Printer crushing blacks badly!

[bazooka]

Calling all digital printing experts!

So last night I was printing some proofs for a couple shot I did. These shots are against a black (0, 0, 0) background and contain quite a bit of shadow detail. On my Epson R320, most of the detail in the shadows completely goes to black whereas I can see plenty of detail on my monitor.

I did some searching around on printing help and found...

Printer Black Point

I downloaded the black point target graph he has and printed it with the photoshop printing walkthrough. I saw no tonal differences... the bars were all black, all the way up to the 52 value.

To make sure I wasn't crazy, I printed the same graph on the same paper on my canon 9000 mk2 and I was able to distinguish tonal differences down to around 14.

Now, if I let the Epson printer driver manage color and I turn off black point adjustment as I was printing originally (everything the tutorial told me NOT to do), it gives me the best print but still the shadows are obviously destroyed. But if I follow the tutorial, it makes it about 100x worse. The midtones drop to black and even some of the highlights.

The only difference between the setup for the Epson and the Canon is that in the profile selection, I see different Canon 9000 mk2 ICC profiles for different papers, but there is only one Epson profile... it's name is just "Epson R320 Default" or something like that (not at home at the moment).

I'm pretty sure this has something to do with the printer profile but I also tried "Gamma 1.8" and "Adobe RGB 1998" because the target graph is in Adobe RGB. Both gave me slightly different, but still terrible results. There are many profiles in the list, but about half of the are for the Canon 9000, and the others are for some papers that I've never heard of (I don't know anything about paper yet, I'm just using some generic 4x6 semi-gloss). So would using the default R320 profile really cause crushed blacks all the way to a black value of 52 (and possibly beyond)?? If so, how do I find a proper profile?

Btw, I did a nozzle check and they're printing fine.

 

[Rephargotohp]

Are you sure you have the Epson Printer Driver installed and not the generic Windows one? (installed using the disc, not allowing windows(I assume) to do it's install. There should be 11 different paper options available in the print driver list.

What are you choosing to control the print color management, the printer or photoshop? If photoshop, have you turned off color management in the printer? In the printer driver defaults have you tried chagning the brightness values?

 

[KenC]

Yes, you need a specific printer driver from Epson with a profile for the paper you are using. The driver should at least have about 5-10 profiles for the common Epson papers. I would recommend using Epson paper at least until you see what it can do and whether you need something else.

 

[MichelleDavis]

I'm new here, but in general when I want to do a show or something I try to get professional printing done.

I had an Epson and what was stated above holds true -you need to use the printer's actual drivers. In my case I had to uninstall and reinstall everything to get the look I wanted, the paper is also critical.

Let us know if you can fix it

 

[ann]

You might move this thread to the digital section for equipment. THis is for darkroom users, who may or may not have any experience with inkjet printers.

 

[bazooka]

Are you sure you have the Epson Printer Driver installed and not the generic Windows one? (installed using the disc, not allowing windows(I assume) to do it's install. There should be 11 different paper options available in the print driver list.

What are you choosing to control the print color management, the printer or photoshop? If photoshop, have you turned off color management in the printer? In the printer driver defaults have you tried chagning the brightness values?

Let me verify that I have actually installed the printer driver when I get home, but I'm fairly certain.

I tried all of the above... originally when I noticed how crushed the shadows are, I was using the default settings of letting the printer do color management. Then I read the article I posted above and changed it to photoshop controlled and changed the ICC to no color adjustment or whatever it said. I have not tried changing brightness values in the printer driver, but doesn't that require using the printer driver to manage colors?

 

[bazooka]

Yes, you need a specific printer driver from Epson with a profile for the paper you are using. The driver should at least have about 5-10 profiles for the common Epson papers. I would recommend using Epson paper at least until you see what it can do and whether you need something else.

I'll see what I can find tonight. I don't know what the paper I was using is, but I'm about out of it and have some "Nat Geo" paper that maybe I can find an R320 profile for. But even still, is it normal for a default profile to crush the blacks all the way past a tonal value of 52? With the Canon printer I just picked a random profile that didn't necessarily match the paper and I was able to see all the way down into the teens.

 

[bazooka]

You might move this thread to the digital section for equipment. THis is for darkroom users, who may or may not have any experience with inkjet printers.

If someone can move this, I'd appreciate it. I just saw printing in the description and thought this was applicable for digital darkroom as well as traditional.

 

[KenC]

Yes, you need a specific printer driver from Epson with a profile for the paper you are using. The driver should at least have about 5-10 profiles for the common Epson papers. I would recommend using Epson paper at least until you see what it can do and whether you need something else.

I'll see what I can find tonight. I don't know what the paper I was using is, but I'm about out of it and have some "Nat Geo" paper that maybe I can find an R320 profile for. But even still, is it normal for a default profile to crush the blacks all the way past a tonal value of 52? With the Canon printer I just picked a random profile that didn't necessarily match the paper and I was able to see all the way down into the teens.

No, that is not normal at all. "Blacks" that are past 50 should be easily distinguishable from {0,0,0} black, even when not placed side-by-side, and even values around 20-30 will be distinguishable when right next to true black. I don't know whether the printer, paper or software is causing this, but the correct profile is necessary to get them all on the same page, as it were. With the Canon printer, I guess some things canceled out and it came out OK by chance.

 

[bazooka]

The Canon 9000 profiles say something like "Canon 9000 mk2 G1" or "SG2"... I presume those stand for Glossy 1 or Semi-Glossy 2. I think I picked an SG1... but really just guessing. I may have gotten lucky. But even if I print on regular type paper, I still can't see any variance between 0 and 52 on the Epson IF I let PS handle the colors. If I set the printer to handle the colors and turn off the Black point compensation and set the ICC profile to "Epson R320 Standard" or whatever it is, can't remember exactly.... it print's better than if I let PS do it, but it's still terrible.

When I get home, I'll reinstall the driver. I *MIGHT* have done a custom install and thought that at the time I didn't need the paper profiles and elected to not install them... it's something that I very well could have done if it was an option. I almost always custom install things and uncheck software or plugins if I don't know what they are. But it was so long ago, I just can't remember.

Thanks for the help, I'll see if I can't figure something out when I get home... I was up too late last night trying to figure it out.

 

[bazooka]

Update: Uninstalled and reinstalled R340 drivers. No change in the black target print. It's still only showing "StylusPhotoR340 Series" in the Printer Profile drop-down along with many other profiles that don't mention Epson.

I tried the NatGeo "Premium Photo Paper"... no change.

I looked for Nat Geo paper profiles but their site along with the instructions that came with the paper only show recommended settings such as "Set to highest quality glossy paper" and "High speed off"... no mention of custom paper profiles.

 

[bazooka]

Update:

I tried disabling "Black Point Compensation"... no change.

If I change color management from ICM & "Off" to Color Controls with "Black Point Compensation" off, I can see tonal variance down to about the 40 value.

If I change "Color Handling" back to the printer instead of PS, I get variance down to around 28 or so.

But this goes against what the article posted above states I should do, and 28 is still very high for glossy paper isn't it?

I wish I knew what the heck I was doing.

 

[Rephargotohp]

Is your Monitor calibrated? If it's too bright, then your prints will be too dark.

You say you reinstalled the driver but did you install the Epson Software? In other words reinstall the printer with the Epson Installer

Have you tried calibrating your printer? I've done this with my Canon to get it to match the calibrated Monitor

 

[bazooka]

My monitors are calibrated via spyder3pro. Looking at the target sheet in photoshop, I cannot see black variance all the way down to 0 but it is in the single digits. I reckon this is about right?

I reinstalled the driver with the Epson driver installer, not manually and not the Windows driver.

Epson Stylus Photo R340, Drivers & Downloads - Technical Support - Epson America, Inc.

I have not tried calibrating my printer. Isn't that a pay-for service? Also, it seems like you would have to re-calibrate the printer every time you re-calibrate the monitor (once a month or so).

 

[bazooka]

And again, I can print this chart just fine on the Canon.

One thing I did notice last night... if I set PS to manage colors and select Adobe RGB 98 from the profile list, it prints exactly the same as if I have the printer manage colors (the printer also selects Adobe RGB when printing this chart because it is also ARGB98). But isn't a printer profile supposed to include things like ink density and distance from the head to the paper (paper dependent)? If so, then I would have to have a profile that is specific to each of the following things:

Printer
Paper
Color Profile

Is that correct or am I misunderstanding?