I've been trying to print some pics of a friend of mine that I took with my Nikon 5700. I use a PowerBook G4, Canon S9000 and PhotoShop 7. The photo looks good on the screen, but when I print it out its very red/magenta. Is this a common problem, should I be using some color matching software, or do I just have to learn how color balance better?? Any advice is welcome!!
Getting the picture to look the same in print as it does on screen can be challenging. I am just barely starting to scratch the suface of color management and it seem that understanding it is the key to success. Here is a link on color management 101: //www.roosphoto.com/html/otherlinks.html
Depending on where you are printing your photos, you may find the dry creek photo profiles usefull as well. They will create a custom profile for you if you'd like (I haven't tried it), and they provide profiles for a bunch of print shops in my area, maybe yours too ( I hope to try one of thier costco profiles this week):
Are you doing everything in RGB mode? Check your setting in PS.
yeah, everything is in RGB. I did some exparimenting in CYMK, but got worse results. Also did some tinkering with the printer driver color adjustments, helped, but remembering what I did for a certian photo is almost impossible!
Good link Gordon :) I believe printers can only print in the CMYK color space, which has less colors than sRGB. If you get yourself or make a profile for your printer, and work in that color space, with a (calibrated monitor) you should end up with prints that match your screen.
I believe printers can only print in the CMYK color space, which has less colors than sRGB.
This isn't really correct. You'll generally be better off working in AdobeRGB for print output. sRGB is possibly one of the smallest colour spaces (aiming to support low end printers and monitors) Adobe RGB is a larger space and has more details particularly in saturated reds & greens.
The colour space supported by a particular printer can vary widely, with inkjet printers, using dye based inks, being capable of reproducing the largest colour palettes. The available set of colours (particularly strongly saturated colours) for inkjet printers using pigment based inks is quite a bit smaller, but the lifetime of a print is about an order of magnitude larger. Wet process prints can usually reproduce a smaller set of colours than dye based inkjets, but again with longer life spans.
This link graphically shows how some colour profiles compare - note that AdobeRGB covers about the largest space. A dye based inkjet profile covers a similar set of colours (i.e., much wider than say a Frontier photo print, particularly in the blues)
