Images print too dark from Photoshop CS2 and CS3

JB
Posted By
jason_bonfield
Sep 22, 2008
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289
Replies
2
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Closed
Having used both CS2 and CS3 I now realise that the prints that I work on in either appear much brighter on the screen that they do when printed, as much as 3 stops darker when printed. I have also noticed that in other programs such as Google Picasa that I use as a viewing tool the images appear closer to the images from the printer. I have used various pro-labs that require their profiles to be used and my own epson 3800 printer at home and despite trying lots of different settings I am unable to get prints that look like they do on the screen they are always darker.

I am using windows XP on a dual core 2.4 PC with 2 Gb ram and an ATI Radeon X1600 series grafix card which I have just updated the driver on. The monitor is an LCD type and is calibrated weekly using a spyder 2 express.
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G
gowanoh
Sep 22, 2008
Welcome to my world.
This is the classic problem with most consumer grade LCD panels: they are so f***ing bright that the calibration devices cannot account for their brightness.
Even if you calibrate to a specified white point, usually recommended to be around 110 (whatever the units are) prints may still be too dark. At least they are for me.
We will not get into the issue that nearly all these panels have 6 bit displays yet we fool ourselves into thinking we are working in 16 bit color.

There are workarounds.
For one thing do not look at your prints in comparison to the ultra bright LCD panel. Take them to what you consider a normally lit room, let your eyes adjust and then judge how dark (or not) the prints may be. My favorite workaround: I have one reasonably good quality CRT in working order and I use this to judge brightness and contrast prior to printing as the CRT display is much closer to the appearance of a reflective print. The loss of CRTs is a major issue as brightness and color standards in electronic imaging are derived from CRT display technology and do not translate directly to flat panel technologies.
You can spend a fortune on a plasma display but if you want the "ideal" performance out of it you have to have it tuned to the specifications of a CRT, which is what the NTSC standard is based on.
The best work around: make some test prints using the curves or the new CS3 brightness/contrast adjustment at different settings and when you find the one that works for you create an action that applies that adjustment prior to printing. If you do this right you will get very close to WYSIWYG color managed printing off a calibrated CRT for the majority of your prints. For ideal results you may want to make adjustments anyway and reprint, just as you might if you were working off a CRT to begin with.
C
Curvemeister
Sep 23, 2008
First isolate whether your display is too bright or your printer is too dark. I’d start by printing images from another source and see if they look as they should. www.drycreekphoto.com has a number of calibration images that should do for this purpose.

Once you’ve isolated the problem, we can take it from there.

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