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.
I know what you are talking about. I've given up, for the time being, printing out images. The problem is in the calibration of your processing software, screen and printer. Less expensive LCD screens are notoriously difficult to calibrate accurately, as are cheaper printers. Ideally you need to use a device like a Spyder to calibrate your monitor and generate a profile that can be feed to your printer. Also using subtractive printers (CMYK) make life difficult if you are processing your images in Adobe RGB (1998) or sRGB.
One way around this is to process in RGB and then when you have finished your processing save a copy in CMYK colour space and use that to colour manage for your printer. It's not perfect but it's a temporary cheap fix.
IMO the Epson R800 and R1800 are hard to beat. They will give results as good as a lab and are reasonably economical to run. As for cheap, the R800 is around $500 street price and the R1800 around $1100. For that money you get pigment (paint) based inks with excellent light fastness (>80 years quoted with some media) and A4 (R800) or A3+ (R1800) printing (A3+ is roughly 30% larger than A3) including roll feed. There are also aftermarket bulk ink feed kits available from the US. Like all equipment there is a learning curve, but the printed results from these printers is excellent.
Having just bought a canon pixma 4300 and run off a few of my astro pics, I am quiet happy with the quality. The only thing it seems to do is over saturate the colors which I adjust before I print out.
Are you using good quality photo paper? can make all the difference..
My favorite canon photo paper pro glossy and the Epson premium glossy.
don`t think much of the cheaper and the kodak papers...
cheers
Many thanks for suggestions. Photoshop Elements sadly does't support CMYK. Presumably I need other software.
I guess part of the problem is room lighting and gloomy weather, but those things are facts of life.
Tried using Photoshop (Elements) to make test strips of RGB running from 0 to 255 in white, red, yellow, blue, and printing out on a black background. Most enlightening. The red and yellow strips looked ok, as did the bright end of the white strip (plain paper). The bright end of the blue strip, by comparison, just wasn't really very impressive. The dark ends of the white and blue strips were a dirty brown-back rather than dark versions of white and blue. It is obvious that no amount of fiddling with Photoshop RGB levels will help, because I can't output more than 100% blue (ie more blue than RGB=[0,0,255]), and certainly can't output "negative" amounts of R or G to get rid of the dirty brown black printed for a dark blue such as RGB=[0,0,25].
Perhaps the inks are at fault ? Will look into Epson R800 with pigment inks - thanks Acropolite.
I don't understand the relationship between RGB and CMYK. I understand the physics and the physiogy, and understand the difference between additive and subtractive colour mixing, but not the nuts and bolts of how RGB maps to CMYK, and whether it might be possible thereby to request purer blues than [0,0,255] or [0,0,25] from the printer, or whether the inks really are limiting.
As soon as you start printing stuff you open up a whole new kettle of fish...
You need to have your monitor calibrated & profiled
You need to have your image editing software set to the photographic industry standard of Adobe RGB 1998 (Just to Keep it Simple)
You need to have the appropriate printer profile in place when you print your image. (Most paper manufacturers have generic profiles available for specific paper/printer combos)
You can buy equipment to do this (I have an Gretag Macbeth/I1 Photo Spectrophotometer) which will calibrate & profile my monitor, my laptop, my TV, my scanner and my printer... also it will calibrate and profile LCD projectors with an optional accessory. not cheap at $2650 though but it is the best on the market and i wont recommend anything else.
If you do this you will get true WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get)
You can remove the printer from the equation by having your pro-lab print your images and soft-proof them in photoshop with the profile that your lab can supply you with. Needless to say you still need to calibrate your monitor.. this will set you back about $500-600 instead of $2650.
Also when home printing it is quite expensive to run. for example my EPSON R2400 with ilford gallerie photo paper costs about $5 per A4 print! you can slight lessen this cost if you buy the paper in rolls but this is only feasible if the printer is capable of accepting them.
At the high-end scale my EPSON 7800 which uses 24 inch (610mm) wide rolls of paper with 220ml ink cartridges an A4 print will cost about $2.20 a fairly big saving if you can afford the initial investment (and make it pay for itself)
The EPSON 4800 which is an A2 printer has the very same running costs. the unit itself hovers around $3200. the 7800 is $6000
edit: DONT USE CMYK mode as you will end up with crap prints!
it sounds like a lot to learn but once it is routine tis easy to maintain, i re-calibrate everything to keep things consistent every two weeks
I get excellent, almost WYSIWYG results from my Epson Stylus Photo 1410 (a tad under $600) - printing from PS CS2 (set for Adobe RGB 1998) and printing to Epson premium photo paper. And I haven't done any calibration to speak of either. The 1410 is an A3 printer too.
Hmm. Wikipedia explained colour profiles. Googling "Gretag Macbeth" quickly found entry-level screen calibrating gear (about $350) and services that will exchange a test print (and $70.00) for a colour profile and instructions on 'where to put them'. Thanks for that. It answers the "General" part of my initial question.
But Wiki also alleged that it was physically impossible to print a saturated blue on a CMYK inked printer, or to display a saturated cyan on an RGB monitor.
Presumably there are some printers that come closer than others. Eg if I asked my pet possum to walk in either muddy water or in coffee, and called the result a print, I would not get really good blues, no matter how calibrated the monitor, nor what colour profiles I fed him. (he is a brushtail, not a ringtail, so he has good artistic sense, just lousy inks).
I'm consistently hearing you guys saying that Epson is good (though huge price range) so perhaps that's where I should look.
It is all a bit daunting! Many thanks for the pointers.
Mike
basically from what i understand the more colours a printer has the better the result.. the new Epson K3 printers have three blacks (Photo Black, Light Black & Light Light Black) and 5 colours (Cyan, Light Cyan, Magenta, Light Magenta & Yellow)
there are printers out there with more i think HP has a red, and blue cartridge in there somewhere and they are also very highly regarded in the printing industry..
then there are the roland printers which are 12-15 ink but they are mega $$
Funny you should be saying this... Just last Monday, I took a shot of Eta Carina with my piggybacked Pentax, proudly put it into my astro files, then tried to print it. What looked terrific on the screen, came out completely green on paper. I have Canon Pixma 800 and use top qual photo paper.
Tried again after processing it in Iris - hopeless.
Eventually I got an almost acceptable print by printing directly from the SD card into the printer - bypassing computer completely. Colours on the Pixma are black, cyan, yellow and magenta I think.Also, from the SD card, a 4 x 6 print was different to a 5 x 7 - the larger the print, the greener it was
It all sounds depressingly complicated and expensive , this photography lark - I may soon be selling all my imaging stuff, telescope etc and just using the Mark 1 Eyeball and LB 12"
Funny you should be saying this... Just last Monday, I took a shot of Eta Carina with my piggybacked Pentax, proudly put it into my astro files, then tried to print it. What looked terrific on the screen, came out completely green on paper. I have Canon Pixma 800 and use top qual photo paper.
Tried again after processing it in Iris - hopeless.
Eventually I got an almost acceptable print by printing directly from the SD card into the printer - bypassing computer completely. Colours on the Pixma are black, cyan, yellow and magenta I think.Also, from the SD card, a 4 x 6 print was different to a 5 x 7 - the larger the print, the greener it was
It all sounds depressingly complicated and expensive , this photography lark - I may soon be selling all my imaging stuff, telescope etc and just using the Mark 1 Eyeball and LB 12"
OK.. Assuming you have photoshop of some sort (later than v6.0)
Step 1: see if you can rent a monitor calibration device of some sort, and calibrate your monitor. that way you have removed one variable from the problem. the printer may be printing as designed but the monitor may be so far out of wack that the print looks green instead of what it looks like on the screen.
Step 2: Go into the colour settings/preferences in Photoshop and make sure your RGB work space is ADOBE RGB 1998 AND NOTHING ELSE
Step 3: download generic printer profiles. these are generally free from the manufacturer and in most cases include most paper/printer combos. you then need to switch off all automatic colour stuff in the printer driver or everything you have done to solve the problem will be pointless. generally it is an option in the advanced setting somewhere that says "no colour adjustment" or something similar..
Step 4: in the print with preview menu select your printer profile from the dropdown menu down the bottom. leave the other option set to relative colormetric
Print away and your problem should be solved.
Generally the photoshop book you got with your software should tell you where everything is. good luck!
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