Why are my prints suddenly awful?

David,

I’m not an expert, so I may be mistaken on this, but here is what I am thinking: Let’s just say for example that 1 year ago you had a system where all profiles were working correctly, your monitor profile was a good one that provided proper color appearance on screen inclusive of the soft proofing, and that printed image "X" was printing as you’d expect.

Now step forward to today: If you print image "X" with good color results on this same system, and assuming again all was correct EXCEPT the monitor profile, then that would be as I’d expect. After all, the image was already edited once with a correct monitor profile, so the colors in the image should be as expected, with only the rendering to the printer being left for consideration and accommodated by the profile for the printer/media combination. Had th image not printed correctly, I would expect either a bad printer profile or clogged print heads.

However, if you edited a new image using your system in its current state and if the monitor profile is corrupt, then the colors rendered to your screen are subject to being inaccurate. Even softproofing, if I correctly understand how it works, would potentially be incorrect. This is because in order for Photoshop to render colors to appear onscreen as if they were the colors seen per the printer profile, it must first know how the monitor’s own color behavior is likely to affect what Photoshop is trying to present to you. With a good monitor profile, hopefully the softproof will be reasonably close to the output. But, if the monitor profile is bad, and yet if you edit the image to what appears good to you onscreen, then the color values saved in the image file will also be skewed from what they should be for correct rendering to the printer.

I hope that makes sense. Color management can indeed be tricky and I could be misunderstanding certain aspects of it myself, but I believe what I’ve said is correct.

Regards,

Daryl

It sort of makes sense, Daryl, but since I regularly calibrate the monitor, I have no reason to doubt the monitor profile – other images – my desktop, for instance, are all spot on. And I confirm that the monitor profile appears in the colour settings drop-down menu in CS2.

Here’s my own take on it – for the soft-proof to be accurate then, yes, the monitor does too. Because my prints are more or less exactly the same as the soft-proof then it seeme to me that both the monitor and the on-the-fly conversion by CS2 when printing are doing their job correctly. I think once I’ve tried Epson paper with Epson profiles I may be able to get a clearer picture. The soft-proof using Epson profile is much closer to the working space image – all I need to do is print it ensure colour match. It may be that I have to go back to Epson (I just don’t like their papers) or, better still, get a custom profile for my paper.

David,

For all you’ve said, I feel you’re doing the right thing, but as my suggestions were just stretching for a possible cause of the problem, I’ll go back to my initial reply and ask if you’re certain your profile loader is working? I don’t have the Spyder software, so I’m not sure what the profile loader is for it, but if it works similarly to the Monacor EZColor software for my OptixXR, then a shortcut for it will be added to the Start Menu > Programs > Startup folder so that it is launched each time you boot your PC. It should then load the profile last created when you calibrated your monitor. If the loader is missing or somehow corrupted and thus not loading the profile, then that may well be the source of the problem.

The fact that colors look correct on your XP desktop doesn’t necessarily mean that the profile is loaded, although it does suggest that. Unless you are viewing the images in some color managed application, which XP itself isn’t, nor are its image viewers, then I’m pretty certain you are seeing all images displayed pretty much as if they were not tagged with a profile themself. That is, most likely they are being shown as if they were sRGB images, and your default monitor setting (profile ignored) may already be close enoughh to sRGB to provide images that look pretty darn good. If your profile is loading correctly and if the behavior is like what I’ve seen, then you will observe a slight shift in colors on your monitor once the profile loader has loaded the monitor profile to the LUT of your graphics chipset.

Also, the presence of a monitor profile in any kind of drop-down menu as in Photoshop’s color settings dialog, simply means that profile exists on your system. It does not mean the profile is loaded.

Again, everything I see you saying sure makes it look at if all should be in good order, yet just isn’t for some reason. Such behaviors as that just tend to suggest a corrupt file.

If you want to confirm your monitor profile is in fact being loaded correctly, I suggest you download this free and simple-to-use tool from Xrite, called DisplayProfile: < http://www.xrite.com/product_overview.aspx?ID=757&Action =support&SoftwareID=539>

DisplayProfile is a standalone executable that, upon launch, initially shows what monitor profile is currently loaded and active. It should report to you the profile you created with your Spyder. If you select any other profile in the list that is tagged with an asterisk (indicates gamma tagged profile suitable for loading to the LUT), it will reload the LUT with that profile and you can easily see how that affects your monitors colors on-the-fly.

Recapping what you’ve said here, the current process you follow is the same that you’ve always taken and used successfully, and nothing to your knowledge has changed? That is, you’ve been successfully using the R800 and the paper and profiles mentioned, with no changes that you’re aware of? As you said, I’d not really expect your original Olmec profile to be corrupted as well as the copy that has been in use. If this "suddenly, when I print" became a problem only recently, then Lawrence’s suggestion of reverting to a System Restore point prior to the time you first observed the problem may well be worth doing. Of course, this assumes you have System Restore active so that checkpoints are periodically created, and they span the time period in question.

In the end, it may also be just as you last said…that a custom profile for your paper is needed. On my R1800, I’ve been very happy with the Espon Ultra Premium Luster, Velvet Fine Art and Ultrasmooth Fine Art papers in most cases, each with their associated Epson profiles. However, there do seem to be some images I’ll print to the latter 2 papers where they seem more difficult to judge the color saturation relative to the softproof. I also now remember how I stumbled along ( <http://ambress.com/photoshop/softproof> ) for a while with having "Preserve RGB Colors" mistakenly enabled in the softproof settings, and that was badly affecting the softproofing of prints made to Epson Enhanced Matte and the Premium Luster…something else worth mentioning, as another time for you to check. Generally, it should be disabled as I understand things.

Good luck!

Daryl

And once again, thanks.

Yes, the profile loader flash screen does appear every time I start Windows, and yes I do see the colour shift as it is loaded. I’ve sent off for a custom profile so I’ll see how that does before trying system restore.

Problem solved! (Though I still don’t know how it arose).

I’ve obtained a custom profile and once again the colours are accurate – no other settings were changed. So my only conclusion is that the manufacturer’s profile (and, somehow, my back-up copy) had become corrupt.

Congratulations on finding a solution David. And yes, that is puzzling how two profiles would become corrupted.