Epson XP-960 ICC profiles bad colors ?

[geertd31145979]

Hi,

I can't seem to get the colors right when printing on my brand new Epson XP-960 from within Photoshop (CS6).

My monitor has been calibrated recently (Xrite i1 Profiler and i1 Display).  

PS Preferences are all OK I suppose :

Here's an example of my print settings in PS (image downloaded from Adobe website, girl too dark, but background OK)

And here are the printerdriver settings (Windows8.1 64bit) :

And this is what Epson print preview shows me :

The image turns out to be too bright, too much saturation an has rather odd color shifts.

When I let the printer do the color management instead of PS, the result is far more acceptable.

I have contacted Epson, but the say their PS knowledge is insufficient, and they asked me to contact Adobe :

"Alle ICC profielen zitten in de print driver en kunnen door Photoshop worden overgenomen. Echter onze kennis over Photoshop is niet toereiken om u hierop een goede support te bieden en adviseren u om contact op te nemen met Adobe"

Can anybody tell me what causes this bad output ?

Many thanks !

[Mylenium]

Well, do you actualyl use the printer profile for proof preview? Other than that your workflow makes no sense. You can't expect Photoshop to manage colors if you don't have a specifically measured print profile. PS has no idea about concepts such as photo paper vs. standard paper. It only cares for ink densities, mixtures, white/ black points and so on. Unless you establish a consistent setup, this will never work, hence indeed it would be smarter to rely on the printer's factory calibration.

Mylenium

[geertd31145979]

Hi Myl,

I read so many times that it's better NOT to let a printer do the calibration.

So I thought PS could make use of that canned profile "EPSON XP960 Series Premium Glossy" for good conversion of RGB colours to YCMK, for that particular printer and paper.  Does not seem to work however.

Proof Preview is PS using that Epson profile: looks OK on screen.

So the profiles I received when installing the Epson printer cannot be used within PS, then ?

And maybe I should have my own ICC profiles made ?

[davescm · Accepted solution]

Just for clarity - does the printed output, on Epson Premium Glossy paper, show the same issues as the on screen Epson preview?

Dave

[geertd31145979]

@

davescm, you made my day !

Indeed, printed on paper, the photo's are OK, no matter if PS determines colors or the printer itself ... (PS giving slightly warmer

results).

So it's Epson preview that caused my confusion.

If I let the printer determine printed colors, Epson preview looks OK.

But if I choose to let Photoshop determine colors, that preview is really bad !  Nevertheless printed output looks good.

Epson, do something about that, please.

My recently deceased Canon printer had the same issue, but then prints looked exactly like Canon preview : really bad when I let PS determine colors.

Many thanks, davescm !

Come to Belgium ... I'll get you a beer

[davescm]

Haha - you're welcome.

When Photoshop manages the colours it sends the colour values that have been transformed using the ICC profile to the printer so that on paper they look correct.

It sounds like that Epson preview is just showing those transformed values on the screen, which given that the Epson software will not be aware of exactly how the transform was done (i.e. what profile was used in Photoshop, what rendering intent etc) , is not really surprising.

Glad you're sorted now

Dave

[D Fosse]

Mylenium  wrote

Other than that your workflow makes no sense.

I think it makes perfect sense. The OP is using the correct printer profile, and all the other settings look right. Contrary to monitors, there's normally no need for printer calibration and custom profiles.

I can't explain this, other than a corrupt profile. Maybe something was lost in translation here (Dutch is, well, greek to me). Let me look it over more closely.

Oh, and let's keep the word "proof" out of it for now, shall we? That only confuses the issue. Proofing comes at a later stage, let's just solve the immediate issue first.