Ideal printing settings in lightroom or PS CS3

Hello again

I've been recently ploughing thru a pile of glossy paper experimenting printing, and I have found,,Lightroom gives me lines in the print but exposed pretty much spot on, and Photoshop CS3 print quality is peeerfect..but on most shots is too under exposed, I tried adding brightness but this made the image too dodgy...whats my best options please if anyone can help me?

Cheers

Paul

Hello again

I've been recently ploughing thru a pile of glossy paper experimenting printing, and I have found,,Lightroom gives me lines in the print but exposed pretty much spot on, and Photoshop CS3 print quality is peeerfect..but on most shots is too under exposed, I tried adding brightness but this made the image too dodgy...whats my best options please if anyone can help me?

 

Cheers

Paul

Which printer are you using? I don't understand the lines in print part, since those should be independent of the software that is doing the printing. Letting us know which printer and what workflow (which kind of calibration) and which computer system (mac or pc).

Bill

Hey Paul,

In my expereince Lightroom does a great job in printing. My best results have beeen when I have LR control the print as opposed to the printer. Make sure you have the correct printer driver and paper setup. There is a video that explains some of the printing details at Adobe Lightroom Killer Tips website. Really works well for me.

Good luck,

Steve

I've been recently ploughing thru a pile of glossy paper experimenting printing, and I have found,,Lightroom gives me lines in the print but exposed pretty much spot on, and Photoshop CS3 print quality is peeerfect..but on most shots is too under exposed, I tried adding brightness but this made the image too dodgy...whats my best options please if anyone can help me?

1. Calibrate your monitor

2. Calibrate your printer

These two steps will save masses of paper and hours/days/weeks of time. Regular re-calibration will maintain consistency and quality over time.

I don't print anything at home (the magazines do this for me.....and pay for the right to do so) but accurate colour management is fundamental to printing any image with consistent results. It was no mistake that I spent more on the monitor & calibration kit than any other piece of computer hardware.

Thanks for the replies, I will try those Killer-tips first of all Steve, cheers, my printer is a HP 460. As I said the quality thru Photoshop is perfect apart from the under exposure so the lines from Lightroom are not the fault of the printer, probably the colour management somewhere, I'll have a fiddle tho as you say Steve...I am printing from a macbook air, I can use windows but dont see this will make a difference as the lines are not there thru photoshop. I do not have any calibrator as yet, but after I have tried all these tips I may then resort to one but I believe they only work on one monitor so that would mean I need 3?

whats my best options please if anyone can help me?

Here's a good start ... http://www.luminous-landscape.com/videos/camera-print.shtml ... highly recommend this if you are going to print for yourself.

1. Calibrate your monitor

Absolutely critical - if you aren't seeing it correctly on your screen, all bets are off. This is a MUST.

2. Calibrate your printer

Eh ... not so important unless you are using weird papers and inks. I have found that lots of the manufacturer provided ICC profiles for specific printers and papers are darn good.

If I needed a custom printer profile, I'd buy one ... this guy is on the Lightroom development team and makes very nice profiles ... Eric Chan ... he charges $20 a profile.

http://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan/photos/profiles.html

Thanks Jeremy, I'm not so sure if I could manage nearly 7 hours to watch a video to be honest.

Well I tried the killer tips Steve and it definately improved the quality from Lightroom, all the lines are gone and I get the same result as I do now from Photoshop, but too dark, the image I am trying has quite a bit of black in the background, what I thought of trying to remove the underexposure was to adjust the exposure in lightroom to give me what I get in the print result, and add the differnce onto the image so it may reduce it to where I want it...but sadly that never worked and it came out close to what I asked for, all too bright, so I tried just upping it a value of 1 and it did it ok, colours were a bit bright but I ran put of paper now to experiment any more!

A question about the callibrators....If my exposure is set ok visually and also matches the value of it, how could it be wrong and need callibrating?

T...... colours were a bit bright but I ran put of paper now to experiment any more!

A question about the callibrators....If my exposure is set ok visually and also matches the value of it, how could it be wrong and need callibrating?

I think you have answered your own question to a certain extent. Colour management of the screen is critical and the human eye can be fooled. It's also worth remembering that none of us underwater photographers actually know the real colour of the subjects we shoot is. View a sea urchin with a HID bulb and the colour is different to flash and different again to a tungsten-based source. Take the sea urchin out of the water (no, I am not suggesting you should......) and its under sunlight and the colours changed. Which one is "right"?. Everyone has accepted what colour things should be...but the computer monitor will have it's own ideas and so will the viewer.

Its not just exposure, its the colours represented on screen and "ok visually" might not be quite spot on - what do you have to compare it to? The RAW file? A print?

Think of the number of variables (red, blue, green levels, monitor brightness, ambient light in the room, ink used, paper used.....settings and levels applied by the user in the application, the application itself.....the age of the monitor.....I could go on....) and then try to manage all of these by the human eye. For me, this is impossible. Calibration ensures consistency.

As a first step, ensure the screen you are using can be calibrated. Not all monitors are equal.

Thanks Jeremy, I'm not so sure if I could manage nearly 7 hours to watch a video to be honest.

A) I'm sure you've spent more time than that reading this board

B) I'm also sure you will waste about that amount of time and money at least trying to figure it all out yourself!

but too dark

If you don't calibrate your monitor and you don't use standardized print viewing conditions you will never get good screen to print matching. You will always be shooting in the dark.

A question about the callibrators....If my exposure is set ok visually and also matches the value of it, how could it be wrong and need callibrating?

Huh?

As a first step, ensure the screen you are using can be calibrated. Not all monitors are equal.

hmm...yeah I best, that would be silly if I bought a callibrator then realised I couldnt use it!

A) I'm sure you've spent more time than that reading this board

 

B) I'm also sure you will waste about that amount of time and money at least trying to figure it all out yourself!

 

 

 

If you don't calibrate your monitor and you don't use standardized print viewing conditions you will never get good screen to print matching. You will always be shooting in the dark.

 

 

 

Huh?

true Jeremy!

The image (on thread linked below) looks exposed fine to me and it has a value of +0.5 on exposure so I thought this was acceptable for what I see, If I apply white balance to what I see is already white, I wonder how that will affect it, so from that hunch I guess the differences are not only in the exposure value

I will eventually aim to get a calibrator I guess its the only way from all the comments, I just have to find which ones best for 3 screens and if they would all work on them...

Sorry, continued here

http://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=34857

Paul,

A point to note. The caliberators dont work well on Laptop screens as there is less adjustment. I tried caliberating my Dell LED laptop screen once and it was a bad move... When you run the software it asks you what kind of controls you have on the monitor to change. Normal PC monitors usually tend to have lots of different settings (especially anything fairly reasonable LCD upwards) so there is much more the software can change.

For my laptop it was severly limited...

Ive found the type of paper used often makes a big difference to the quality of the output, there are so many different ones to choose from, different weight's, types and makes. I have printed the same image with the same settings on 2 different papers before and you would never guess to look at them - difference between going on the wall and going in the bin...! Its worth getting a couple of small pack's of 10x15's in the different varieties to experiment with so you dont use all your ink. Original HP inks are a must as well, the aftermarket\compatibles are very variable and usually not a scratch on the geniunine inks.

As Jeremy said, the ICC profiles make a big difference and work well with Photoshop its also worth giving that a go....

Happy printing!

Thanks Mark,

I've just ordered a batch of HP semi-gloss paper to comply with my printer, so hopefully that may improve things, my previous paper was kodak and I couldnt get a profile for my printer for it, they only had epson or canon, but its all finished now!

I've got a macbook air laptop and I bet I cannot calibrate it, will have a google.

Is there an easy way to tell if a screen is "calibratable"?