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DarrenDriven

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Everything posted by DarrenDriven

  1. I have three identical Pro-100s. When this started happening I got so frustrated that I threw #1 away, unboxed #2 and started with fresh ink. Did NOT solve the problem. Thanks for the honest update, @GabrielM, but unless it's systemic in all Pro-100s or happened to be a factory defect that coincidentally appeared in two printers (purchased at different times/places) then I doubt it's the printer itself. I guess I'll have to try a new computer with a fresh install of Affinity Designer. I get that this is like chasing an invisible spider. Just sucks.
  2. Tried two tests allowing the printer to manage the color. One with the correct paper color profile (Canon Semi-Gloss) and again with the sRGB IEC61966-2.1 applied to the printer. Both tests resulted in prints that looked identical to when I print with the software controlling the color management. No change.
  3. No worries. Glad to know that you are aware. I LOVE your software and I want to continue to learn and master it... but this stupid little issue is driving me batty!!
  4. Do they respond in here? Is there a tag or a trigger to have them review the topic?
  5. At this point... maybe I should completely uninstall and reinstall Designer? I'm pulling out my hair. I just want things to work like they did when I first started using the software and my new printer. I've invested countless hours trying to troubleshoot this and I have nothing to show for it. Anyone have a link to show me how to uninstall completely? I can only find reference to Mac articles/topics.
  6. I just tried exporting my work to a large PNG and then used Windows to print that PNG on the Pro-100 and the colors actually came out looking pretty close to what they should... not perfect, but close. I then imported the same PNG that Windows printed pretty good into Affinity Designer and printed it using the same color profiles that I used when Windows printed and I got messed up colors again. WTF? So.... this confuses me more. I'm not sure what it tells me. I think it means that things get screwy while printing from Designer to the printer, but exporting the digital art seems to work just fine?
  7. Argh! ICM got me nowhere. I tried it with Perceptual and Relative Colorimetric (as per the link's instructions) and neither made any noticeable difference. I found a print that I made just before things went haywire and the biggest difference you can see is how my logo appears. The old print shows it as a bluish-gray, as it should be, and every single new print shows it as a bright and dark blue. Nothing changed on my computer, printer, ink or paper when this happened. It just started printing this way one day and never has been the same since. ...and here is my old (correct) print compared to the posters that I have done at the print shop. The logos are very similar in color. This backs up my theory that I am outputting the correct colors from my Affinity Designer source material. And here is the Canon print preview screen that is the last step before hitting print. Again, it shows that coloring looks correct to me. I think I might have to ditch this printer completely. As I do more and more research online I run into others using the same printer with similar issues. None of them ever seem to be resolved. Maybe this just isn't worth continuing down the rabbit hole.
  8. So I noticed that in my soft-proof layer I could choose the Adobe RGB (1998) color profile and all parts of my poster are within the gamut. I got excited and hoped that if I printed using that profile it would work... but nope. Still comes out with certain colors (blues/greens) much darker. In the Designer workspace I can choose the appropriate Canon Pro-100 <SG> 1/2 profile and with Gamut Check deselected the screen shows exactly the correct coloring. When I print I get a darker, muddier version with some colors matching great and some not well at all. As for making sure that the printer isn't doing color management... I am not sure exactly how to do that. I think I might have it turned off, but 30 minutes of googling down rabbit holes hasn't improved my confidence. When printing, I choose printer properties, check the "Color/Intensity Manual Adjustment" button and a Manual Color Adjustment dialog box appears. The second tab allows me to select None for color correction and that is the extent of any settings that seem to control printer color control. I realized that another possible issue is that I design and print from one computer, then my printer is attached to another computer on the network. I just ran a long USB from the design computer straight to the printer in the hopes that it might help, but I got the exact same results of strange colors. All tests from now on will be done with the printer connected straight to the design computer. Here is my 50th print of the same damn design. Printed with all color profiles set to what they "should" be and printer connected directly to the design printer. Blues are WAY off still.
  9. Used this video to get acquainted with soft-proofing: https://vimeo.com/120563699 Wow. I had no idea this existed. I tried it out using my Canon printer profile for the proper paper, using Gamut Check, and I got this: (Can I just choose a printer profile that fits within my gamut and shows no gray areas?)
  10. Hmmm... the Canon software provides a print preview and I've been using that. It matches what I see in the Affinity Designer workspace... but then it prints differently. So maybe I shouldn't be using it. I will do more research on the soft proofing aspects of Affinity Designer. And oops, here is the Affinity print dialog:
  11. I design vector art in Adobe Illustrate using a color picker from photos (for accuracy) to paint in the correct colors. The art is exported as high-res PNG and imported into Affinity Designer where it appears to be the same color as my original design. (Originally the colors would look wrong at this point because the color profile for my monitor had gotten changed) I am confident that up to this point everything is working correctly because when I send the artwork from Designer to my print shop the resulting posters are printed correctly. When I print from Affinity Designer to my Canon Pro-100 the resulting prints have colors that do not quite match the screen. Much of the coloring looks good, but blues and greens are off... and some colors that have very low saturation on the screen print with higher saturation on paper. Windows Device Monitor Color Profile: sRGB IEC61966-2.1 Document Color Profile: sRGB IEC61966-2.1 Printer Profile: Canon PRO-100 <SG> 1/2 Photo Paper Plus Semi-Gloss I use the "Preview before printing" setting on the Canon-PRO print dialog to soft proof -- no layers to turn on or off or delete. Low-resolution export of my source material. Coloring looks accurate here. Closeup of one of the stranger-outputting cars. Coloring looks accurate here. Now are four different versions printed with four different printer profiles. I didn't mark down which profiles I used late last night because I was too frustrated. One of them is printed with the appropriate Canon Pro-100 profile, one is with the same sRGB profile used for my document/monitor, and two randomly-chosen printer profiles as experiments.
  12. Oh yeah, one last note. When any of my pieces go to the print shop where they use professional printing equipment to run my posters, the coloring always looks spot-on with what my screen shows. This backs up my impression that something software/driver-related is screwing things up between my computer and my printer.
  13. Well I'm back. I can't believe that this is still an issue. Colors are still printing wrong. I'm using the sRGB IEC61966-2.1 color profile for the document in Affinity Designer and I've tried almost every color profile on my computer for the printer profile but nothing works right. I am so exhausted and confused. I know there should be a logical step-by-step process to make this work but for all the time I've spent researching I just end up even more confuse than when I began. Some color profiles get the red right, but then the blue is wrong. Or the gray is blue. Or the orange is brown. Nothing I've tried so far gets all the colors to print the way they appear on my monitor. Is anyone out there available for a consult via email or chat or something? I need someone with knowledge to help me through this... I am at a total loss. Things are so damn close, but just wrong enough that I can't be happy with the output.
  14. Things are still off a little... darker than they should be. They are close, but not really correct. I just haven't had time to troubleshoot anymore.
  15. I have no idea... but now that I know how to check and change the settings I'm prepared!
  16. Argh! I didn't have instructions dumbed-down enough for me to figure them out until @GabrielM posted the link that specifically walked me through the procedure. Thank you for your help, too! Apparently here in the States you could buy a new Canon camera and basically get a free PRO-100 along with it. Lots of people were asking $200-250 for their unopened printers on Craigslist and I bought every single one that I could talk down to $100!
  17. Followed the instructions in that post and found how to view and change the color profile for my monitors... guess what? Somehow my Canon PRO-100 printer profile was setup as my color profile for my monitor! I fixed that and BOOM! My truck imports orange now! I picked up three PRO-100s for $100/ea new on CL because of a rebate promo that Canon was running. They're pretty cool to have around for that price! I think the added benefit of the PRO-10 would be lost on me. I only print graphics, not photos, so it's already kind of overkill.
  18. Here is a quick file that I threw together and imported the orange and blue trucks... I threw the original color screen cap on this image just for reference. Hmmm... well I unplugged the 2nd monitor and it didn't change any of the color rendering, so maybe that's not it. I even rebooted without the second monitor disconnected and it didn't affect it.
  19. This is correct. I see the message saying that sRGB is being used since there is no color information included in the PNG. But now that I reinstalled Affinity Designer I see a red truck when I open the PNG directly... it isn't orange anymore like it was before the fresh install. Now when I change this document's color profile from sRGB to Canon PRO-100's printer profile (which used to cause the PNG to appear the correct color) I get a momentary flash of the correct orange color, then it appears red again. Fawk.
  20. Two more things real quick. Now that I reinstalled Designer when I open the PNG directly (instead of placing it) I see a red truck now. No longer orange like it used to look. That's annoying. The ONLY way I seem to be able to view my colors on the screen correctly is when I use the Canon PRO-100 printer driver as my document color profile. If I do that then I see the colors properly on screen, they render properly on the print preview and they come out of the printer pretty damn close. Why is it a bad thing to use the printer driver as my color profile if it seems to work?
  21. Trying a couple more things... I use Precision Colors refillable printer cartridges so I ran one print using my reserve set of OEM Canon inks just to make sure that this isn't an ink issue. Nope. I got exactly the same results with the Canon inks as I did with the Precision color inks. I created a new document in Designer that is designed for Web instead of Print. Used custom presets for size (13x19 inches) and the default RBG/8 & sRGB settings. Went back in to double-check my settings and the document type was NOT set for Web anymore, but for Print. ? I changed it to Web, saved it and checked it again... back to Print. Did a couple more experiments and apparently if I choose Inches for the document units then the document type is automatically set to Print instead of Web. I don't know that this matters or not. I didn't go any farther with this idea. Ugh, then I completely uninstalled Designer from my PC, rebooted, installed fresh and created a new document... and it popped up with all the specific settings that I setup for my last document before the reinstall! Somehow even when uninstalling everything it saved settings somewhere. I quickly placed the orange truck PNG into my new document and it appears red. FAWK! Uninstalled a 2nd time and searched my HD... found that a bunch of settings were saved in /Users/<user>/AppData/Roaming/Affinity/Designer/1.0 so I deleted everything in there (and the separate 1.0 Trial preferences that were never removed) and reinstalled again. New document w RGB/8 & sRGB... imported my orange truck.... the damn thing looks red. I actually have a separate print server on the other side of my office that runs three different printers. Maybe the issue is in that other computer? I ran a long USB cable directly to my PRO-100 from my main PC and printed directly. The damn orange truck looks and prints red. I'm done with this for the week. I have no idea WTF is going on. I've wasted several days just trying to output a print that looks like what I created and it just shouldn't be this hard. (sigh)
  22. Thank you for the tutorial links. One reason I love Designer is because of the support. I'm watching them right now. Since my artwork generally contains multiple imported PNG files (see above, sometimes hundreds of individual PNGs) then if I start adjusting colors to make my orange perfect will throw off seven other red-orange illustrations... it seems like a rabbit hole that might just cause insanity? Going to watch some more tutorials now...
  23. Let me start off by saying that your tutorials are some of the best I've seen. I've written my fair share of DIY articles, etc, so I know just how much work goes into them. I'm blown away. Thank you. So, that is a LOT of information to absorb. Let me parse it bit by bit. I tried to determine the EXIF information in my PNG using the command line tool you suggested, but my DOS is embarrassingly rusty. I wasn't able to get it to work. So I tried a couple of online EXIF readers... they couldn't find EXIF info on my PNG. Everything came up blank. Maybe you can take a look? I tried creating a CMYK document in Designer and importing my PNGs. The color looks close, but the blacks are washed out. I printed it and the orange appears reddish and the grays appear bluish. The issue here is that my artwork is used for both web AND print. My art started for the web (Flash movies) and recently I have began printing and selling the artwork. I have 500-ish illustrations created -- all in Adobe Animate -- so at this point changing the method of creation is pretty much impossible. I would probably scrap the entire project if I had to export and convert all the artwork. (shiver) I've been printing this stuff on my PRO-100 for most of a year without any problems. Everything worked perfectly... the colors on the screen matched the colors that came out of the printer. Some of my posters feature 300 of my illustrations. If I had to rebuild each one inside of Designer it would take me... well, my first child is due in a month so I have no misconceptions about free time. I simply won't have any. It boils down to this: something recently changed in my digital processing that causes the imported PNGs to appear wrong on the screen and print wrong on paper. I won't deny that understanding the concepts of color space are important and I am learning a lot, but at this moment I am working feverishly to finish an addition on my house for the new nursery, trying hard to keep creating new art production to maintain a steady income, trying to please my unhappily-pregnant wife and I just can't cram all of this new information into my head with any success. I really just want to figure out what the hell I accidentally changed so that everything will start working like it did last week! Sorry for the rant. I'm tired haha.
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