LR Soft Proofing

[martyns96992618]

Hi

I'm having some issues with printing with the Canon 100 Pro, with the colour not the same as the LR soft proof. I'm now going to try printing with the Print Studio Pro plug in. My question is do I still soft proof through Lightroom or make adjustments with Print Studio Pro?

Thanks in advance

Martyn

[Laura Shoe]

I don't know anything about the Print Studio Pro plugin, but be sure that you are selecting the printer/paper profile and then in the printer driver software, turning color management off.  This is the most common cause of color mismatches. Otherwise, here are a few more:

• printer nozzles clogged
• evaluating the print under colored light (tungsten light bulbs, for example)
• your monitor isn't properly calibrated.

[JP Hess]

I agree. I have the Canon Pixma Pro-100. You have to make sure that you are using the right paper profile regardless whether you are using Lightroom to print or the Canon plug-in to print. If everything is set properly, I get the same results from using either one. Consequently, I seldom use the Canon plug-in. I see there is little benefit to using it.

[martyns96992618]

Thanks for the advice.

I have covered every base I think.

• Correct ink installation.
• Turned off the Printers control of the colour intensity.
• Using the correct ICC for the paper used.
• Soft proof prior to printing.

The results are still the same with sunsets coming out more red than Yellow showing on the screen. The only thing will be to calibrate the screen, but I'm running Lightroom on an old Toshiba laptop that has only a limited calibration feature. I feel an upgrade will be in order before I can achieve decent prints.

[Laura Shoe]

Hi Martyn (?), I'm not convinced that turning off printer color intensity has turned off color management completely. Can you please provide screenshots of your printer driver settings?

Also I would very strongly recommend purchasing a calibration device, such as a ColorMunki Display rather than using your laptop calibration feature. I don't feel that you need to upgrade your monitor to get correct prints (unless there really is something wrong with it.) Certainly there are other benefits of upgrading though.

[JP Hess]

Do you actually know how to turn off color management on the printer? It's critical that you only have color management by either Lightroom or the printer. As Laura indicated, turning off color intensity probably isn't going to solve the problem.

[martyns96992618]

Okay Folks

Some screen shots

Its the colour intensity part which opens up the colour correction which I set to none. This is all I have been turning off on the canon side of things and have left Lightroom side alone.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Martyn

[JP Hess]

Okay, that's right. That's how I turn off color management on my printer. Now additionally, you need to go into the paper type and choose the appropriate paper type. The paper you are using will have an instruction sheet telling what type to choose. But then, I don't think there are any paper profiles produced for that printer. With the Pixma Pro 100, after making those settings in the printer driver I can go to Lightroom and choose the exact profile for the paper that I'm using. And that profile is specifically for my printer. Without the paper profile, I'm wondering if you are not better off letting the printer manage the color. I know I'm not helping you much because I've never used your printer. But without profiles available, I think you are to experiment the other way and see what happens. A couple of small 4 x 6" prints isn't going to use up a lot of ink and will give you a good idea of what to do.

[Laura Shoe]

Those are the correct settings, Martyn, if you are selecting a profile in LR - but if in fact you don't have a profile available for your specific paper, then I agree with Jim  - choose Managed by Printer in Lightroom's Print Job panel, and ICM in the printer driver manual adjustment.

[martyns96992618]

Thanks for getting back Jim

When I installed the printer it came with paper profiles for the Canon range of photo papers which I then choose when soft proofing through Lightroom, i believe this works with a plugin that was installed when i first set it up if you were to print through Lightroom. I have also printed on gloss and semi gloss paper with different paper profiles again with the same results.

I have also printed through Print Studio Pro with only slightly better results, but not satisfactory. The end goal would be to print through Lightroom

All that I have done and advise given leads me to believe that the only other variable is the Display and calibration. Would this cause the could to be more red than yellow?

I'm finding it very frustrating as I believe I have a very capable printer.

[JP Hess]

Yes, it sounds to me like you have a monitor calibration problem. There are right ways and wrong ways to calibrate monitors. There are hardware devices you can purchase to do it the right way, I don't want to tell you how I do it the wrong way because it really isn't very reliable. But you've got to get that monitor to match the printer. It's the only way you'll ever get reliable prints. The Print Studio Pro plug-in isn't going to save you if the monitor isn't matched up properly. It's just that simple.

[martyns96992618]

Jim/Laura

Just for reference

Above is how its printing

And this is in Lightroom.

[JP Hess]

Something is definitely off, that's for sure. If you're using Windows, have you used their so-called calibration tool to adjust the monitor as best you can?

[Jao vdL]

Are you using a wide-gamut display by any chance? How are you calibrating it? I've now run into several wide gamut displays that were uncalibratable using even top-of-the line spectrophotometers and were always too red or too yellow. This was shocking as you are doing everything right but will still be getting bad results. That said hardware calibration is still essential.

[martyns96992618]

Thanks for your help.

I'm afraid I'm running in on a old Toshiba Satellite Pro. I know not ideal, saving for an upgrade. I have done the calibration that is offered within windows to no avail. As to a wide-gamut display you will have to help me there, not sure.

I'm thinking of getting a monitor and calibrator as an option and using it through the laptop.

[Jao vdL]

It's unlikely that that is wide gamut. More likely a very narrow gamut. Calibration using hardware is essential on those.

[martyns96992618]

Hi all.

I know this thread has been dead for a while and alas i'm no near to a solution. To this end I just about to purchase a Colormunki calibrator. A question for the more experienced in this area.....Would calibration rectify such a colour difference in the images above? The reason I ask is when I have uploaded to social media and viewed on different devices the colour difference is not there, if that makes sense.

Thanks again for you advice.

Martyn

[Jao vdL]

Screen calibration is essential so I would recommend you get a calibrator in any case. However, it only helps if your screen is the culprit. If it is your printer, your printer driver, or something else that is messing up the prints, you won’t see much of a change. You would be able to trust your screen better but it might not fix the problem with the printer. Just cautioning on expecting a panacea. You will have solved problem no1 but not the entire chain. ColormAnagement needs to be done from beginning to end. In many cases, the profiles supplied by the printer manufacturer or by the paper supplier are pretty good and you don’t need to do anything else than calibrating your screen. Sometimes the printing profiles are just not so good, and no screen calibration will help.

Is your colormunki of the spectrophotometer kind? In that case you should be able to do a test print and generate a printer profile that you can use inside Lightroom and get really good prints that way.

Sent from my ...

[JP Hess]

I don't know anything at all about the Colormunki. I have read accolades by others about it. You need the hardware device that reads directly from your monitor. But a well calibrated monitor is essential.

When the monitor matches the printer closely, and you use the appropriate paper profiles, you can expect your prints to match quite well. I did a little comparison last night with an image that I printed on three different Red River paper types on my Canon Pixma Pro 100. Three of these images are scanned thumbnails, and the far right image is an exported JPEG from Lightroom. The three images that are scanned images were soft proofed using Lightroom. Not a perfect match, for sure. But close enough for me.

[cmgap]

If you are printing your own work as the others have mentioned color calibration and the correct color profiles based on the paper you are using are critical for success. You can have a calibrated monitor and use the wrong icc profile and will be disappointed. The paper manufacturer you are buying from should have profiles on their site with recommendations.

[martyns96992618]

Thanks for all the advice.

The only variables I can think of as to why the colour is not as the screen is as follows

• Fault on printer - This is a new Canon 100 Pro, so I think the chances of this are slim.
• Wrong paper profile or poor profile from manufacture - I have used two different papers with the correct profiles, still with the same results.
• Conflicting Printer/LR colour control - I have turned off the colour control that the printer has, see in the thread before.
• Monitor calibration - I run Lightroom on a rather crappy Toshiba Laptop (I know need an up grade) and this has not been calibrated.

Out of the above the only one I can think of is the Calibration, So that's the direction i'm going to go in.

[JP Hess]

Just for fun, do you want to share that image and let me see what I can print? It will be a small one, 4 x 6". But I have the Pixma Pro 100.

[Todd Shaner]

martyns96992618  wrote

Out of the above the only one I can think of is the Calibration, So that's the direction i'm going to go in.

We can do a first-order check of  your display calibration with the image file used for the screenshots in your reply #11. Export the original file with your Develop settings to DNG file format using the below settings and post the DNG file on Dropbox or other file sharing site. We can then compare it to the posted picture of the print.

[martyns96992618]

It would be interesting to see what you print. I have uploaded it to my Dropbox account in the format that you requested. This is my first upload, so I believe I need your email address. If you want to message me that would be great, again if this is the wrong way let me know as I have never used Dropbox.

Thanks again for your help.

JimHess​ - Thanks for your offer as well Jim. As above if you let me know your details.

Martyn

[Todd Shaner]

Marty you need to create a Dropbox share link for the DNG file, copy it, and place it in a reply here. If you prefer to keep it private click Jim's and my avatar and then on 'Message' in the upper right-hand corner of our profiles paste the share link in your message and we'll take a look.I also suggest uploading the actual camera shot image file of the picture to Dropbox. Screenshots have a display profile applied, which we want to avoid for this comparison. Thank you.