# Problem getting right Color to print using Lightroom 1.3 and Canon PIXMA Pro9000



## charld (Mar 26, 2008)

Just fired up my Canon PIXMA Pro9''' to print some pictures from
Lightroom 1.3 but the colors are very muted when i use lightroom.
If i use Canon DPP the colors are not that bad, its a bit dark but that was easily fixed and i can get it quite close to what i see on the screen. My monitor is not calibrated..

No matter what i do i cant seem to get lightroom to print with bright accurate colors.

The image on this link[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif] http://www.pbase.com/charld/image/9471133' [/FONT]
(on the left) is what i see and get when i do a print preview and print and my monitor image is on the right.

The images were all show in RAW and converted to DNG. I tried all the different setting in Lightroom and i cant seem to get this working. Any ideas?

I want to use Lightroom as my workflow.

Thanks


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## Gene McCullagh (Mar 26, 2008)

charld said:


> My monitor is not calibrated.



Calibrate your monitor before you go down the color management road.

At present there aren't great soft-proofing capabilities in Lightroom.  Hopefully that will be addressed in upcoming versions.  If you have Photoshop bring the image into that to see what the print will look like. Perhaps some of the colors in your image are outside the printer's gamut and what you are getting is the printer's best effort to match the colors you're sending.

Also, double-check to see if the profile you're using to print matches the paper you are printing on.  Wrong profiles can sometimes give you these muted color issues.

However, calibrate your monitor first or you are sure to drive yourself insane in this process!!


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## Katherine Mann (Mar 26, 2008)

First, calibrate your monitor if you haven't done so already.

But, even if you can't do that immediately, the following settings will yield good results:

1. in the Print module, clicking on the Print Settings button ...
2. Choose your media type
3. Under Print Quality choose High
4. Under Color Intensity choose Manual. In the subsequent dialogue box choose None. 
5. In the Print right hand panel under Color Management choose your print media - PR1 for Photo Paper Pro, SG1 for semi-gloss &c
6. Rendering intent Perceptual. 
7. Hit Print and OK. 

Good luck. Let us know if you have any more trouble.


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## charld (Mar 26, 2008)

Thanks i will try your suggestions today.

What i couldn't understand was why Lightroom Print Preview had the colors so bad..and thats just how the images came out when printed regardless of what i tried.


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## wblink (Mar 27, 2008)

charld said:


> Thanks i will try your suggestions today.
> 
> What i couldn't understand was why Lightroom Print Preview had the colors so bad..and thats just how the images came out when printed regardless of what i tried.


 
The preview is made by the printerdriver using the icc profiles belonging to and installed for that printer and used by LR.

I am in the same situation you are in (with another (Canon) printer). I have bought a calibration set, am waiting for the delivery, but just as you: I cannot understand the difference on the same (uncalibratied) monitor between the original and the preview.
Personally I think the icc profiles that Conon delivers are good for Japan, but not for Europ and USA. We like a much cooler (bluer) presentation.

My job is paperproduction. (No not photopaper, just glossy rotation-offset), and the color of the paper delivered to USA is much more blue than the color for Germany. Don't know about Japan, our paper doesn't go there. You can only see the difference when the two papers are next to eachother or by measurement.


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## charld (Mar 27, 2008)

Katherine Mann your advice was 1''% correct and resolved my issue 
thanks


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## Katherine Mann (Mar 27, 2008)

You're welcome!


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## Katherine Mann (Mar 27, 2008)

Willem, I hope your Spyder comes soon. 

When you have calibrated, you will develop your photo to your own taste in Lightroom and the printer will print what you have created. The printer profiles being warmer or cooler or whatever will make no difference whatsoever.


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## wblink (Mar 28, 2008)

Katherine Mann said:


> Willem, I hope your Spyder comes soon.
> 
> When you have calibrated, you will develop your photo to your own taste in Lightroom and the printer will print what you have created. The printer profiles being warmer or cooler or whatever will make no difference whatsoever.


 
My spider has been sent, I will receive it today (I will turn in in about 5 minutes: nightshift whooooaahhh), or else tomorrow.

I don't expect very much from the monitor calibration. I think the canon icc profiles are no good, but I hope with the spider I will be able to make MY icc profiles so that the print matches the monitor (which is FAR off now (and ONLY when the canon icc profile is used ...)).

If not: I'll drop the canon in the garbage can and look fo a new HP. I used HP before, never had any trouble, switched to canon because HP uses 1 colortank for all colors and canon uses 1 for each color: cheaper, not better.

So I'm still in bussines and ar curious about the spider-thing: never used a tool like that.


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## Gene McCullagh (Mar 28, 2008)

Katherine is exactly right!  

Don't give up on your Canon printer. They produce excellent results. I think when you calibrate many of your problems will go away.  Good luck!


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## henfri (Nov 29, 2008)

Dear all,

I'm experiencing the same problem described here. But sadly, I can't fix it by following Katherines Instructions above. That might be, because my Lightroom setup is in German, but I think, I managed to get the points anyway...

I created a pdf with screenshots of the original and the results of different settings.

I uploaded it here:
*http://tinyurl.com/lightroomColors*

Can you see my fault?

Greetings,
Hendrik


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## achrysos (Nov 29, 2008)

Hendrik,

Which version of LR are you using? (Fill in you signature with all relevant information under the UserCP link - that gives the gurus around here a head start to solving your problems)

For instance, if you're using LR2 and on a Mac, then you might want to try running LR2 in 32bit mode, not 64bit mode. That fixed my problem with this printer. (I can't see your images now as it says the site is down for maintenance).


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## henfri (Nov 30, 2008)

Hello,

I filled out my Signature now. Also the link seems to work now.

I see, that the here proposed solution is to assign the correct ICC Profile in LR, while switching off the color Mgmt in the Driver.
As you can see in my link, that doesn't work for me, or I'm doing it wrong.

On the other hand, printing works fine from other Applications like IrfanView. So, another option would be turning off ICC in LR, and turning it on in the Driver. Then the results should match those of the other applications, right? Well, it doesn't. But why? What is LR doing different (wrong)?

Attached you'll find two files (in addition to my link above, which is more complete): 
The first the original picture. I'd be grateful if one of you, who is satisfied with his results could import this picture and create a screenshot just like the second picture (Print preview next to the original including the settings).

This is because yet I didn't sucseed in reproducing the successes that others in this thread had. And I'd like to know, if it is this because I did something wrong, or if it is this particular picture that is more tricky, than the ones you used for your checking.


Greetings,
Hendrik


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## Brad Snyder (Nov 30, 2008)

Hendrik, it's important that color management be preserved throughout your workflow.

In your samples, some of the images are shown in Lr, some are shown in some other display program, and all of them are somehow screen captured in (I assume) yet another program. 
Can you explain how you prepared the actual screen captures you're showing us?


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## henfri (Dec 1, 2008)

Hello,

sorry, I should have mentioned:
In my PDF on the left hand side are screenshots of the Canon Print preview. IMHO (and according to other users) this should be identical to what is displayed in LR.
On the right hand side are screenshots of the way LR displays the Image (and also other viewers like Irfanview).

Attached you find a comparison between:
Print preview, when printet from Irfanview  ||  Lightroom || Irfanview.

You can see, that LR displays the picture a bit brighter, than Irfanview. But more importantly: Irfanview and the Print preview when printet from Irfanview are *Identical*

Greetings,
Hendrik

Greetings,
Hendrik


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## Brad Snyder (Dec 1, 2008)

Hmmm. How is your display calibrated?


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## henfri (Dec 1, 2008)

Hi,

my screen is not calibrated.
Nevertheless: The printout usually looks just like the canon print-preview. 
Now, what I want is, that the print-preview looks just like the image as displayed in Lightroom.

I'm not dissatisfied with the comparison between screen and printout -except when I use LR, and in this case, the trouble can already be seen in the print-preview.

Greetings,
Hendrik


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## henfri (Dec 5, 2008)

Hello,

coming back to this subject:
Is this assumtion correct:
"The Canon Print-Preview and the Picture in Lightroom must look identical. If not, something is wrong"?

Greetings,
Hendrik


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## Katherine Mann (Dec 6, 2008)

Hendrik - the Canon Print Preview is not going to give you accurate colour. If you calibrate your monitor you will get better results. 

Consider this: no two monitors on the planet are the same. How can your printer understand that your monitor is different from mine? Obviously, you must give the printer a colour recipe to reproduce that is based on something concrete. If you don't calibrate your monitor, and your monitor is way off in the greens - how do you tell the printer to print less or more green than someone like me, who has calibrated her monitor and the greens, blues and reds are balanced?

It is impossible for a printer to adjust itself intuitively to your monitor's propensities. By calibrating, you adjust your monitor to output equal amounts of green, red and blue. Now we are the same and the printer knows what we mean.


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## henfri (Dec 6, 2008)

Hello,

I do understand this.
But there are two points, that -IMHO- tell me, it's not the Monitor:
1) If I print from other applications (Irfanview for instance), everything looks fine
2) The picture looks good on the camera viewer, in Irfanview, in Lightroom(!), ... you name it. When I print it with LR, the Image looks crappy (sunburn) in the Canon-Print preview and nearly the same in the print-out.

Now, the question is:
Why does LR behave differently then other applications, even if I tell LR to let the Printer handle the color management.

Greetings,
Hendrik


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## Katherine Mann (Dec 7, 2008)

*maybe it's the colour space*

Perhaps you are running the other applications in a different colour space? I'm using ProPhoto RGB for Cs3 and for Lr.


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## henfri (Dec 8, 2008)

Hello,

here's the same done from Picasa:

Left: Canon-Print Preview, Right: Picasa

Why is this different than from Lightroom?

Greetings,
Hendrik


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## Katherine Mann (Dec 8, 2008)

*Colour space*

Because of the colour space. Possibly.


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## Brad Snyder (Dec 9, 2008)

Picasa treats every image as sRGB, just as I expect your Canon Print previewer does.

Picasa Color Management


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## Mark Sirota (Dec 9, 2008)

I think, but cannot confirm, that it's not quite accurate to say "Picasa treats every image as sRGB".  In fact, I believe Picasa isn't color-managed at all.


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## charld (Mar 26, 2008)

Just fired up my Canon PIXMA Pro9''' to print some pictures from
Lightroom 1.3 but the colors are very muted when i use lightroom.
If i use Canon DPP the colors are not that bad, its a bit dark but that was easily fixed and i can get it quite close to what i see on the screen. My monitor is not calibrated..

No matter what i do i cant seem to get lightroom to print with bright accurate colors.

The image on this link[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif] http://www.pbase.com/charld/image/9471133' [/FONT]
(on the left) is what i see and get when i do a print preview and print and my monitor image is on the right.

The images were all show in RAW and converted to DNG. I tried all the different setting in Lightroom and i cant seem to get this working. Any ideas?

I want to use Lightroom as my workflow.

Thanks


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## Brad Snyder (Dec 9, 2008)

I was quoting what I thought was the official Picasa help file at Google, but on-second reading, may just be a forum post. That's the link in my response.

I read that whole thread again, and I don't get much out of it, but I don't have any arguments with the 'no-color management' theory.  Whatever it's doing, if anything, is not correct.  There were several links in the thread to what seemed to be Picasa Help, but they 4'4'd.


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## Denis Pagé (Dec 10, 2008)

Picasa Help from google.


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## Brad Snyder (Dec 11, 2008)

Thanks Denis. Yeah, I've been there.Iif you enter 'color management' for a search target, the only results are user posts. Which is sort of how I got confused to begin with.

 I guess the whole point is judging color-fidelity by what Picasa shows you is not the best choice.


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## henfri (Dec 12, 2008)

Sorry, I couldn't follow your discussion.
The point is: If I print from another app, it works fine (correct colors), if I print from picasa, it doesn't.
Katherines idea was, that it might be due to color space. So how can I make LR behave like picasa in terms of color space?

Or is this the wron approach?

Greetings,
Hendrik


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## Brad Snyder (Dec 12, 2008)

It's the wrong approach. 

Your monitor is not calibrated, Picasa is not color managed, Canon Print Preview (according to the only references I can find, I could very well be wrong) is not color-managed, Irfanview is not color managed.

So the only color-managed thing in the chain is Lightroom. To answer your earlier question, that's why Lightroom is behaving differently.


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## henfri (Dec 14, 2008)

Hello,

but Lightroom is the only program printing awful colors 
And: Why does Lightroom also print awful colors when I tell LR to let the printer do the color management?

Greetings,
Hendrik


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## Denis Pagé (Dec 15, 2008)

henfri;3'856 said:
			
		

> Hello,
> 
> but Lightroom is the only program printing awful colors
> And: Why does Lightroom also print awful colors when I tell LR to let the printer do the color management?
> ...


Because, as Lightroom is color managed you need to set your printer differently than with the other applications too.


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## Scott O (Dec 16, 2008)

I just purchased a ColorMunki to calibrate my monitor and profile my Epson 78'' printer.  Danged if it didn't work...prints are better than ever, and even match what I see on my monitor very closely.  Remember that even with a custom profile, if you change ANYTHING (paper, operating system, printer, etc.) you must make a new profile.  This hardware makes it easy to do.  By the way, I have nothing to do with xRite...just an impressed customer.  Also, many times you can get free profiles from the manufactures (either printer or paper) web site.


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## Denis Pagé (Dec 16, 2008)

Welcome to the forums Scott! And thanks for you signature. That may help in the future if you have questions.

I was thinking about buying a ColorMunki anytime soon. Nice to hear it works fine.


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## Katherine Mann (Dec 16, 2008)

Henfri, so, to sum up, I think we all agree that if you calibrate your monitor your prints from Lr will look like your screen. And then all the work you do to your photos will be useful, instead of a shot in the dark.


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