Printing Problems

[mickyperice]

Hi all , not sure if this is related to this section, but i cant find one for prinitng.
does anyone know anythiong about printing pictures with good quality e.t.c?
let me explain ! , i have an epson r300 printer, my problem is every picture i do comes out to dark fromm the original.
ive used the best picture option, used photo paper, and the scans are high resolution quality, but the prints always come out to dark any ideas at all ?

[HRMaddie]

My suggestions are the following:

Update driver
Update icc profiles and print with icc profiles - for info on printing with icc profiles see the Epson website
Clean print heads
If all else fails - download Qimage (trial version) and see if that helps

[TaoTeWingChun]

I actually rn into this very same thing recently when trying to print out our vacation pictres. At first I thought the pictures were dark, but t evntually turned out to be a ruined stack of Epson 4 x 6 Premium Glossy Photo Paper. I opened a ew stack, and the prints came out much better.

I think that the paper succumbed to local humidity issues, as the same prints on that opened stack all came ut way too dark vs the same prints on the new paper.

Just an FIY - u may want to check your photo paper, if the driver ad other software updates don't work.

Cheers!

TTWC

[JerryB]

Hi all , not sure if this is related to this section, but i cant find one for prinitng.
does anyone know anythiong about printing pictures with good quality e.t.c?
let me explain ! , i have an epson r300 printer, my problem is every picture i do comes out to dark fromm the original.
ive used the best picture option, used photo paper, and the scans are high resolution quality, but the prints always come out to dark any ideas at all ?

not enough info to try to pin it down.. could be your camera.... or scaner however your getting the digital pictures, could be the monitor is too light...... on the orginal... is the orginal photograph or what you see on the screen huge difference!!

there could be a couple of reason and not directly related to the printer....

1. if your taking these with a digital camera the orginal may be to dark.... however this can be adjusted with your image editor....

2. your monitor.... if your editing the picture... and your monitor brightness is to light you'lll overcompensta by making the picture (darker) nice looking on the monitor however.. when printing it become too dark....!!! I suggest..... adjust your monitor brightness/contrast controls to match your printer!! for the closest, truest color matching and brightness...
note some image editing progrms will have internal adjsutments you can make...

[mickyperice]

Thnaks for all the replies , the pictures im working on are scans of the originals, ive scanned them to a high resolution, the original picture is light and its the same on the monitor, but the end product is way to dark.

[b1tchm4gn3t]

Mine do the same thing on ALL my printers. My resolution: I use a photo editor to lighten them before printing. Seems to work well for me.

[JerryB]

Thnaks for all the replies , the pictures im working on are scans of the originals, ive scanned them to a high resolution, the original picture is light and its the same on the monitor, but the end product is way to dark.

hi,
more info is always usefull.... I would adjust my monitor brightness/intensity to match the printer intensity/brightness... that way when you scan.... or even edit.... you have the correct idea on how the printed picture going to look as far as brightness!!

on your scanner i would check your brightness and contrast setting.... maybe there too light to get a accurate disply that is close to the actual photograph....

[Supreme2k]

try going into the settings before you print, click on Advanced, then click Image Color Match (ICM).

This has fixed those issues many times for me.

[mickyperice]

Hi, thanks again for replies, ive tried a photo editing prog that does lighten it up abit, but it makes the picture alot different from the original,
Could you tell me wot the (ICM) mode actually does?
thanks

[ozymango]

Thnaks for all the replies , the pictures im working on are scans of the originals, ive scanned them to a high resolution, the original picture is light and its the same on the monitor, but the end product is way to dark.

I feel your pain, I've been scanning photos, slides, and negatives to put into a book (and print for samples) and getting the scanner, the monitor, and the printer all to agree on how a picture looks, is a nightmare! Seriously, if you do this kind of stuff for a living (I don't, but I know somebody who does and he let me borrow some of his rather expensive calibration stuff, which helped but his equipment is better than mine in the first place so his still looks better), there's a whole separate art and science involved in getting everything accurate.

I'm always hesitant to adjust the pictures for the sake of the printer, if they look good on screen and the scanner and monitor seem to be in agreement -- it could very easily be your printer, and it's a lot easier (and safer) to adjust printer output globally than your images, one at a time. Of course it may be that your monitor and scanner are both off in the same way, and your printer is accurate ... though I sorta doubt that, mostly because printer inks and papers and software configurations are much more fickle (in my experience) than your scanner and monitor.

I'm not helping much, am I? Well, anyway, I'd start by doing what somebody else said, download the latest drivers, go to Epson's site and get all the info you can about that printer, and dink around in the printer options to see what color and brightness settings you can adjust globally (if any). And try printing on plain paper, see if the brightness levels are the same, better, or worse, it could be you've got bad photo paper. Print some pix from the web, see if they look okay or if they're dark.

Good luck!

[Supreme2k]

I haven't really looked into it specifically, but from what I can tell after printing, ICM must do somekind of pixel scan on the original to more closely match the color profile for the print output.

It shouldn't matter what app you use to print. It should still be in the Properties of your printer when you use File-->Print