[Willow5075]

I have had a look thru the tutorials ad guides but cant quite find the answer

I am printing photographs for the first time from my iMac using PS Elements - I have a Canon MP600 printer.

Colour Management settings

Colour handling - Photoshop Elements
Image Space - CAmera RGB profile
Printer Profile - Working RGB - sRGBIE61966-2.1
Rendering intent - Relative colorimetric

My black and white picture has bluey purplish hue - my portrait which looks fine on screen is way too dark and there are lines on everything.

I have the mac drivers as I had to download them specifically when I changed from PC

I changed "Colour Management" from printer to PSE with no improvement - I am using decent paper that yielded good results before I changed systems.

I cant afford to by any colour calibration gizmos right now - how else can I improve the colours?

I'd like to put some pics in for Tuesday nights comp at the camera club but I certainly cant submit the ones I printed today !

Thanks in advance for any assistance

[Dabhand16]

Colour printing can be a can of worms. I'm no expert, but I think one thing you have to do is to use the same colour profile with all of your kit. You say you are using Adobe RGB - usually considered the best for printing - and yet the printer is using sRGB.

So I'd first set everything to Adobe RGB. Camera - Elements and the printer. Photoshop can be set up to control the printing. Don't know if Elements can do this, but if it can set this too. No point in making changes in Elements if the control of the printing is then handed to the printer (that is then using a different colour profile!). You will need to set the printer driver to manual or computer control too.

You then really ought to calibrate the monitor and the printer. there are various ways of doing this, but the more you spend the better the result. There are some free calibration tools around so they might be a good starting point.

The rendering intent I use is not relative colourmetric either - but I can't remember what setting I do use! I'll look it up next time I use the desktop.

[Des Gardner]

If there are lines on everything it just mabe your printer heads nead cleaning, do this before you start adjusting things....there should be a maintenance tool on your printer click on then follow on screen instructions....you may know all this but it was just a thought! after this why not let windows print a straight picture for you again dont change any of the settings....these are just 2 of the things I would do if things started to go wrong with my set up!..... best of luck....

[Dave Canon]

You must use the correct profile for your printer/ink/paper combination. In the drop down list, you should find profiles relating to your Canon printer.

Dave

[Willow5075]

Thanks all I will try your suggestions

[Silver Dragon]

.. As suggested, do a head clean...
Also, as suggested, If you are getting Vertical lines, you may also need to run the Print Head Alignment tool...
This is typically found in the Epson Print monitor "Maintenance" tab.

When I first set up my Printer, (also an Epson) I ran a monitor calibration tool to get my Monitor showing the right colours, I would recommend the tool I used, (Monitor Calibration Wizard, by Mike Walters) but I dont know if that works on a Imac...
Once you have the screen set to a good level, nail the buttons in place so they dont get changed again by accident.... I know I have been guilty of doing that once or twice.....

Secondly, you may then also need to run a printer calibration tool, to get a "Wysiwyg" (what you see is what you get) balance between Monitor and Printer, as the printer may not be getting the same colours as your monitor shows....
What you get on one monitor, say CRT screen, may be totally different to a TFT, CRT, LED or OLED screen... for this reason, when I print anything in high quality, I always do the final adjustments on the one screen in the house I know is "Balanced" in this way to the printer output.
I have a twin-screen setup here, and as the two screens are different makes, the main screen being the higher quality one, pictures displayed side by side on the two screens give subtly different results, so you have to balance your printer to the screen to get what you see on screen as a printout.
This is best done by printing off a test page, and comparing the two, printed version against an on-screen version, side by side in neutral light, then changing what the printer is set to, and re-printing the page, and comparing the two again....

I know this sounds long-winded, and, yes it is, but, once set, you can set a "Default" profile, name it, and unless you change the screen, once its done, its done...

[Chris H]

I did some research on your CANON printer and unfortunately it is not recommended for printing photo's.

It unfortunately is low end and designed for basic printing only.

Follow the instructions with your printer but I doubt you will find all the alignment tools and wizards that the slightly more expensive printers have.

The colour cast your getting can be many things but firstly are you using genuine inks or refills.

I use 2 printers designed for photo printing and neither gives true black. One gives a purple cast and one gives a green cast.

The biggest pitfall most people hit is what is termed as double profiling.

Thats when you allow the software to profile and leave the printer drivers profiling on as well.

Make sure you either turn off the softwares printer profiling or the printer driver profiling.

I had nightmares until I spent money and got a closed loop profiling kit to do both printer and monitor.

Sadly it still doesn't stop colour casting on B&W as neither printer uses modern true black inks.

[Dabhand16]

If it is a Pixma MP600 it ought to print photos

https://www.canon.co.uk/For_Home/Pro...P600/index.asp

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/co...&modelid=13800

[Willow5075]

thanks all - yes it is a Pixma - probably should have mentioned that before. It has previously printed really well so I am confident it is a driver/calibration/maintenance issue.

Just need time to quietly work through all your various suggestions.

[silkstone]

I have an MP610 and an i9950. Although the latter does give rather better results (which it should!) the MP610 turns in a creditable performance. The only way I got reliable printing from Windows was to use QImage. There is a learning curve but if you follow the guides it should avoid most of the profiling problems.

Qimage Professional Quality Photo Printing Software

[silkstone]

Oops! Just remembered you're using a Mac! (Must read post properly!) All I can say is that printing from Aperture gives decent results for me, although some slight tweaks are needed to saturation. You do need to choose the right paper type from the Printer Properties dialogue. From memory, Photo Paper Plus Glossy works OK with third-party paper such as Ilford Galerie Smooth Gloss.

[Willow5075]

Thanks Silkie - yes mac/pixma/PSE - i dont have Aperture - looking at getting Lightroom tho

[Willow5075]

Well, finally sat down and checked all settings - have now aligned the camera and PSE to sRGB and have PSE managing the colour. Much better results for colour pictures but I am getting a purplish caste to mono shots.
However, I did the auto align print heads and the lines are worse than ever ......
I shoot in colour (jpg) then de-saturate by just downing the saturation (among other things) - could this be the problem? I know there is a tutorial on converting to black and white which I will revisit.
Would this be likely to be better if I shoot in RAW? A step I haven't taken yet ....

I'm off to the Canon web site to check for new drivers

[Willow5075]

So I have downloaded new drivers - different code number to last one so I assume its newer, I changed the paper to a Canon specific paper and set the cassette feeder to default to glossy paper.
After the updated dated drivers, I aligned the print head again for good measure - test page looks fine. I have even looked at the monitor colour management and selected sRGB for that and ran it through a calibration in the mac settings area.
So camera -monitor - printer all in the same space - sRGB
I had a look at the helpful "similar threads" link that I just found at the bottom of the page .....seems to be a lot of debate over sRGB v Adobe RGB - I've decided to stick with SRGB because that's what all my photos are to date.
SO even when I take the step into RAW I'll do the same I think
I STILL have lines on the pictures - do I need a new printer?

[Dabhand16]

Two things from your last two posts. First - mono printing is difficult for most 'average' printers. You might be able to tweak some settings in the driver to improve results. Best results are usually obtained with printers with 6 or 8 cartridges. Epson even have dedicated mono cartridges that you have to change over for mono printing.

Lines on a print are usually caused by a blocked print head.

There is a maintainence regime in the printer driver, but it might use a lot of ink. I don't think that on your model you can remove the print heads, but if you can it might be worth doing this and soaking them in alcohol (IPA) to see if this cures it.

[Willow5075]

Thansk Dab - ran the nozzler check etc and said it wasn't blocked but will have a look again.

[heidi]

How are you doing the mono conversion? I used to get a purple cast on B&W photos printed in the lab (silver halide/laser) from an old mono conversion technique, changed technique and now get crisp black tones without the cast.

[Willow5075]

I use PSE and more recently I am using Gradient Map ..prior to that just desaturating - not sure if I have tried printing any with newer method - might check that out today

[heidi]

Gradient Map was the one that made mine purple. See if another method produces the same results, then you can rule that out.

[Willow5075]

I've been doing some more testing today ad it seems I can print just fine from iPhoto but not from PSE. I have printed same picture via both apps today and the prints from PSE have awful colours and lines etc. Pics from iPhoto - colours look same as on screen, no lines etc. so nothing wrong with the printer.
Downloaded mac drivers from Canon AGAIn just to be sure but I think I may have to accept that it's not really compatible.
Main problem now is, I 'd be happy to print from iPhoto but cant see any way to stop it chopping bits off the photo.

[Dabhand16]

I'm not familiar with PSE, but in PS you can set it up to do the the colour management, and to proff the print on screen. Sounds like there is a conflict there somewhere, so check the print settings in PSE.

[silkstone]

I don't use iPhoto but have you thought about getting Aperture 3? Printing is a doddle, and it should produce the same result as iPhoto. Free trial available!

Apple - Aperture - Pro performance with iPhoto simplicity.

[Willow5075]

I may have to go down that track but having swapped OS and photo processing software once already, I'm reluctant to add another new app to learn all over again...mind you cost nothing to try does it?

I still miss Corel PSP - I wish they had a mac version but I don't want to go down the VM path just to have it

[silkstone]

If you're used to iPhoto, Aperture 3 shouldn't be much of a learning curve. You can get it for less than £60 over here with academic discount - if you know anyone who is a student or works in education.

[Willow5075]

I have looked on the Apple site and retails at A$249 and student pricing A$229 - one thing I haven't done is tried Apple Care to see if they can help at all.
Anyway I have just organised free trial - if it does what I want then I'll happily pay the $249. I'm still struggling a bit to get my whole work flow sorted from download to print.
I started using iPhoto for storage and sorting but then changed over to Bridge which came with PSE but I don't like that much - I see from the reviews that Aperture supposedly is good for sorting and viewing and competes with Lightroom in this space. Also because it seems its quite compatible with PSE I wont have to stop using that.
Main thing for me will be if it prints nicely

[Willow5075]

Lots more experimenting today and iPhoto still winning the quality stakes - no lines beautiful colour
BUT I still can't see how to scale the picture to the paper size, particularly if I have cropped a landscape picture "pano" style - can't seem to get it to stop chopping off the edges regardless of the paper size.

Have tried Aperture, some nice features but printing, whilst better than PSE still has lines in it and where PSE is over saturated the colour with Aperture is washed out.

I've tried multiple combos of settings - my husband says now he knows where Andy Warhol got his inspiration - must have had a printing problem!!

[Willow5075]

Resorted to installing Canon Ex Print utility which will scale the image properly if I use A4 but colour on scenic shot not as good as iPhoto although lily pic just as good as iPhoto

Enough experimenting for today I think

[Willow5075]

Resorted to installing Canon Ex Print utility which will scale the image properly if I use A4 but colour on scenic shot not as good as iPhoto although lily pic just as good as iPhoto

Enough experimenting for today I think

[Dabhand16]

Originally Posted by Willow5075

BUT I still can't see how to scale the picture to the paper size, particularly if I have cropped a landscape picture "pano" style - can't seem to get it to stop chopping off the edges regardless of the paper size.

Once you crop a picture you will not be able to fit it to paper unless you maintain the proportions. 5:4 for 'proper' photo sizes, or more recently the international sizes which I think are 2:3.

Pro print shops can cope with panos as they use roll paper that can be made any length to accommodate the image.

[Willow5075]

Yes maybe I can just get a few professionally printed save myself a bit of grief