Images seem to print much darker than they appear on screen?

I have been using iPhoto to create cards and then I later save them as .pdf files so I can take them to another mac connected to an Epson 1400 printer and print them. Prior to making the cards in iPhoto, I do basic levels and auto color adjustments in Photoshop. Some of the cards that I am printing seem to be so much darker than the way they appear on screen. I understand that there is a differene between what is presented on a display and the way something may print, but the difference is so drastic. Is this something to do with iPhoto?
Thanks.

rick.pearl
Because every maker of computer, software and printer have a different definition of the various colors Apple and others got together to agree definitions that would work together. So if you assign a color space to an image - sRGB, say - then any software or hardware that respect the color space will be using the same meaning for 'green' or 'blue'.
In iPhoto Preferences -> Advanced, check the box for Embed Color Sync Profile, and this will embed a profile on every pic you add from now on.
As to the one's already in, Old Toad has kindly created an Automator action that will add an sRGB profile to pics already in iPhoto. You can downlaod it from here.
http://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/FileSharing.woa/wa/default?user=toad.hall&tem platefn=FileSharing7.html&xmlfn=TKDocument.7.xml&sitefn=RootSite.xml&aff=consume r&cty=US&lang=en#
Regards
TD
as to the points: most everything I do is pointless

Similar Messages

LR 4 images look and print much different than they did in LR 3 - How do I go Back to LR 3

How do I go back to LR3 ?
LR 4 is a disaster for me
Dave

You could double-click on LR3, and use LR3.
Or you could calibrate everything properly (monitor and printer) in LR4, and see if you can get things to match (by the way, I'm sure other people have done this and are not having this problem, maybe some of them could jump in here and discuss)

Why are the photos i print much darker than the monitor image?

why are the photos i print much darker than the monitor image?

Please read this post then provide some details. What printer model? What operating system? What program are you printing from?
Some programs such as Photoshop give the option to print to CMYK or sRGB color spaces. Even though the printer uses CMYK inks the driver is expecting sRGB data. If CMYK is selected the prints will be much too dark.
Another thing to check is the media type. If you are printing on plain paper and have seelcted Photo paper the prints have too much ink.
Bob Headrick, HP Expert
I am not an employee of HP, I am a volunteer posting here on my own time.
If your problem is solved please click the "Accept as Solution" button ------------V
If my answer was helpful please click the "Thumbs Up" to say "Thank You"--V

Prints are darker than what appears on PC screen

Windows Vista Business OS
Acer laptop PC
PSE6
Good morning.
I'm so hoping that someone has an easy solution to this printing issue.
In PSE6, I've created 85 scrapbook poem pages in the following format: 300 dpi; 12 x 12 size that will be reduced to a print size of 8 x8.
I worked all summer on this project for my 98-year young grandma who is the author of these poems. Gram is spry and healthy, but given her age, we are both concerned that it will take a long time to remedy the problem - if the only solution to lighten is to go through each layer of all 85 pages and reset the light intensity. As she says in jest, "time" is really not on her side. This is our second poem book project - the first was handmade scrapbook poem pages that were printed directly from a UPS copycenter printer.
For this second project, I printed some test copies of a couple of pages on my inkjet Lexmark printer. Photo quality paper: the printed copy was much darker than what appeared on the laptop PC screen - details couldn't be distinguished. Lower quality paper: the printed copy had a faded looking print.
I will be taking the PDF format of the pages to the UPS copycenter, again. I've been told that the prints can be lightened, however, I'm concerned that the quality of the print will be compromised.
Any easy solutions to resolve this problem?
Thank you.
Shinlee

Any suggestions or comments about this topic? I've been told by the UPS copy center that lightness/darkness modifications can be made from their printer; however my concern is that the print quality will be affected (i.e. lightening will cause a faded look).

Photoshop saves images darker than they appear in-program

I am using Photoshop CS6 64-bit version, and I also had this problem with the previous Photoshop CS5 (64-bit aswell). (Windows 7 64-bit)
I've had this problem for a very long time and I've been looking for answers for tons of times however this time around I really want it fixed because it is very annoying.
Whenever I save most images that I've edited or created in Photoshop, they get saved as darker than they are in the program;
It shouldn't be a monitor problem. I have two monitors and it occurs on both. When I save the image and open it on the same monitor for comparison, it is darker than it was in photoshop.
If I use a screen-cap tool like Gyazo directly in photoshop to upload a screenshot of the image to the web, it appears just as light as it should (I am not sure if it's 100% as light as it should, however it's definitely way better and lighter than saving the image then uploading it).
Here's a comparison. On the left it is the wallpaper opened in Photoshop. On the right side I have the image saved as a .PNG and shown using the default Windows Photo Viewer:
http://i.gyazo.com/02f434cce077a672e0169f7c2875b3ef.png
You can see that there is a clear difference, and that it's way darker than it should be. It pretty much ruins the image in this case due to how dark it gets.
(Yes, I've tried saving a very wide range of image filetypes with no success)
Continuing on the monitor/screen-cap part above... So logically there should be some issues with the actual saving of the image in Photoshop. Am I using sRGB? Yes. I have checked all the settings in the color settings countless times to make sure it's right. I also tried playing a bit around with them to no avail. Here is a picture of my color settings (Ctrl+Shift+K): http://i.gyazo.com/b3f993b61e2e9c701d0820886670da36.png
I have both tried to reset my settings and re-installed Photoshop. As I also said I've had this problem with an earlier version of Photoshop aswell. I have tried to convert color profiles before I save the image and I've made sure it's saved using sRGB.
I'm convinced Photoshop is saving the image wrongly or something due to the screen-cap case.
If anyone has any leads on how to go about fixing this then please speak out. If you require any more information about my hardware/software or what I've tried, just ask.
Thanks!

This has nothing to do with Photoshop. The problem is that Windows Photo Viewer displays the image incorrectly. Apparently it's choking on the display profile, while Photoshop manages to work with it.
Both applications are fully color managed and should display identically. If they don't the problem is nearly always the display profile.
Try to set sRGB as default display profile in Windows. If the difference disappears you know you have a bad profile and need to replace it. If you don't have a calibrator to make a new profile, just use sRGB for now. Manufacturer-supplied profiles are notoriously defective in any number of ways and should be avoided.

Print much darker than displayed photo

recently upgraaded to latest Mac system. Using Canon Pixma Pro 9000 printer. When printing image, final print very much darker than displayed on screen! Using LR 4

Have a look at this video: http://tv.adobe.com/watch/getting-started-with-adobe-photoshop-lightroom-4/lightroom-4-pri nt-the-perfect-image/

I have two printers: Epson XP-950 and an hp Photosmart 7520. Both print photos that are darker than they appear on the PC screen. What can I do to set them to printg what is shown on the screen????

I use Photoshop Elements 12 for my photos. I have a constant problem where my photos don't print like they appear on the screen. They come out darker than the screen shows. If brighten them in the program, I have to almost make the photo appear "white" in order to look good printed. ?????? What can I do to fix this problem??

sneakypete1 a écrit:
I use Photoshop Elements 12 for my photos. I have a constant problem where my photos don't print like they appear on the screen. They come out darker than the screen shows. If brighten them in the program, I have to almost make the photo appear "white" in order to look good printed. ?????? What can I do to fix this problem??
I am ready to bet that your display is much, much too bright (like all displays at factory settings.
Why Are My Prints Too Dark

Custom .look grade applied in Premiere seems much darker than in Speedgrade

I'm just starting to dig into the interaction between Premiere and Speedgrade. Maybe I'm missing something. When I try to apply a Lumetri custom .look file as either an effect or a filter in Premiere, the result is MUCH darker than it appears in Speedgrade. To explore further, I rendered the clip in question via Speedgrade, imported the result to Premiere, and the grade looked as it had in Speedgrade. Applying the .look file via Premiere to the same source clip, the result was once again far too dark.
Is there some setting that I'm missing someplace? Are other people having the same result?

I'm not sure if you still have the same problem but I've noticed that certain LUT's that you can find in Speedgrade can help match the two programs and the way they display the image. Also I've realized the "Input Saturation" setting DOES NOT translate well into Premiere.
Try this:
1. Take a grade you made and turn the Input Saturation up quite a bit for that specific grade..
2. Create a separate .Look file with that grade.
3. Turn the Input Saturation back to default and make a separate .Look with that grade.
4. Switch between the grades from Step 1 and Step 3 to see if it better matches your Speedgrade image.
Note: If these still don't match, what matched my two programs almost perfectly was using the DAY4NIGHT - SL - 3527.itx LUT in the Speedgrade options under: Timeline > Setup at the bottom. Use this LUT in conjunction with Steps 1 through 4. Experiment with different LUTs.
I hope that helps! :-)

LR 4.1 photos (still) MUCH darker than in PS CS5 - why?

Right: Photo in LR4.1, shown using Process 2010 to be compatible (as good as possible) with PS and ACR 6.7 (a switch to 2012 shows a difference regarding darkness, but not too much)
Left: Top the same photo opend via LR (it matches the LR version), bottom the same photo opend directly via PS. This bottom version is how it should look like IMO.
Photo is a Canon .CR2 RAW file. Of course all parameters for the RAW converting process are the same for LR and PS.
Screen is Eizo CG243W, hardware calibrated with the Eizo Color Navigator (coming with the monitor) and Spyder 4. Win7 64Bit, all currently Adobe Updates installed, no RC versions.
Simply ALL photos are shown way too dark in LR, not only RAWs but also jpgs. Photos match between PS and e.g. Firefox, which supports color management.
It is also clearly visible how different the histograms between the two open versions in PS look like:
Dark version (opend via LR):
Opend via PS directly:
No clou what to check anymore, and quite desperate already... it makes no sense to spend a lot of work to improve the photos in LR with high effort (and all drawbacks of going to the limits with Exposure etc.) if this is all only based on some wrong interpretation of LR, which it looks like to me...
Ah yes, I read about that LR cannot handle V4 ICC monitor profiles correctly, but I checked this, mine are V2.2, so this should be fine... but maybe still some incompatibility between the profiles produced by the ColorNavigator and LR!? I also found the other topics regarding similar problems here in the forum, but as we are already talking about LR4.1 final and ACR 6.7 for PS, it seems like the bugfix mentionend there did not solve this issue...
Anybody any clou?
Thanks!
Klaus
UPDATE: OK, now it is getting really weird... I just saw that I opend the file with PS as 8 bit only, so I tried to do again with 16 bit. Result is that I now cannot reproduce my screenshot from above at all, no matter if using 8 or 16 bit - but what I can manage is to have the photo opend twice in PS, looking exactly the same, both 16 bit, but with totally different histograms!?

With Nikon raw files I can't reproduce what you're seeing.
I'm also using LR4 (.2RC in my case) and PS CS5.
Provided the raw file is set to PS2010 in LR, then it looks the same in LR as in CS5. CS5 evaluates histograms differently, so they don't exactly compare - but the histogram in LR looks the same as the histogram in ACR.
Have you got LR, Catalog settings, Metadata tab, "Automatically write changes into XMP" checked? If not, you need to right click the image in LR, select Metadata, then "Save metadata to file" to make sure the xmp data that ACR sees in the .xmp file is the same as the edit data LR sees. And, as you say, set the process in LR to PS2010 or there may be slight differences, even though ACR6.7 is supposed to be able to read PV2012 files (in my experience, ACR6.7 does not render PV2012 files identically to LR4.2RC, or it didn't when I was using them last weekend).
Can't help you with the Spyder or Eizo kit - I have two different monitors both calibrated with a ColorMunki Display, set to create v2 profiles. As everyone says, v4 profiles seem to be more trouble than they're worth.

Elements 10, windows 8, 64 bit, epson artisan 835 printer: prints are really dark even after using enhancements like adjusting lighting. Prints are darker than photoshop edit screen. Prints are acceptable using paint, windows photo viewer, or gallery.

Elements 10, Windows 8, 64 bit, Epson Artisan 835 printer: Prints are really dark even after applying enhancements, like adjusting lighting. Prints are darker than Photoshop Edit Screen. Prints are acceptable using Paint, Windows Photoviewer, or Photo Gallery.

In general theory, one now has the Edit button for their posts, until someone/anyone Replies to it. I've had Edit available for weeks, as opposed to the old forum's ~ 30 mins.
That, however, is in theory. I've posted, and immediately seen something that needed editing, only to find NO Replies, yet the Edit button is no longer available, only seconds later. Still, in that same thread, I'd have the Edit button from older posts, to which there had also been no Replies even after several days/weeks. Found one that had to be over a month old, and Edit was still there.
Do not know the why/how of this behavior. At first, I thought that maybe there WAS a Reply, that "ate" my Edit button, but had not Refreshed on my screen. Refresh still showed no Replies, just no Edit either. In those cases, I just Reply and mention the [Edit].
Also, it seems that the buttons get very scrambled at times, and Refresh does not always clear that up. I end up clicking where I "think" the right button should be and hope for the best. Seems that when the buttons do bunch up they can appear at random around the page, often three atop one another, and maybe one way the heck out in left-field.
While I'm on a role, it would be nice to be able to switch between Flattened and Threaded Views on the fly. Each has a use, and having to go to Options and then come back down to the thread is a very slow process. Jive is probably incapable of this, but I can dream.
Hunt

External projection much darker than the source

I am using a mini displayport to vga adapter and the external image is much darker than the source running on my mbp. this is going into a mixer then out to a projector. I also have an old pre intel powerbook that is doing the same thing(into a mixer and out to a projector) with s-video , with no problems at all.
this is a recent problem with the mbp,6 months ago it worked fine.
could it be the new os? if so how do i get back to the one i need?

I am having the same problem with my brand new MacBook Pro connecting to a video projector with a Mini-display to VGA connector. Many of the pictures are darker
than they should be. In PowerPoint I had to go to those darker slides and lighten them up (brightness up and contrast down). Now they are tolerable, but they still look better on the Mac screen than the projected image. Have tried three different projectors and find the same result. Projected colors are quite a bit different also. Puzzeled in Pennsylvania

Why are colors in Illustrator 6 so much darker than in Illustrator 4?

I recently switched from Illustrator CS4 to CS6. The colors in 6 are much darker than in 4, and are not accurate to actual Pantone colors (they were very close to being accurate in 4). Has anyone experienced this, and does anyone know what to do about this?

Your color management settings may have changed since you said all colors are darker. check your color management settings match between CS6 & CS4.
Edit >> Color Settings
In regards to the difference between CS6 and CS5 or before the color books are now LAB not CMYK, so that means the values are different. A bad thing for print if you change the color mode to CMYK, the colors will be far off what the PMS book says, and you will have to manually fix this e color to match what CS4 uses.
CS5 the book colors were in CMYK so when you converted to CMYK the colors were a close match for printing.
In CS6 the color books switched to LAB which may be more accurate for RGB and digital workflows, but not Print CMYK.
In CS6 converting to CMYK, introduces scum dot (small value which serves little purpose and introduces screening) in cyan and black you would not desire, and in for example flexible packing scum dot would increase the visibility of a moire pattern. For printing never use the CMYK conversion in CS6.
Depending which PMS book you use the CMYK values change.
485 is 95m 100y in the Latest Color Bridge Book, so many brands prior to the bridge book reject that cmyk match for brand consistency with existing printing.
485 is 95m 100y in the solid process book. Many brands stick to this especially if they are matching what their brand was prior to the color bridge.

PSE6 Mac Printing Colours darker than PSE4 - Adobe accepts problem !Help!

*PSE6 Mac Printing Colours darker than PSE4 - Adobe accepts fault*
My work requires that when I create prints for artists I must replicate all the prints exactly everytime. It worked perfectly from PSE2, PSE3 and PSE4 but now......
I am unable to replicate quality of printing on MACOSX PSE6. it works great on PSE4. I mailed some printed images on art paper to adobe in amsterdam and a cd with the same images. After weeks of discussions phone, email and after testing using their work flow....they came back with some answers.
Finally a couple of replies from Adobe re colour problems and they have accepted that they are double managing the image and that I should use printer management to do the colour conversion.. here are their two replies and the comment that they will now drop me until???????   
Answer #1   Your Customer Service Number is: 129800224   Thank you for contacting Adobe Technical Support.   After consulting with my colleagues about the issue you raised, I can let you know the following:   The issue is both on our as well as the driver software side and the workaround we have given is the best available at this time. This issue is affecting all printers, not just Epson or Canon.   The soft proofing effect that you are seeing in the print preview is indeed an attempt at soft proofing. However since Photoshop Elements managed prints are incorrectly double colour managed it is not as useful as it was initially designed.   As to the exact details of why this occurred, we have no official information.   We believe that this will resolve the issues you are experiencing, however, should the reply not help solve the problem, please contact us again, quoting the case number given above, and we will re-open the case.
  Answer # 2  Subject: Re: Adobe TS #180107025 / Mario / PSE6 oversaturated Print (KMM3793441I51L0KM)   Dear Mr. Laugesen,   We have had word back from our engineers regarding your issue.   The Photoshop Elements team are aware of the problem and are working with Apple and the printer manufacturers to get this to work correctly. In the meantime, the only workaround is to switch off colour management in Photoshop Elements and let the printer handle the colour management.   Unfortunately we can not make an estimation as to when a fix will be provided. We will close the case for the time being as there really is nothing more we can do about this issue besides offering the suggested workaround. Closing this case does not mean that the research will stop however and the engineers are working on a solution to this.

finally fixed With PSE9

H264 encoded playback file is much darker than original .avi

Hi -
I am trying to encode a large .avi file as H264 and everything goes well, but the playback is MUCH darker than the original .avi file is. I have done this before with a black and white video and had no problem, but this one is not working.
The avi is created in Sony vegas Pro and i found some online info suggesting that this is a known problem in earlier versions of Premiere, and that there is an edit that cna be made to the Prem60.ini file. However, I am running Premiere Pro 4.0 and can't even find an .ini file in the folder now.
This is encoding from NTSC 720 x 480 23.957 fps, to H264 NTSC DV Widescreen High Quality.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you for the reply!
Actually, When I export the avi project into Adobe Media Encoder, it gives me the following settings and they have been great until this file:
Export Settings:
Format: H.264
Preset: NTCH DV Widescreen High Quality
The summary info is NTSC, 720x480, 29.97 fps, LOWER
I have used these same settings before and the qulity has been outstanding.
I did read online that there was a problem in premier 6.0 with Premiere working better with the Microsoft codec rather than the Soney vegas Pro codec and that to solve teh proble you can edit th ePrem60.ini file to tell the program to ignore the Sony codec and default to the MS one, but that's for an older version and I cant even find an ini file for Premiere Pro...
I would really appreciate any help I can get on this -

Borderless prints much darker

My document prints fine from Illustrator with the paper setting as U.S. Letter but it clips the bottom of the image. So I select "borderless 8.5 x 11" and it no longer clips the image but it prints WAY darker, from golden do a dark gray brown. Please help! Thank you!

LuMich,
Some printing colour issues are caused by an overly helpful printer driver setting causing a inappropriate colour management at printer level. I may be conceivable that such a setting is invoked when you print borderless, so it may be worth having a look at that (im)possibility.

Images seem to print much darker than they appear on screen?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for