Getting Accurate Color Output in Prints

[DianeF]

I have been doing some testing of color printing using Affinity Photo. I am using an IMac, OS El Capitan and an Epson 2400 printer. I am not getting colors that are completely accurate. I just used the Mac's calibration program to calibrate my monitor. I printed all the images on plain copy paper. For 2 below, I had set the RGB Color Profile, in the Preferences settings, to sRGB 61966-2.1. For the other 3 tests, I changed it to Adobe RGB (1998) after doing some reading on color management.

 

In this example, the color profile of the image I was trying to print was sRGB 61966-2.1 I believe this profile came from the camera from which the picture was taken. When I printed the image I tried a few different settings:

 

1.Color Sync (which lets Affinity manage the printing), using the Adobe RGB (1998) color profile, with the Plain Paper setting. I disabled the settings in the printer dialog box so that Affinity Photo, not the printer was controlling the settings. This gave me the best print, although the skin tones in the photo were too orangey red compared to how the picture looked on the monitor.

 

2. Color Sync using the same color profile on the printer, sRGB 6 1966-2.1, as was used in the document. Again, I used the plain paper setting and disabled the printer controlling the settings. This print was worse than the first, with the skin tones even more orangey and the blue objects in the image tending toward turquoise rather than deep blue.

 

3. Color Sync as in #2 except that I chose the Enhanced Matte setting. This gave me the worst colors, in terms of both the skin tones and the blues.

 

4. Epson controls the colors. This defaulted to a printer profile of SP2200 Standard PK, with plain paper settings, something I was not able to change. The colors I got were similar to the colors in #2 and not as bad as in #3.

 

Based on this experiment, I'm wondering if there is anything else that I should change either in my preferences or other settings. #1 is acceptable but not great. I don't want to use up all my expensive ink trying every combination of preference settings and color profile settings so I'm wondering if there is some rule of thumb that I should be following.

[v_kyr]

Well usually the general workflow is to calibrate the whole input/output chain parts, meaning to calibrate your monitor and your printer accordingly. The resulting ICC profile files are then setup seperately for these devices.

 

Your monitor ICC profile is just used for the monitor output, so the display shows hopefully nearly correct colors under the given gamma and lighting conditions. The printer ICC profile is in turn used just for your printer output, it depends on used printer model, paper type and inks etc., in order to give the best possible color match for that combination. - Usually there should have been some vendor specific printer ICC profile files already be preinstalled from Epson, when you installed your printer drivers. If not look and search after those for your Epson printer model on the internet via Google or the like.

 

You should try to setup some printer ICC profile file for your printer, which fits your printer model and the used paper type. For tryouts you can print either only little portions of an image or small sized down copies of that. Also note that higher quality glossy or mate photo paper should always give better color results than plain copy paper.

[DianeF]

V_kyr, thank you for your comments.

 

As I may not have clearly stated in my original post, I already have a series of ICC profiles for my printer. Those are what I was using when I made my test prints which I have done as small scale prints.

 

I experimented with having the printer manage the printing and with AP managing the printing. The best result I got was when AP managed the printing using a Color Sync profile Adobe RGB (1998). But the color was still somewhat off. So my question was whether there was anything else I could try to get better color output.

 

I understand that I will get better colors using higher quality photo paper, but I believe I should be able to get decent colors even with plain paper if I can figure out the right settings. I am a fiber artist and plan mainly to print on fabric, which is a whole other kettle of fish, so I wanted to get decent color settings first on paper before working on fabric. I have used this printer in the past with Photoshop and gotten good results on both plain paper and fabric, but that was awhile ago and with a different program.

 

If anyone has thoughts about other settings to try I'd be happy to experiment further.

[Fixx]

It is unclear what printer profile you used. Does plain paper setting include Epson profile?

[jhmdigital]

I'm not an expert but have been colour printing for many years and think that there may be one or more areas covering your problem.

 

Firstly any serious printer would not rely on Mac calibration. This relies on how you see colour, the colour temperature of the room light etc. The recommended way is to use  a display calibration unit such  X-rite Colour Munki to create a profile for your monitor. Then to recalibrate every month. Using such a device also allows you to use its ambient light monitoring facility which allows the profile to be adjusted real time as the lighting in the room changes e.g sun going in and out. or artificial light at night. {consider using a 'daylight' bulb].

 

Once you have a properly calibrated monitor you can concentrate on the printing.

 

The paper profiles built into your printer can give quite acceptable results provided the quality of the paper you are using is close to that the profile was created for. Unfortunately there can be a tremendous variation in 'plain' paper with both weight and surface finish which will dictate how much ink it absorbs and how it shows the colour when dry. Also remember that the colours of the print will change according to the light in which you are looking at it. e.g.. outdoor sunlight or indoor artificial lighting.

 

Most photographic paper manufacturers provide free profiles for each paper they produce which you can download and install

 

Once you have done the above try again using Colour Sync with Affinity managing the colour and the downloaded profile for the paper you are using and you should get acceptable results.

 

The bad news is that paper profiles will not help you with your fabric printing. You should still calibrate your monitor but different fabric will have different absorption rates and show the colours differently. I suspect you realise this from your "whole different kettle of fish'.

 

If you are in the UK try buying   digital photo paper from Permajet [ http://www.permajet.com ] and downloading the appropriate profile. They area small but extremely helpful company who may be able to give some pointers for fabric printing . They also run courses for digital photo printing.

 

Hope some of this helps.