Color & Contrast Issues When Printing

[matthewn43692242]

Hello, Thank you for reading. I'm a graphic artist with about 30 years of experience. I've done a tone of printing both at home & through print shops. For a couple of years now, I've had an impossible time Trying to get my prints at home from various Epson printers (Currently An Epson ET 2720).

No matter what paper I use or what quality setting, all of my prints come out muddy, lacking contrast. The lighter colors are dark & over-saturated, the darks are lightened & lacking definition. The problem is isolated to Photoshop as other adobe apps & other apps generally print colors more true to what I see on the screen. It happens no matter if the source file is in RGB or CMYK.

Generally I have the "Color Sync" option turned OFF in the printer driver & the Photoshop Print Settings set to allow the printer to manage colors.  If I set it to allow Photoshop to manage the colors ten things go really crazy & everything becomes extremely dark & the colors are waaay off. It is my understanding that for home printing from an inkjet printer you would not usually use the "Photoshop Manages Colors" option though I do understand that using it would require settings for you exact printer, paper ink etc...

In the past, with previous PS versions & previous printers I never had this issue. I did massive amounts of printing with excellent color but for years now I've been unable to produce any acceptable prints from home.

I've spent endless hours messing with every imaginable setting both in Photoshop & the printer driver with no luck. Any clue would be greatly appreciated. I'm on the latest version of Mac OS.

[Test Screen Name]

What specific version of macOS and Photoshop please? Numbers matter, and people often believe they are on the latest, when actually updates have failed. 

[NB, colourmanagement]

When using "Photoshop Manages Colour" you need an accurate printer/paper profile - generally we see better results printing this way than by using 'printer manages colour'. 

AND, of course, 'printer manages colour' only works for the manufacturers papers listed under media in the driver.

Whats the paper?

Maybe your screen calibration is inaccurate?

As a test you could open this image and see if it looks "natural" on screen

what happens when you print it?

I hope this helps
neil barstow, colourmanagement net :: adobe forum volunteer
google me "neil barstow colourmanagement" for lots of free articles on colour management
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[matthewn43692242]

Hello,

Thank you for the input. I'm currently in Mac OS 11.6.1 an dusing Photoshop 23.1.0.

Since the issue is isolated to Photoshop, It's unlikely that the callibration of my monitor is to blame. Never in all these years have I needed to find/install a profile for any printer & I've never really used the "Photoshop Manages Colors" setting so we can narrow the issue down to printing while allowing the printer to manage colors.

The oversaturated, low contrast muddyness applies whether I'm using plain paper, presentation paper or photo paper (any paper). Since it's an Epson printer, I use Epson papers when not using plain paper.

Since it's so universal, I'm currently going back to the simplistic possibilities like converting the color profile to the working space or not, Assigning profiles or not etc... Sorta starting the exploration again from the beginning. 

The sample image that you supplied looked fine on screen, printed as expected from the preview app but printed muddy from Photoshop. I'll keep poking around.

[TheDigitalDog]

You should always test output using good color reference images designed for that task. The color reference images RGB values are such they are set for output and are editing and display agnostic. Test the output this way and examine for the same color issues so we know it's not your image specific issues causing the problems:

http://www.gballard.net/photoshop/pdi_download/

http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html#TestPrint

http://www.digitaldog.net/files/2014PrinterTestFileFlat.tif.zip

[NB, colourmanagement]

Matthew: "Thank you for the input. I'm currently in Mac OS 11.6.1"

There is apparently a bug in 11.6.1 related to printing to an Epson. Quite a bit has been written about that on this forum Some have solved this by updating to OSX Monterey 11.7x -

I would personally feel that not ideal as I tend to wait a while before jumping onto latest OSX releases. It depends on your mac I guess, I'm getting excellent service on a workhorse Mac using Mojave.

Some Monterey issues

Big Sur 11.6.1 issues

I hope this helps
neil barstow, colourmanagement net :: adobe forum volunteer
google me "neil barstow colourmanagement" for lots of free articles on colour management
[please only use the blue reply button at the top of the page, this maintains the original thread title and chronological order of posts]