series of posts on the topic, and serves as an overview of issues that will be addressed in-depth over the coming weeks. Some people love getting under the hood of this kind of stuff, tweaking settings, and thoroughly understanding how each link in the chain works. Others simply want to just make it work.”Dammit Jim, I’m a photographer, not a color scientist”! Both approaches are vaild, but obviously require different levels of information. Below I’ll give a broad overview of the necessary tools for a color-managed workflow. Without going down the rabbit hole, you’ll have a sense of what is required for predictable output. In upcoming posts I’ll delve more deeply into each step of the process, explaining the whys in addition to the how-tos.
If your goal is to have a print precisely match what you see on the screen, it’s important to understand that a monitor screen and a sheet of paper with ink on it have inherently different qualities. We will never mistake one for the other, so an exact, indistinguishable match is…well, impossible. And if you aspire to making a fine print, your aim is not merely to reproduce the look on your monitor, but to create a physical object— the print—that conveys a unique and personal meaning that cannot be fully understood just by viewing the image on a monitor. In other words, a great print possesses qualities that an onscreen image cannot. But, I’m getting ahead of myself, and for a vast majority of photographers the problem is simply getting a print that is not too light, too dark, too saturated or too contrasty compared to what they’ve got onscreen. This, fortunately, is absolutely possible.
The Monitor
The first obstacle to achieving a screen to print match is often the accuracy of the monitor itself. If you do not calibrate and profile your monitor you have absolutely zero chance of getting print output to match it. Few of us have unlimited budgets, but if you can’t spend the money for a colorimeter with decent software, you can stop reading now. Similarly, if your monitor is more than 5 years old, you are at a severe disadvantage. Monitors age, and at a certain point, they cannot reliably reproduce expected colors. This is especially noticeable with neutrals like whites, grays and blacks.
Once you’ve got a well-functioning monitor and have gone through the calibration/profiling process, the next step is to create the appropriate working conditions. Simply put, when evaluating images onscreen, the monitor should be the brightest light source in the room. Furthermore, no other ambient light should be shining directly on the screen. And finally, you should always be looking at the monitor from a head-on position. LCD displays have a limited viewing angle. And on lower quality monitors, shifting your head even a few degrees off center can severely distort colors and contrast.
Below are five situations to avoid. If any of these apply, accurate color will not be possible.
Inaccurate Color: Five Causes
1. A monitor that has not been calibrated and profiled
2. An old and/or low quality monitor incapable of displaying a neutral gray from edge to edge
3. A room with bright fluorescent lights, like an office cubicle
4. Direct sunlight hitting your display
5. Working with the monitor titled up or down at extreme angles
The Printer
Seeing accurate color onscreen is one thing. Reproducing those same colors on a printer is quite another. Here is all the justification you’ll ever need for buying a new printer. Current inkjet models have a significantly wider color gamut than models from even 3-4 years ago. A printer with a wider color gamut is capable of reproducing more of the colors that can be displayed on a monitor. There’s no substitute for this capability. A printer can either produce a certain color or it can’t. If colors on the monitor exceed the printer’s gamut there’s no way to get a match. One important thing to note is that achieving the widest gamut possible on any printer requires using a glossy paper instead of a matte paper. With glossy papers you have a greatly extended palette of bright saturated colors. Matte papers have their own wonderful characteristics and can yield stunning prints. But for rich saturated colors and deep dark blacks, glossy papers have a wide advantage.
Printer Profiles and Soft-Proofing
For the same reason you need to have your monitor profiled, an accurate printer profile is a must for getting predictable color on the page. A custom profile, ie one made based on the output of your specific printer, represents the most ideal solution. Canned or generic profiles like those that come when you install the printer driver or the downloads from paper manufacturers’ web sites will be less precise. However, with the latest generation of pro-level inkjet printers, there is relatively small unit to unit variance, so these canned profiles can be quite good.
Whether using canned or custom profiles, it’s vital that you use the correct settings in both the application’s print dialog box and the print driver menu. These vary among software and printer models. In an upcoming post we’ll look at settings for Epson and HP printers using both Photoshop and Lightroom.
One of the most helpful features in Photoshop with regard to print-matching is the ability to soft-proof an image. In this workflow you view the image onscreen filtered through the actual printer profile to be used when printing. Photoshop provides an onscreen simulation of how that image will print. This simulation can mimic the brightness and hue of the paper white and the density of the blacks the printer can produce. While soft proofing doesn’t eliminate the need to see an actual hard copy, it gives you an opportunity to deal with out of gamut colors before you burn through ink and paper. We’ll look at that workflow in its entirety in an upcoming post. But I’ll mention here that for this technique to work, you must have an ICC profile for your specific printer/paper/ink combination. The higher quality the profile, the more accurate the results you’ll see when soft-proofing.
Print-Viewing Conditions
We still have one more color-management aspect to address. When the print comes out it’s crucial to evaluate it under a consistent light source that mimics the illumination of your monitor. Incandescent bulbs, with their yellow tint will never be able to match the color balance of your monitor. Viewing prints next to a window is problematic because the temperature and intensity of sunlight changes over the course of the day. Overcast skies provide nice even window light, but unless you live in Scotland, you can’t count on these conditions every day. There are companies that make inexpensive desk lamps with color-corrected bulbs that will get you in the ballpark. A light fixture with a dimmer is the ultimate solution because then you can match the brightness level illuminating the print to that of the monitor. And if your budget can handle it, you can purchase a light viewing booth, which provides extremely accurate print to screen comparisons.
Screen to Print Mismatches: Five Causes
1. Using a printer more than 1 generation behind today’s models
2. Printing an image with rich, vibrant colors on a matte paper
3. Neglecting to soft-proof the image before printing
4. Viewing the print in light that is too bright or too dark
5. Incorrect application and print driver settings
This is the bird’s eye view of the problem. As you can see, there are a number of areas and issues that must be addressed for successful screen to print matches to occur. The goal is attainable but it’s a lot more work than the monitor and printer ads suggest. Over time, more and more of these steps will require less user intervention. But until then, we’ll explore each of these areas in detail in upcoming posts. You’ll learn what you can do today, to get the colors you expect.
Tags: color management, computer, digital, inkjet, photography, Photoshop, printing, tutorial
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March 31, 2009 at 9:00 am
Good info on printing it will be useful to lot of people