On Sep 12, 9:47 pm, "Kent McPherson" wrote:
I’m trying to figure out why my digital photos look great with vibrant color on my LCD monitor but look a bit washed out on my HP Photosmart 8250 printer. I’ve tried playing with ICC profiles by picking different options but I’m not having much luck. Is there a good primer on printing out there or can someone who is using an HP 8250 tell me how they get crisp photos?
There are numerous issues with LCD screens producing an over bright or over contrasty image which is not reproduced when printing.
The most constant reason for this is the cable from the computer to the monitor. PCs with "on-board" graphic cards generally only have a 15 pin "VGA" cable. All LCD screens have a connection for these and carry out an on-board re-conversion to digital signal which causes some pretty nasty colour and density that has in the past, given LCD screens a bad reputation.
Even a fairly basic display cards (Radeon, Gforce etc) has both analogue (15 pin VGA) and digital outlets. The better quality ones will have 2 digital outlets. When you connect a digital monitor (LCD) to the analogue outlet, the card does a digital to analogue conversion and the monitor does an analogue to digital conversion.
Data is (for want of a better word) damaged in this process and you end up with a very colourful and totally incorrect view of colours. Digital data cables ought to come with monitors but almost all the lower cost monitors come with analogue cables. I presume this it the compatibility issue… Making hardware backwards compatible makes it incompatible!
SO before you go any further down the road to getting really fantastic photographs… Make sure you have a 100% digital link between your LCD monitor and the graphic processor in your PC. Once you’ve done that, get hold of a an essential program for tuning your monitor called: PSTRIP.EXE. This will allow you to access colour management facilities on your graphic card, even the makers didn’t know about!
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