[sculptor]

Hi, folks,

My deep sky images (typically 0.5 to 1 hr stacks of guided 60-90 sec exposures (EOS 20Da at F/6.7 or F/10, ISO 1600) with flats and darks and so forth) look pretty pleasing on the screen (HP LCD), but less so on paper (Canon Pixma IP4200, glossy resin paper). In particular, the (currently topical) nebulosity around rho ophiuchii looks great on the screen, but on paper is barely there. I play around with gamma, or with the settings for the printer itself, and find gamma = 1.4 and flogging the CMY channels on the printer to max achieves a result that looks almost just barely ok in bright sunlight but not indoors. I can have black everything, or blue nebula on grey background, but can't get blue nebula on black background.

Any recommendations on (a) how to make prints in general look like screen in general, or (b) what printer to buy. Printers are ridiculously cheap compared with the rest of the gear, but seem to let the side down.

Cheers.