Epson colour management

Derek Fountain wrote:

I’ve recently had need to reinstall my Win2000 machine which has Photoshop CS and an Epson895 colour printer. I’ve never had any success with this printer, with all images coming out too red. Nothing like a clean sheet to start again with…

I downloaded and installed the ICC profiles from the Epson website, and was just playing with the Printer Properties dialog. I came across the Colour Management tab which has one profile associated with the printer. That profile is named "EE147_1", and, since it’s the only one, it’ll get selected by default. Apparently.
I’ve never seen this dialog tab before and don’t know anything about what it does. Where does this information and the "EE147_1" profile fit into the workflow? Could this be the source of my problems with this printer?

It’s very easy to double profile your printing under Photoshop, and a magenta cast is the trademark of a double-profiled Epson.

If you are specifying "Printer Color Management" when you print, you should be OK. If you print to the Epson profile from within Photoshop, and have your driver setup as you do you will get double profiling. Pick one or the other, but not both.
—

Mike Russell
www.curvemeister.com
www.geigy.2y.net

From: Derek Fountain

I’ve recently had need to reinstall my Win2000 machine which has Photoshop CS and an Epson895 colour printer. I’ve never had any success with this printer, with all images coming out too red.

If it’s a strong magenta cast then most likely you’re applying profiles twice instead of once with your flow. Should be easy to fix.

I downloaded and installed the ICC profiles from the Epson website, and was just playing with the Printer Properties dialog. I came across the Colour Management tab which has one profile associated with the printer. That profile is named "EE147_1", and, since it’s the only one, it’ll get selected by default. Apparently.

I’ve never seen this dialog tab before and don’t know anything about what it does. Where does this information and the "EE147_1" profile fit into the workflow?

The better Epson Photo printers (1280, 2200 etc) supply separate ICM profiles for each paper type, which allows you to soft proof with the profile and get a pretty good idea of what the final print will look like. The cheaper consumer models (like you have) often don’t offer separate profiles for each paper type, instead all the profiles are bundled into one ICM file (ee147_1.icm, in this case). Then if you select ICM option while printing the driver sees which paper type you’ve chosen and automagically picks the right profile for this paper from the bundle, if you have the dialog boxes set right.

Could this be the source of my problems with this printer?

Probably not, more likely you’re applying profiles twice … you need to tell us how you’re printing to be sure, ie, if you are trying to soft proof (wrong idea with this bundled profile) and what settings you chose in the Epson driver.

What SHOULD work is to not select soft proofing and don’t convert to the printer profile, and then in the Epson driver select ICM … the dialog boxes for Color Management options are slightly different from printer to printer, but on a 2200 (for example) you’d select ICM and in the "ICC Profile" box select ‘applied by printer software’. It’s easy to apply the profile twice by mistake, which will give you a heavy magenta cast, which you seem to have.

Bill

If it’s a strong magenta cast then most likely you’re applying profiles twice
instead of once with your flow. Should be easy to fix.

I wouldn’t say it’s a strong magenta cast. It’s actually pretty mild. Experience has shown that applying a correction layer with saturation at about -5 and lightness at about -15 makes the screen look fairly like the printed version. Unfortunately those numbers differ for each photo, so a simple adjustment layer before printing doesn’t work. I have to print several small images using trial and error to get an adjustment layer which looks about right.

For some images, the printed version is "good enough", but for anything with skin tones or red earth (there’s lots of that here in Australia!) the printed version is too red.

This is all looking at the image on the screen with soft proofing switched on. Switching soft proofing on does make the on screen skin tones a little redder, but not by nearly so much as I see when printed.

Probably not, more likely you’re applying profiles twice … you need to tell us how you’re printing to be sure, ie, if you are trying to soft proof (wrong idea with this bundled profile) and what settings you chose in the Epson driver.

OK, my monitor is calibrated by Adobe Gamma and the room is naturally lit (although it could be brighter in here). I have an Epson895 with Epson inks and Epson Premium Glossly Photo Paper. I have the latest driver and ICC profiles as downloaded from the Epson website yesterday. The image I’m printing is a montage of a friend surfing – greenish water with a large close up of his face (somewhat flushed) in the background. Looking at the image on screen with soft proofing for my printer/paper enabled, the image looks good.

In the print dialog I set the Colour Management Source Space to Document (sRGB in this case) and the Print Space to Epson895 with the right paper. Intent is Perceptual and Black Point Compensation is checked. I click OK to get to the printer dialog.

I click Properties and set the paper to the right type. Ink is Colour and I set the Mode to custom. Click the Advanced box and set Colour Management to No Colour Management. Print Quality is 720 (I’d make it 1440 for the final print) and all other options are off. It hit the print button.

The image printed is notably darker than seen on screen – 10%, maybe a bit more. The greenish-grey water is pretty close, perhaps 5% less saturated than on screen. The yellowish clouds (the photos were taken not long from sunset) are more saturated then on screen, maybe by 10%. The reds are significantly more saturated. His flushed face is about 20% redder than on screen, and the bright red flashings on his surfboard are perhaps 25% brighter than on screen.

This image is probably usable. Experience tells me I could add an adjustment layer which turns down the reds about 15% (so it looks less saturated on screen) and turns up the lightness by about 10% (so it looks too light on screen) and the printout would then be close enough to what I want. Other images with more red content aren’t so easily adjustable, and to be honest, I rarely use the printer because of this problem.

What SHOULD work is to not select soft proofing and don’t convert to the printer profile, and then in the Epson driver select ICM … the dialog boxes for Color Management options are slightly different from printer to printer, but on a 2200 (for example) you’d select ICM and in the "ICC Profile" box
select ‘applied by printer software’. It’s easy to apply the profile twice by mistake, which will give you a heavy magenta cast, which you seem to have.

OK, that’s what Mike appears to be suggesting, so I tried that: Source space is document, as before, print space is Printer Colour Management. In the Epson driver leave the paper type and other settings as before, and set the mode ICM. This time the print is slightly brighter than before, but the colours are a bit less accurate. The reds are now notably stronger than my first effort. We’re probably talking 30% redder than the screen. Again, if it weren’t for the reds, the image would probably be usable, in my non-professional, not extremely demanding kind of way. But since the guy looks like he’s badly sunburnt, I can’t live with it.

Any further advice would be appreciated.

in article 40ea0c3e$0$24747$,
Derek Fountain at wrote on 7/5/04 7:24 PM:

If it’s a strong magenta cast then most likely you’re applying profiles twice
instead of once with your flow. Should be easy to fix.

I wouldn’t say it’s a strong magenta cast. It’s actually pretty mild. Experience has shown that applying a correction layer with saturation at about -5 and lightness at about -15 makes the screen look fairly like the printed version. Unfortunately those numbers differ for each photo, so a simple adjustment layer before printing doesn’t work. I have to print several small images using trial and error to get an adjustment layer which looks about right.

For some images, the printed version is "good enough", but for anything with skin tones or red earth (there’s lots of that here in Australia!) the printed version is too red.

This is all looking at the image on the screen with soft proofing switched on. Switching soft proofing on does make the on screen skin tones a little redder, but not by nearly so much as I see when printed.

Probably not, more likely you’re applying profiles twice … you need to tell us how you’re printing to be sure, ie, if you are trying to soft proof (wrong idea with this bundled profile) and what settings you chose in the Epson driver.

OK, my monitor is calibrated by Adobe Gamma and the room is naturally lit (although it could be brighter in here). I have an Epson895 with Epson inks and Epson Premium Glossly Photo Paper. I have the latest driver and ICC profiles as downloaded from the Epson website yesterday. The image I’m printing is a montage of a friend surfing – greenish water with a large close up of his face (somewhat flushed) in the background. Looking at the image on screen with soft proofing for my printer/paper enabled, the image looks good.

In the print dialog I set the Colour Management Source Space to Document (sRGB in this case) and the Print Space to Epson895 with the right paper. Intent is Perceptual and Black Point Compensation is checked. I click OK to get to the printer dialog.

I click Properties and set the paper to the right type. Ink is Colour and I set the Mode to custom. Click the Advanced box and set Colour Management to No Colour Management. Print Quality is 720 (I’d make it 1440 for the final print) and all other options are off. It hit the print button.
The image printed is notably darker than seen on screen – 10%, maybe a bit more. The greenish-grey water is pretty close, perhaps 5% less saturated than on screen. The yellowish clouds (the photos were taken not long from sunset) are more saturated then on screen, maybe by 10%. The reds are significantly more saturated. His flushed face is about 20% redder than on screen, and the bright red flashings on his surfboard are perhaps 25% brighter than on screen.

This image is probably usable. Experience tells me I could add an adjustment layer which turns down the reds about 15% (so it looks less saturated on screen) and turns up the lightness by about 10% (so it looks too light on screen) and the printout would then be close enough to what I want. Other images with more red content aren’t so easily adjustable, and to be honest, I rarely use the printer because of this problem.

What SHOULD work is to not select soft proofing and don’t convert to the printer profile, and then in the Epson driver select ICM … the dialog boxes for Color Management options are slightly different from printer to printer, but on a 2200 (for example) you’d select ICM and in the "ICC Profile" box
select ‘applied by printer software’. It’s easy to apply the profile twice by mistake, which will give you a heavy magenta cast, which you seem to have.

OK, that’s what Mike appears to be suggesting, so I tried that: Source space is document, as before, print space is Printer Colour Management. In the Epson driver leave the paper type and other settings as before, and set the mode ICM. This time the print is slightly brighter than before, but the colours are a bit less accurate. The reds are now notably stronger than my first effort. We’re probably talking 30% redder than the screen. Again, if it weren’t for the reds, the image would probably be usable, in my non-professional, not extremely demanding kind of way. But since the guy looks like he’s badly sunburnt, I can’t live with it.

Any further advice would be appreciated.

Has the pix been "assigned"sRGB as a profile?
IF yes – what happens if you "convert to profile" to your printer profile in PS – and then print with no color handling anywhere.
–
If it is still out of wack
your monitor may not be well profiled
your printer profile may be bad
(that is probably the case, if it is a canned profile)

MSD

Bill Hilton wrote:

From: Derek Fountain

I’ve recently had need to reinstall my Win2000 machine which has Photoshop CS and an Epson895 colour printer. I’ve never had any success with this printer, with all images coming out too red.

If it’s a strong magenta cast then most likely you’re applying profiles twice instead of once with your flow. Should be easy to fix.

Applying profiles more than once can be a culprit for many problems, and seems to trip up many users. Aside from noting "a strong magenta cast", is there a more conclusive way to tell that is exactly what happened?

If you ask me, applying any profile in Photoshop is a hazard. Photoshop or Epson, for that matter. It only seems to be Epson printers which do this magenta thing.

My solution:
Switch off colour management all together. If you can’t get it right by now, you might as well forget it until later. At least get the printer doing half decent output before you go back that way. Put your faith in the force, Luke.

Remove the ICC profile for the printer too. It’s crap.
Now that you are in free space, print a photo you think looks right on the screen. If this has a magenta cast (pink clouds in the sky). Adjust the printer directly. You will probably find everything you print (photographically) from any program has the magenta cast.

Open the Epson printer properties and go to printing preferences – advanced settings. Knock back about 15 points of magenta and 5 of yellow. See what this does. You might need to change this for other paper but the 5 Epsons I unpacked since setting up a r310 for myself, all needed pretty much the same corrections. Must be something about Epson!

Cheers.
_____________________

wrote in message

Bill Hilton wrote:

From: Derek Fountain

I’ve recently had need to reinstall my Win2000 machine which has

Photoshop

CS and an Epson895 colour printer. I’ve never had any success with this printer, with all images coming out too red.

If it’s a strong magenta cast then most likely you’re applying profiles

twice

instead of once with your flow. Should be easy to fix.

Applying profiles more than once can be a culprit for many problems, and seems to trip up many users. Aside from noting "a strong magenta cast", is there a more conclusive way to tell that is exactly what happened?

Has the pix been "assigned"sRGB as a profile?

No, they’re sRGB straight out of my digital camera. Well, that’s what the camera claims to put out anyway.

your monitor may not be well profiled

Could be, but I’ve done it a dozen or more times. It always comes out the same, but I suppose I could be making the same mistake each time. It’s hard to see how though, since it’s not exactly a difficult procedure.

your printer profile may be bad
(that is probably the case, if it is a canned profile)

That’s where my suspicions lie. It’s a consumer level printer and I suspect Epson made it to a budget with a "good enough" mindset. I suspect most people use this sort of printer with the cheapie, not-too-impressive software which comes with it, and in general they’re happy with the results. I doubt if vast amounts of effort went into creating those profiles.

Perhaps my best approach here is to stop being so pedantic until I can afford to spend a decent pile of money on a printer… :o)

From: Derek Fountain

For some images, the printed version is "good enough", but for anything with skin tones or red earth (there’s lots of that here in Australia!) the printed version is too red.

This is all looking at the image on the screen with soft proofing switched on. Switching soft proofing on does make the on screen skin tones a little redder, but not by nearly so much as I see when printed.

Hi Derek,

Sounds like you’re definitely NOT applying the profiles twice. Since you get a close match except for a couple of colors I’d say the problem is likely either an inaccurate monitor profile or an inaccurate printer profile.

One cheap way to check this out is to find one of the quickie print places like Wal-Mart or Costco (not sure what the Aussie equivalent is) or whatever that has a Frontier-type printer and get a print from them. If this print looks just like your monitor with good reds then you know it’s the Epson profile that’s off. If it looks like the Epson print then it’s probably a bad monitor profile causing the drama.

And if it looks totally different than either then you’re back in the spin cycle of color management hell 🙂

Worth 30 cents or so to print a 4×6 find out either way, probably.

Bill

On Tue, 06 Jul 2004 10:24:17 +0800, Derek Fountain
wrote:

OK, my monitor is calibrated by Adobe Gamma and the room is naturally lit (although it could be brighter in here). I have an Epson895 with Epson inks and Epson Premium Glossly Photo Paper. I have the latest driver and ICC profiles as downloaded from the Epson website yesterday. The image I’m printing is a montage of a friend surfing – greenish water with a large close up of his face (somewhat flushed) in the background. Looking at the image on screen with soft proofing for my printer/paper enabled, the image looks good.

In the print dialog I set the Colour Management Source Space to Document (sRGB in this case) and the Print Space to Epson895 with the right paper. Intent is Perceptual and Black Point Compensation is checked. I click OK to get to the printer dialog.

Uncheck black point compensation and the image will be lighter when printed. Note that your image is in sRGB which is both a colour space that is narrower in gamut than Adobe RGB and one which has more out of gamut areas when turned into a (CMYK) print than Adobe RGB (which, though wider gamut maps the CMYK colour space much better). And remember, that your print out is CMYK (not the image of course) so that colours will vary more. Glad to see you’re soft proofing but are you noting whether out of gamut colours are in the images?

I click Properties and set the paper to the right type. Ink is Colour and I set the Mode to custom. Click the Advanced box and set Colour Management to No Colour Management. Print Quality is 720 (I’d make it 1440 for the final print) and all other options are off. It hit the print button.

The image printed is notably darker than seen on screen – 10%, maybe a bit more. The greenish-grey water is pretty close, perhaps 5% less saturated than on screen. The yellowish clouds (the photos were taken not long from sunset) are more saturated then on screen, maybe by 10%. The reds are significantly more saturated. His flushed face is about 20% redder than on screen, and the bright red flashings on his surfboard are perhaps 25% brighter than on screen.

See my comment above about sRGB v. Adobe RGB.

It seems to me that there’s a couple of issues here. One is the colour space you’re using and your use of black point compensation. The other is most likely out of your control in that I suspect the printer profile isn’t very good.

—

Hecate

veni, vidi, reliqui

One cheap way to check this out is to find one of the quickie print places like Wal-Mart or Costco (not sure what the Aussie equivalent is) or whatever that
has a Frontier-type printer and get a print from them. If this print looks just like your monitor with good reds then you know it’s the Epson profile
that’s off. If it looks like the Epson print then it’s probably a bad monitor profile causing the drama.

Now that is an excellent suggestion. I think the profiles for the Fuji machine are on the web somewhere, so I’ll try to find a local printer who has such a machine and give it a try.

One cheap way to check this out is to find one of the quickie print places … that has a Frontier-type printer and get a print from them.

From: Derek Fountain

Now that is an excellent suggestion. I think the profiles for the Fuji machine are on the web somewhere, so I’ll try to find a local printer who has such a machine and give it a try.

I think those profiles will let you soft-proof to see what you can expect to get, but my understanding is that the Frontier-type places expect the file to be in sRGB space without converting to a specific profile, so don’t convert it unless you talk to them first and see if that’s what they are expecting.

Let us know how this works out 🙂

Bill

Fiji digilabs do indeed like sRGB files but they (most of them) also run on auto-pilot and adjust colours the way they think they ought to be. Wrong suggestion to get a mini-lab print and try and make your gear conform.

Better deal is to go to your local computer store and ask for a demonstration of an Epson r300 or a Picture-Mate printer by plugging your camera into the USB port of the printer or it’s card into the right slot and have the *EPSON* printer make the print. This way you will know that… a: an Epson did the print (Picture-Mate uses dura-brite ink – r300, dye ink) b: if you alter your PC’s printer to match the print you have, you are almost guaranteed to be able to duplicate the results!

Both of those printers can take cards too and neither one needs a computer hooked up to make a print… Digital Photo Labs to go!

The other (less desirable from your viewpoint) is to e-mail me an unaltered file and I’ll (via a computer) make 10×15 cm print on a printer in my showroom (dura-brite or dye) and post it back. I’m in Australia but the mail service is only 3 days to London so I guess anywhere else should be no more than a week. My addy is a real one if you want to do that.

Doug.

"Bill Hilton" wrote in message

One cheap way to check this out is to find one of the quickie print places … that has a Frontier-type printer and get a print from them.

From: Derek Fountain

Now that is an excellent suggestion. I think the profiles for the Fuji machine are on the web somewhere, so I’ll try to find a local printer who has such a machine and give it a try.

I think those profiles will let you soft-proof to see what you can expect

to

get, but my understanding is that the Frontier-type places expect the file

to

be in sRGB space without converting to a specific profile, so don’t

convert it

unless you talk to them first and see if that’s what they are expecting.
Let us know how this works out 🙂

Bill

I think those profiles will let you soft-proof to see what you can expect to get, but my understanding is that the Frontier-type places expect the file to be in sRGB space without converting to a specific profile, so don’t convert it unless you talk to them first and see if that’s what they are expecting.

Yes… and, er, maybe. :o}

From what I’ve read, Frontier machines don’t do colour management themselves, they are just basic, what you see is what you get devices in that respect. So most people would take in an sRGB image from their camera, and the result would look like what they see on their non-calibrated monitor.

So what I can do to do is get Frontier profile, adjust my image using soft proofing, then convert my image from its sRGB space to that profile. Save as an 8bit TIFF and take it in with the instruction to just print it with absolutely no adjustments. That sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?

in article 40eca1cf$0$24746$,
Derek Fountain at wrote on 7/7/04 6:27 PM:

One cheap way to check this out is to find one of the quickie print places like Wal-Mart or Costco (not sure what the Aussie equivalent is) or whatever that
has a Frontier-type printer and get a print from them. If this print looks just like your monitor with good reds then you know it’s the Epson profile
that’s off. If it looks like the Epson print then it’s probably a bad monitor profile causing the drama.

Now that is an excellent suggestion. I think the profiles for the Fuji machine are on the web somewhere, so I’ll try to find a local printer who has such a machine and give it a try.

That might be
<<drycreekphoto>>
as I recall