Printing - Images Very Dark

[M99]

Hi all,

I'm having trouble getting acceptable printouts.  I have tested a gazilion variations but really can not understand so many settings, in various places.  Or why this is such a problem.  I am aware screen to print differs.  

I washed out the photos and they still come out very dark.  I've had to make color adjustments on the printer settings, making as much as +25 lighter (25% ?)  and -35 Saturation.  In combination with the 'Save Ink' setting.  Have tried assorted color management control settings.  

My document looks great.  But I get some crazy output unless I intervene.  

It's as if there is too much ink being applied.  Colors become very strong and highly saturated.  Even a light aqua becomes dark and overpowering, for instance.  Even after washing the images out with photoshop, there's still lots of color and saturation.  I simply can not understand what's going on.  

New Xerox Versalink C405 PS 2/3 laser printer 

US Web Coated ... 

Document CMYK US Web Coated... 

Glossy paper 

There is so much information out there and settings to deal with, I can't tell you how much time, paper, and ink I've wasted. 

Can someone please give provide a simple, guiding overview of how to get from screen to print.  The CMYK proof in InDesign looks great.  

One other thing I notice and would like to try its effect but can't find an answer to:  

For output destination, where I've read to select US Web Coated or US Sheet Feed Coated,  I see my old printers in the drop-down list.  I tried one of them and it came out a lot lighter, awful but lighter.  But I would say maybe much closer to the correct saturation and amount of contrast.  BUT I do not find my new printer listed for some reason and would like to try that setting to see what happens.  How does this become populated (Windows?) and how do I add my new printer to it?  

Thank you!!  

[Randy Hagan]

Hard tellin' not knowin' but I'd suspect that you may have two conflicting layers of color correction going on between your printer and InDesign. Maybe three, if you're using different color settings between Photoshop and InDesign. And if you're trying to drive your Xerox device with a generic Postscript printer drive, you're built to lose.

You didn't mention which version of Windows your system has, so if you haven't done so already, you can download and install the right set of drivers from here:

https://www.support.xerox.com/support/versalink-c405/downloads/enus.html?operatingSystem=win10x64

After the correct drivers are downloaded, install a new printer using the new drivers through your Windows Control Panel. It's still available in Windows 10, where Windows Settings is the default utility; you have to search for it in Cortana to get your Windows 10 Control Panel. Delete your existing printers, then install the drivers, and make sure in the Windows Control Panel that your Xerox VersaLink 405 is listed as your default printer.

Once that's done, you can deal with how InDesign is reproducing color. Don't put in a picture. Create 9 rectangles on a page, and use the following color builds for the fills:

100%K - Black

0%K - No added color

100% Cyan

100% Magenta

100% Yellow

15%C-100%M-100%Y - Approximation of RGB Red

75%C-5%M-100%Y - Approximation of RGB Green

100%C-90%M-10%Y - Approximation of RGB Blue

0%C-10%M-100%Y - Approximation of Safety Yellow, which should look different (hopefully) than 100% Yellow

Now go to your Color Settings for InDesign Edit>Color Settings... menu command and make not of your color profile, RGB and CMYK color settings. Change nothing, then click the OK button.

Print the page with the 9 boxes, using your Default Printer profile of Xerox VersaLink C405. Check out your results, seeing if you're getting the same results you expect. We want the InDesign color profile and your printer profile to get the results you expect. This reconciles profile 1 and profile 2.

Now we'll check out Profile 3: the Photoshop Color Profile.

Foirget about the pictures you have used. Throw them away. As you adjusted the color settings, we have no idea how they will respond to the right color profiles. Open a new, uncorrected image. Go to the Edit>Color Settings... menu command in Photoshop and make sure that the color settings in Photoshop match the settings you had with InDesign. If not, change them to match. Then print the new, uncorrected image directly from Photoshop using your Default Printer profile. See how they print from Photoshop, and judge how well that compares to what you expect. Don't apply any fixes to the image.

Now, place the uncorrected image into your InDesign document and print it using your Default Printer profile. We don't care so much about how the image looks, so much as how it looks compared to how it printed in Photoshop. If it prints the same, now you can go back to Photoshop, correct it, and see if you get the same, corrected results when you print with InDesign.

There are a lot of steps here, but if you follow them and make note of the results you get, you'll go through a lot of paper but you'll find the results you're looking for.

Hope this helps,

Randy

[M99]

Thank you Randy! That's an interesting experiment. I'll undertake that and see what happens.

[Randy Hagan]

I know what I outlined is a bear of a process. But if you follow it step by step, it will help you discern what's working right — and what's not — in your reproduction process.

One other thing: you mentioned that you were finding differences between how images reproduced from color inkjet and color laser output devices. That's not surprising, as inkjets literally spray the paper/substrate and laser output devices heat/burn toner and fuse it to the substrate. In fact, the earliest color laser printers used heavy color blocks similar to crayon material to fuse color on the page.

When you get your correct printer driver installed, if you still get poor results you may want to check the linescreen used to output your files. sometimes making the linescreen coarser can get you better print results, because toner doesn't "blend" as well as inkjet printing when creating CMYK process color printing. The settings may be in the printer driver itself or in an adjunct printer utility. When you find it, start at a coarse newspaper-type linescreen like 75 lpi. While that will create image reproduction that looks like you can sand a hangnail with, it will provide a baseline you can improve to the point where you get the best results from your output device.

Good luck,

Randy

[Luke Jennings]

Have you tried printing an exported PDF from Acrobat?

[M99]

Yes, I've done a lot of reading which led to exporting a pdf. Thanks.

[M99]

This has been a problem from the beginning. I was using Publisher, took the document to Staples (laser) and the colors were much more intense/saturated/darker. The photos came out really dark also.  So I started tweaking the images and colors so they would print better.  

I also got a laser printer in order to get a better idea of what would print at a printing facility and to make necessary adjustments as I worked.  I also wanted to use the PS3 feature to create device-independent output, but haven't gotten there yet.  (A couple printers have told me they only use PDF and don't do PS3 due to errors.) 

I haven't printed the Publisher document on my laser to see how it compares to Staples. But when I recreated in InDesign, some of the results were really bad with strange coloring.  And the darkness problem continues.  

[M99]

duplicate

[M99]

So, I'm trying to figure out what the basic settings should be for my own printer at this point.  

My previous printers were inkjet.  All I've ever needed to do to print in the past is select the device and the type of paper.  (I'd really like to get my new printer on the output destination list, but only see the old ones.  Can't find any info on this.)