Pixma Pro 9000 II prints are dark

[kyamon]

;D
My wife knows that any time I complain about some technical aspect of my photos I am going to spend money... But in this particular case even a $2k screen or a Pro-1 printer would not do the job, I guess. So I did like you did, and switched to indecent language. And asked for help... (which I got, and am very glad about)

i have also found that creating my own custom ICC profiles for the papers i use much more reliable than using each manufacturer's canned ICC profiles. the canned profiles will get you close, but if you have exacting expectations then you really need to create your own custom profiles.

i use the Color Monkey by X-rite to do both screen and print ICC profiles. it does a fairly decent job but i have never....NEVER....been fully satisfied with any print that has ever come out of an inkjet printer. there is always something that is just slightly off...but i end up just chalking it up to differences between the two different formats or the random and frequent printer errors that occur.

i absolutely loath desktop printing...its a horrendous task to undertake if you have the highest expectations. trouble is, making a print is ingrained upon my consciousness as "part" of the photographic process. my wife knows when i am doing prints by the stream of expletives coming from my office and she knows to steer clear of me for a few hours.

anyway....good luck. seriously.....

 

[wopbv4]

Hi,

it is also important to have colour accurate lighting to evaluate your prints.

I use:
http://www.imagescience.com.au/products/GrafiLite-Mode.html

 

[TrumpetPower!]

i have also found that creating my own custom ICC profiles for the papers i use much more reliable than using each manufacturer's canned ICC profiles. the canned profiles will get you close, but if you have exacting expectations then you really need to create your own custom profiles.

i use the Color Monkey by X-rite to do both screen and print ICC profiles. it does a fairly decent job but i have never....NEVER....been fully satisfied with any print that has ever come out of an inkjet printer. there is always something that is just slightly off...but i end up just chalking it up to differences between the two different formats or the random and frequent printer errors that occur.

i absolutely loath desktop printing...its a horrendous task to undertake if you have the highest expectations. trouble is, making a print is ingrained upon my consciousness as "part" of the photographic process. my wife knows when i am doing prints by the stream of expletives coming from my office and she knows to steer clear of me for a few hours.

anyway....good luck. seriously.....

Closest answer yet.

Color management is...well, prepare for insanity. You'll be insane by the time you figure it out, so it doesn't hurt to be at least a bit crazy going into it.

The ColorMunki, by all reports, is a very capable instrument. The basic profiling software that X-Rite ships it with is not bad, all things considered, but leaves lots of room for improvement.

If you want the ultimate in quality, pair a spectrophotometer (such as the ColorMunki or its bigger brother, the i1 Pro) with ArgyllCMS. It's a free, open source, command line toolset. Awesome, awesome software.

There's also another factor worth mentioning. Even with the best color management, there are still limitations. All devices have limited color gamuts, and it's very common to want to do stuff with images and devices where the gamuts don't overlap. Generally, your camera will have the biggest gamut; your working color space probably won't be able to encode all the colors your camera can capture; your monitor certainly won't be able to display all the colors your working space can encode; and your printer will be able to print some colors you can't get on your monitor but it won't be able to print others your monitor can display. Oh -- and the paper you print on has a huge effect on the colors it can print. What to do with out-of-gamut colors is where the rubber meets the road...and where a lot of the problems happen in well-color-managed environments, and not something one can really answer in a forum post....

However, with the right equipment and skills, I can assure you, it is possible to, for example, photograph a painting and make a print of it such that the artist herself has trouble telling original from copy in a side-by-side comparison. But the road from where most photographers are to there is a long and steep and bumpy one....

Cheers,

b&

 

[Quasimodo]

Very interesting thread. I have the pro 1 myself, but also struggle with the luminocity, even after callibrating with my x-rite i1 Display Pro. As with the OP it always get darker, and I will try to wing it on gefuhl

 

[marcel]

Hi, I have the pixma pro 9500. It is a problem of duplicate profiles. It is with these printers. I have solved the problem using the profile Pro Photo RGB in photoshop and profile of paper in the printer. The quality is very good and I sell lots of prints.
If you need to try the printer plugin is Easy Photo Print Pro, remember: PRO.
Check the paper profile, must be GPSPP11.
Another thing to consider is that if you have the printer to your side is enough testing on pieces of paper to get an idea of how to be in the paper. It is useless to calibrate the monitor with expensive equipment if the end result is on your side. If you send your work to someone far away, you have to be sure that he will see it as you see it, in this case you need to calibrate your monitor like the other person. But if this is not the case it is sufficient to test the printer, after all photos are equal. I spent 35 in the darkroom, and I can assure you it is a technique that never fails.

 

[hhelmbold]

I have a question about the comparison between Lightroom and Easy-Photoprint (which I have never used). In lightroom I can use the Ilford ICC profile that matches my paper. In Easy-Photoprint I don't seem to have this option, I can only tell it that I am using matte photopaper... Am I missing something? If this is correct, then the comparison with LR does not work since the issue could be with LR or with the ICC...

I think you have been bombarded with so many answers that you might be trying to fix everything at once too ;D If the prints are indeed the same as the problems I am facing I would suggest you start to elimanate factors in order to get to the root problem. Forget about screen calibrations and custom ICC profiles and ILFORD profiles and start with basic settings.

Photoshop and Lightroom does not use the same print engines, so you can use Photoshop as your 2nd application for testing instead of the Canon Easy Photo Print. But what I suggest is you make a print in LR and in Photoshop where you use the same printer settings and paper type. This will tell you quick enough if LR is the problem or not. Once you have that answer you can go to step 2 and start calibrating your software of choice. Changing too many things at once is going to create new problems once it suddenly works... you won't know which of the 100 solutions or combinations of them actually did the trick ;D

 

[Leejo]

I unfortunately don't have one of these quality printers,
however I overheard recentlly on a podcast with Martin Bailey (MartinBaileyPhotography.com),
who currently uses an imagePROGRAF_iPF6350_Large_Format,
hat the printer driver configuration somewhere stored the Lightroom version,
and anytime there is an LR upgrade he needed to modify the config file to suite.

If you are seeing differences after some point in upgrading LR then this could be
an indication of a similar problem.

 

[jondave]

i have also found that creating my own custom ICC profiles for the papers i use much more reliable than using each manufacturer's canned ICC profiles. the canned profiles will get you close, but if you have exacting expectations then you really need to create your own custom profiles.

i use the Color Monkey by X-rite to do both screen and print ICC profiles. it does a fairly decent job but i have never....NEVER....been fully satisfied with any print that has ever come out of an inkjet printer. there is always something that is just slightly off...but i end up just chalking it up to differences between the two different formats or the random and frequent printer errors that occur.

i absolutely loath desktop printing...its a horrendous task to undertake if you have the highest expectations. trouble is, making a print is ingrained upon my consciousness as "part" of the photographic process. my wife knows when i am doing prints by the stream of expletives coming from my office and she knows to steer clear of me for a few hours.

anyway....good luck. seriously.....

+1

I never did trust the canned profiles... I used them once, uggh. Never again.

Customised ICC profiles for BOTH your monitor and printer is the only answer. I'm personally using an X-Rite i1, and the difference vs canned profiles is night and day. Colormunki is ok, but the best results can only be had with a spectro or having your profiles done through a color lab.

Another side benefit of buying your own spectro to create your own profiles is that you will be able to use 3rd party ink and paper (only the good quality ones of course). The money you'll save will more than make up the initial cost of the spectro, believe me.

 

[kyamon]

Another side benefit of buying your own spectro to create your own profiles is that you will be able to use 3rd party ink and paper (only the good quality ones of course). The money you'll save will more than make up the initial cost of the spectro, believe me.

Interesting point - but I always assumed that cheap inks also have drawbacks with regards to longevity, resistance to sunlight etc.

In any case, thank you all for the interesting answers and suggestions I sure have a lot to try and play with now!

I did manage to obtain the missing ink, so I continued a few tests. The comparison between prints from LR, PS, and EPP is really astonishing - after seeing this I really wonder what the point of an ICC profile for a specific paper/printer combo is if the software in the end does what it feels like anyway! (on a side note - for the Ilford 4x6 paper I am using, which is 310 micron, the ICC is GPSPP12, not 11.)
The picture I was using yesterday most of the time (dark portrait, brown hair and a moderately pale face) turned out too dark in all three programs. Differences are barely noticeable, details in the hair are lost because it gets too dark, and the face turns red. The print is basically useless.
I now tried a different pic, this time a bird sitting on a black PVC tube with a green/white bg (completely oof). Here, the difference between print and screen are considerably smaller, making it in the end really only an issue about adjusting the settings to match where the photo will ultimately hang. If I compare PS, EPP, and LR with this pic, I see interesting color tone differences, in particular on the PVC tube. Ideally this should be dark-grey'ish, and what PS gives me looks pretty close. In contrast, EPP produces something that is almost purple while LR is slightly on the greenish side. But the differences are so small that I would probably not see that unless I have the prints on top of each other. Someone with a better-trained eye might notice (and unfortunately I can not quantify any of what I just said). But it certainly is something I could live with.
The problem is, of course, that I also have the other type of photos, and that with the current settings I just know that some types of prints come out bad.

I guess what this comes down to is a confirmation of what some of you said - in order to get things right one has to do it manually, with or without the help of a spectrometer. Very disappointing.
Just for fun I tried something new - I printed something directly from my camera, using PictBridge. Much to my relief it did not appear to produce better results (who uses that anyways?)

 

[TonyMM]

I may have missed it in reading this thread, but do you have the "Soft Proofing" box checked in the LR4 Develop module with the correct paper profile selected under "Create Proof Copy" ? It is pretty clearly noticeable on my NEC Multisync PA241W monitor that my monitor image turns darker when I activate the Soft Proofing box.

I am having pretty good monitor to printed image matching up on my Epson Stylus R1900 - but I do have to adjust Brightness and Contrast in the Print module to get a close match -- and the level of Brightness/Contrast needed varies between paper profile selection. LR4 remembers the last settings you printed with for each profile and comes up when you go into Print module for printing after you select the appropriate paper profile above.

Tony M

 

[kyamon]

I may have missed it in reading this thread, but do you have the "Soft Proofing" box checked in the LR4 Develop module with the correct paper profile selected under "Create Proof Copy" ? It is pretty clearly noticeable on my NEC Multisync PA241W monitor that my monitor image turns darker when I activate the Soft Proofing box.

I am having pretty good monitor to printed image matching up on my Epson Stylus R1900 - but I do have to adjust Brightness and Contrast in the Print module to get a close match -- and the level of Brightness/Contrast needed varies between paper profile selection. LR4 remembers the last settings you printed with for each profile and comes up when you go into Print module for printing after you select the appropriate paper profile above.

Tony M

Thanks, Tony. I had not used the soft-proofing in LR, and you are right, the difference is considerable. What it does is that it seems to remove some of the color saturation when I check the soft proof box, but what remains is the excessive red in the prints.
I had played with the brightness/contrast settings in the print module, and I can get the print to look better in terms of colour. But I do get the feeling that the photo becomes softer in general.

Is it possible that my dark test-photo is just a particularly hard case? The Pixma Pro 9000 MII is known to not perform great with B/W, so could it be that it just isn't so great as soon as there is a lot of black (or dark) involved? How does the printer produce a black point? I noticed with these tests that even though an estimated 10-20% of the photo are "black", the black cartridge was only used by about 1/5 or less, while I went through almost an entire magenta (the M, not the PM). I presume it uses a lot of that for the brown hair and the skin tones, but that much?

 

[kyamon]

Just for the record - I had a look at the ICC profiles from Ilford.
GSPP12 and GSPP11 are identical (for all I can tell) - makes sense since the supposed difference is only the thickness of the paper, but the paper is otherwise the same. What surprises me more is that they date from 10/2009.
This gets me back to the question what these are good for if each software produces a different result in print, even though the same printer/paper profile has been used...

 

[TrumpetPower!]

Interesting point - but I always assumed that cheap inks also have drawbacks with regards to longevity, resistance to sunlight etc.

Third-party inks, as a rule, are less expensive than manufacturer-branded inks...but they're not all cheap. Lyson, for example, makes some very, very good inks, including a number of printer-specific alternate inksets that are superior in every way to what the manufacturers offer for those particular printers.

Cheers,

b&

 

[kyamon]

Interesting point - but I always assumed that cheap inks also have drawbacks with regards to longevity, resistance to sunlight etc.

Third-party inks, as a rule, are less expensive than manufacturer-branded inks...but they're not all cheap. Lyson, for example, makes some very, very good inks, including a number of printer-specific alternate inksets that are superior in every way to what the manufacturers offer for those particular printers.

Cheers,

b&

Good to know, thanks.

 

[TonyMM]

Also -- watch the Histogram at the top of the panel in Develop/Soft Proofing as you click in the Soft Proofing check box (underneath the image) -- you will note that the histogram of Red/Green/Blue concentrations changes significantly with Soft Proofing activated and not activated. This may be causing the "Red Shift" you're seeing. For example, when I look at one of my images in Develop/Soft Proofing checked and not checked, I see a big shift increase in the number of Red pixel concentration shifting to higher end -- this would indicate to me that the printer will be told to print more red content, particularly in the upper end (I'm using Red River Polar Pearl Metallic paper profile in this example).

So, this provides an opportunity to adjust both the Hue and Saturation red values if you want to more closely duplicate what your monitor is showing you. It will also give you a reading on whether or not some color values are "out of gamut" (will not print) on the specific paper. This again, will give you an opportunity to go back and change hue/saturation to try to bring that portion of the print back into printing full gamut.

Pretty useful, if tedious for some prints.

Tony M

 

[kyamon]

this is really frustrating... I am close to giving up and just try to avoid in the future to print dark photos. And otherwise use PS to print...

I really find it unbelievable that this is not a solved problem. The fact that two programs from the same company produce different output on the same setup is miserable. These are computers, after all. They may not always do what we want, but they are pretty good at doing the same thing over and over again. So all we need is a reasonable way to calibrate. Once. And then it should work...

Or is it all just so sensitive that nothing is reproducible? Does a tiny change in the composition of the ink change everything? Does the temperature of my room change? Or is it only the amount of coffee I had before sitting down at my desk...?

(as a side-note... I am a scientist and do experimental work. I know that things never work the first time around. But then someone works to understand what is going on and improves it, and ultimately something functioning results. In this case the fact that Canon, Ilford, and Adobe (or all the others) do not manage to produce a proper system together is outrageous. And it is not like this is a new problem in any way... OK, I am frustrated and will stop my rant here )

 

[TrumpetPower!]

I really find it unbelievable that this is not a solved problem.

As I indicated in my first post on this thread, it is a solved problem. It's just that the solution isn't obvious and requires equipment and skills.

Here's super over-simplified instructions to how to solve the problem:

[list type=decimal]
[*]Buy a spectrophotometer such as the i1 Pro or the Color Munki.
[*]Use said spectrophotometer to calibrate and profile your display.
[*]Again use said spectrophotometer to profile every combination of printer / ink / paper you use.
[*]Learn what to do with all those ICC profiles you've created. That includes things like soft proofing -- and there's a lot more to soft proofing than ticking a box in Photoshop. Much more. And that's just one small piece of the puzzle....
[*]For bonus points, use better software than that X-Rite ships with their instruments. They make some very good but very expensive profiling software that shouldn't be too hard to use. ArgyllCMS produces superlative quality and is free, but it's command-line only. There are other options, too.
[/list]

I assure you, that's "all" you need to do to solve your problems within the physical limits of the various pieces of hardware. Problem is, it's not an easy solution....

Cheers,

b&

 

[kyamon]

I really find it unbelievable that this is not a solved problem.

As I indicated in my first post on this thread, it is a solved problem. It's just that the solution isn't obvious and requires equipment and skills.

Here's super over-simplified instructions to how to solve the problem:

[list type=decimal]
[*]Buy a spectrophotometer such as the i1 Pro or the Color Munki.
[*]Use said spectrophotometer to calibrate and profile your display.
[*]Again use said spectrophotometer to profile every combination of printer / ink / paper you use.
[*]Learn what to do with all those ICC profiles you've created. That includes things like soft proofing -- and there's a lot more to soft proofing than ticking a box in Photoshop. Much more. And that's just one small piece of the puzzle....
[*]For bonus points, use better software than that X-Rite ships with their instruments. They make some very good but very expensive profiling software that shouldn't be too hard to use. ArgyllCMS produces superlative quality and is free, but it's command-line only. There are other options, too.
[/list]

I assure you, that's "all" you need to do to solve your problems within the physical limits of the various pieces of hardware. Problem is, it's not an easy solution....

Cheers,

b&

OK, I have calmed down a bit by now

I know that there is a way to get prints look the way they should. I know there are people (professionals) who are skilled enough to get these systems to work properly.

What I meant was that I find it weird that there is no simple solution to get this to work at home, for amateurs who can not invest the time and money to go through the entire recipe you described (command-line is not even the issue, I would not have a problem with that...). My thought when I purchased that printer was that it is a way to get around the randomness of large-scale commercial photo-printing companies. I thought that if I get a printer, use that company's own ink, quality paper, and established software I would get a system that is close to plug-and-play. But that is far from the truth... That is what annoyed me, and that is what I meant by "unsolved problem".

Granted, if I want to make the best possible espresso in my own kitchen I can not just get a professional espresso-machine. I also have to learn which beans to buy, how to grind them, how much of them to use, how much pressure to apply, etc. But since we are dealing essentially with chemistry and computers in the case of photo-printing, I thought that things would be sufficiently well standardised and controlled to make the procedure simple. I think if I would take to photos with different cameras of the same type, using the same settings, I would get identical pictures - or is that not the case? That is what I also expect from printing.

Essentially what this all means is that for any non-professional (or for me, at least) it is simply impossible to get great prints without investing a lot more money and a lot more time. Both of which I am able to invest only to a certain extent. It just looks like I have to reduce my expectations, and that frustrates me.

 

[jondave]

Interesting point - but I always assumed that cheap inks also have drawbacks with regards to longevity, resistance to sunlight etc.

OEM inks are not as trumped up as you think they are. Epson and Canon make it seem so because it's in their interests to protect the HUGE margins they make on it.

The are a lot of crap inks out there, don't get me wrong. But the best ones are not hard to find, and perform even better than OEM (in terms of color gamut for the most part). And they save you heaps of money - the best ones don't even cost a quarter of OEM. Guilt-free color-lab quality prints that costs pennies, yeah baby. It's quite addicting actually.

In fact, it is the same OEM ink manufacturers that make the the top of the line refill inks.

Essentially what this all means is that for any non-professional (or for me, at least) it is simply impossible to get great prints without investing a lot more money and a lot more time. Both of which I am able to invest only to a certain extent. It just looks like I have to reduce my expectations, and that frustrates me.

It actually depends what your definition of great prints are. In my opinion, what you're getting is already great - in comparison to what most people not using LR/Photoshop, icc profiles, and professional home printers get.

But it seems what you want is the peak of Mt. Everest, which means you do have to invest time and money to reach. Nothing comes easy my friend, such is the bitch called Color Management. So I say take the plunge, get a spectro. Best investment you'll ever make.

 

[kyamon]

OEM inks are not as trumped up as you think they are. Epson and Canon make it seem so because it's in their interests to protect the HUGE margins they make on it.

This is certainly true - after all, they have to pay for the printers that they give away basically for free...

It actually depends what your definition of great prints are. In my opinion, what you're getting is already great - in comparison to what most people not using LR/Photoshop, icc profiles, and professional home printers.

But it seems what you want is the peak of Mt. Everest, which means you do have to invest time and money to reach. Nothing comes easy my friend, such is the bitch called Color Management. So I say take the plunge, get a spectro. Best investment you'll ever make.

No... Mt. Whitney would be good enough. Or Mont Blanc, since it is around the corner from here
Maybe you are right and I should look into spectrometers...