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Printing from Affinity - wishy-washy prints


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I printed an A4 montage as a Christmas present only to discover that it emerged from the printer as a disappointingly washed-out print. I know now this was mostly my fault as I had never set up Affinity for printing and it was using its default settings. I usually save my photos from Affinity and print from the Epson Easy Print programme. However as it was A4 I printed direct.

I watched the videos about printing and soft proofing hoping I had found the solution. I didn't know what document profile to use so I chose Adobe RGB (1998) as that's what I used in Photoshop. I set the soft proofing to the printer paper I was going to use and ticked gamut check. I tweaked the curves (as shown in the video) until the grey splodges had disappeared. I increased the vibrance and HSL a little as too much brought some grey splodges back. I also found I needed to sharpen the photo more. The rendering intent was Absolute Colourimetric (None of them seemed to make any difference.)  I did remember to turn off the soft proofing layer.

In the print dialogue I chose the printer profile to match the printer paper but I didn't know what to put in the Profile option at the top so that was left as Custom. The photos I printed were certainly an improvement as far as colour intensity was concerned but were a bit darker and rather muddy.

As you can tell I am well out of my comfort zone when dealing with setting up the printer and soft proofing (which is totally new to me) so if any experts out there could give me some pointers on printing from Affinity and soft proofing I would be very grateful (or point me to some info already available that I might have missed).

TIA

And a belated Happy New Year to all

 

 

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I am far from an expert when it comes to printing in general or specifically with Affinity (I've done all my past printing with Lightroom & profiles for my RAW files printed on a Canon Pro 100 wide format printer).  But one general suggestion I would have is to remind you that when setting up the printer & doing your soft proofing, bear in mind that the image you see on the computer screen is back lit, but the image when printed on your paper will be lit with reflective light.  So it is quite often a good idea to add some brightening with increased exposure or brightness sliders to adjust for this.  It sounds like this might help with the dark & rather muddy output you are getting.

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Thanks for the reply, jedorme.

I have had a quick go at increasing the brightness but anything beyond 1% produced the dreaded grey splodges again in one photo but I did manage a 7% increase in another. I have yet to try printing again but hope to do so later this week.

I seem to have very little leeway when it comes to the adjustments. Most only allow me a tiny adjustment before I get the grey splodges again. I don't know if that is normal behaviour.

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Can you possibly post a copy of the images with these splodges as you call them.  Hard to tell without seeing your results, or how a histogram of your images would look, to tell what is really going on.  What kind of camera are you using, RAW or JPEG & assume if RAW you are using Affinity as your RAW converter.  What size files are you working with?  Might possibly be some kind of color management issues also.  But if we could see what you are getting in results it might help to give you some better suggestions for dealing with it.

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Thanks for the reply.

I am going to be away from my computer for a few days so I will get back to you then with more info. The grey splodges are what shows up on my image when I use the soft proofing adjustment. I remove them using curves but have very little leeway with Levels, HSL etc

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Could be a faint sun/flash flare that shows when making adjustments, can't think much else that would cause grey splodges other than dirt on the camera mirror etc. What is the colour format set to? 

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