The most common printing problem of WYSINWYG “What you see is NOT what you get” is a non-calibrated monitor. Here is the scenario: You spent hours editing an image; selecting the right colors, making sure the shadows are just right, the black point isn’t clipped and so on. You print the image and it’s not what you see on your screen. You’re confused. When you sent the same image off to a professional lab like Miller’s, Bay Photos or Mpix, the image looks great. But when you print from home or print at Walmart the image looks bad. What’s going on?
Your images look great from the professional labs because they color corrected the image using their calibrated monitor. Walmart or other quick labs are inexpensive because they don’t color correct your image or make changes. They can show you on their screen what they see is exactly what they printed. Their monitor is calibrated correctly to their machine. The problem is the image you gave them isn’t calibrated to your monitor. You made changes to the image based on erroneous information you’re seeing. It’s a simple fix, you need to calibrate your monitor.
There are many ways to calibrate your monitor. The best way is using a Colorimeter. The two that I’ve used for years are X-Rite ColorMunki and Datacolor Spyder4Pro. You can use software to calibrate your monitor, but it’s not recommended. Your eyes can be fooled, a colormeter isn’t fooled as easily. Once you calibrate your monitor, you should periodically re-calibrate it to make sure you’re in-sync.
This short video shows how easy it is to calibrate your monitor.
http://youtu.be/9OddRCVZQaw
I have a colormunki and do calibrate my monitor, but still I experience 2 issues: First, the tonal range is ALWAYS a lot darker on a print than on my screen; Second, I don’t have a room where the background light is constant (window light changing during the day is the main challenge) so a morning color calibration doesn’t seem to be as effective in the late afternoon, for instance. The first point is often glossed over by experts offering advice on printing (I understand the fact that monitors these days are super-bright and contrasty, but I’m still looking for… Read more »
There’s always a difference in printed images, where light is reflected by the surface, and monitors, where light is transmitted. Contrast is far lower in prints (and depending also on paper). Most users set monitors way too bright, even if calibrated, and thereby prints are usually ‘too dark’, especially if seen under the wrong light. Be bold, and lower brightness, even if you don’t like it in the beginning. Besides the monitor itself, you need the proper ICC profile for the printer/paper/inks combination used. It’s important to take advantage of the capabilities of the tool used to print to ‘preview’… Read more »
I have a colormunki and do calibrate my monitor, but still I experience 2 issues: First, the tonal range is ALWAYS a lot darker on a print than on my screen; Second, I don’t have a room where the background light is constant (window light changing during the day is the main challenge) so a morning color calibration doesn’t seem to be as effective in the late afternoon, for instance. The first point is often glossed over by experts offering advice on printing (I understand the fact that monitors these days are super-bright and contrasty, but I’m still looking for… Read more »
There’s always a difference in printed images, where light is reflected by the surface, and monitors, where light is transmitted. Contrast is far lower in prints (and depending also on paper). Most users set monitors way too bright, even if calibrated, and thereby prints are usually ‘too dark’, especially if seen under the wrong light. Be bold, and lower brightness, even if you don’t like it in the beginning. Besides the monitor itself, you need the proper ICC profile for the printer/paper/inks combination used. It’s important to take advantage of the capabilities of the tool used to print to ‘preview’… Read more »