color management

I am having a "heck" of a time trying to print some of my work, and getting the correct color reproduction. I have produced some artwork in Painter and/or Photoshop. I've calibrated my SONY monitor. Some of my work has originated from digital photos using an Olympus C-3020. I've brought them into the applications in RGB modes; manipulated them, etc., etc, and then printed on an Epson 740.

I just purchased some watercolor paper and Inkjet canvas from Pictorico. My watercolors print with a very heavy ink concentration ( very dark), and my canvas prints are very intense. I've used the recommended settings from Pictorico.

On canvas from Office Depot ( which I prefer) my prints are "washed out".

Can anyone assist me with understanding color management, or direct me to a reasonable sight. Please, as you can tell, I am not the most technically sophisticated, so keep it simple if you can.

Thank you very much.

[email]moea@verizon.net[/email]

As the old saying goes.......
Color managment is a journey.... not a destination.

However..... I believe you'll get something out of the Photoshop help files... search them for "color managment"

A little bit of stuff taken from the Photoshop help files.

the photoshop "help" files read...

Your monitor will display color more reliably if you use color management and accurate ICC profiles. The Adobe Gamma utility, which is automatically installed into your Control Panels folder, lets you calibrate and characterize your monitor to a standard and then save the settings as an ICC-compliant profile available to any program that uses your color management system. This calibration helps you eliminate any color cast in your monitor, make your monitor grays as neutral as possible, and standardize image display across different monitors.

Although Adobe Gamma is an effective calibration and profiling utility, hardware-based utilities are more precise. If you have a hardware-based utility that can generate an ICC-compliant profile, you should use that instead of Adobe Gamma. Also, be sure to use only one calibration utility to display your profile; using multiple utilities can result in incorrect color.


Its a shame Microsoft hasn't adopted the MAC OS's Colorsync
color managment, I have depended on it for years.

also from the help files:

Photoshop offers a collection of predefined color management settings designed to produce consistent color for a common publishing workflow, such as preparation for Web or offset press output. In most cases, the predefined settings will provide sufficient color management for your needs. These settings can also serve as starting points for customizing your own workflow-specific settings.

To choose a predefined color management setting, choose one of the following options from the Settings menu in the Color Settings dialog box.

Color Management Off Uses passive color management techniques to emulate the behavior of applications that do not support color management. Although working space profiles are considered when converting colors between color spaces, Color Management Off does not tag documents with profiles. Use this option for content that will be output on video or as on-screen presentations; do not use this option if you work mostly with documents that are tagged with color profiles.

Emulate Photoshop 4 Emulates the color workflow used by the Mac OS version of Adobe Photoshop 4.0 and earlier.

U.S. Prepress Defaults Manages color for content that will be output under common press conditions in the U.S.

Europe Prepress Defaults Manages color for content that will be output under common press conditions in Europe.

Japan Prepress Defaults Manages color for content that will be output under common press conditions in Japan.

Web Graphics Defaults Manages color for content that will be published on the World Wide Web.

ColorSync Workflow (Mac OS only) Manages color using the ColorSync CMS with the profiles chosen in the ColorSync control panel. Use this option if you want to use color management with a mix of Adobe and non-Adobe applications. This color management configuration is not recognized by Windows systems, or by versions of ColorSync earlier than 3.0.

When you choose a predefined configuration, the Color Settings dialog box updates to display the specific color management settings associated with the configuration.


I think it will help you alot to read the "Producing Consistent Color" section of the help files.... then experiment...

Thank You very much. I will take your advise, and read more of the Help Files.

hey there,

I speak from experience on this one: PRINTING ON CANVAS IS A NIGHTMARE.

While I cannot speak of watercolor paper prints, recently, my company had a very lucritive job fron an entrepreneur who ordered some canvas reproductions of a favorite scenic print. - "heck" of a time, my butt - it sucked. We used 3 different printers, about a thousand dollars worth of material and NONE of it made the grade, he ended up having it done on vinyl in the end.

First, you must consider that paper is porous, it soaks in ink - canvas is WAAAY more porous, it sucks the ink right up. At least the stuff we use does.

BUT- there's hope for an oversaturated print. Try this: duplicate your image - then flatten it. double click your background layer to convert it to a "Layer 0" - then, drop the opacity to about 80 percent. Be sure you put a solid white layer under it - then print. If that's still too dark, drop it to 60 or even 50 percent. You get the idea...

also, check to see if your canvas is actually white - compare it to paper to see if you should drop cyan out of your print. I found that the canvas was actually a tinge blue.

best of luck!
gg

Thanks GraphicsGuy! You're right------it sucks big time.