emailed photos are good but printed come out heaps darker

[Guest]

I HAVE SEVERAL EMAILED PICS ON MY XP. THE PICS ARE FINE BUT WHEN I TRY TO
PRINT THEM ON MY EPSON R310 , USING WIZARD,THEY COME OUT SO DARK. I HAVE BEEN
USING GLOSSY PAPER. PLEASE HELP OR THIS PRINTER WILL BE UNDER A BUS!!THANKS

 

[John Inzer]

I HAVE SEVERAL EMAILED PICS ON MY XP. THE PICS ARE FINE
BUT WHEN I TRY TO PRINT THEM ON MY EPSON R310 , USING
WIZARD,THEY COME OUT SO DARK. I HAVE BEEN USING GLOSSY
PAPER. PLEASE HELP OR THIS PRINTER WILL BE UNDER A
BUS!!THANKS

=============================
Just as an experiment...try adjusting your monitor's
brightness/contrast to match the printed image as
closely as possible.

Open the image in an editing program and brighten
it to your satisfaction...try printing it once again.

Please turn off your caps lock, it makes your message
very hard to read.

--

John Inzer
MS Picture It! MVP
How to ask a newsgroup question:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375

 

[Quilljar]

I HAVE SEVERAL EMAILED PICS ON MY XP. THE PICS ARE FINE BUT WHEN I
TRY TO PRINT THEM ON MY EPSON R310 , USING WIZARD,THEY COME OUT SO
DARK. I HAVE BEEN USING GLOSSY PAPER. PLEASE HELP OR THIS PRINTER
WILL BE UNDER A BUS!!THANKS

Don't be ridiculous Joanne. This has nothing to do with your printer. You
have to set your monitor to match the correct values of the photos. Then you
need to adjust them to print out how you want them to print. Use any of the
free graphics programs such as FastStone. How can you possibly expect a
machine automatically to know how you want your pictures to look.? In fact
two machines, your computer and your printer. Any worthwhile craft such as
printing good photos, needs some learning to get it right.
You have some expensive and clever equipment there. You must learn how to
use it.

Thankfully, this NG exists to help you and I am sure you will be helped.
--

Quilly,

Have a look at the new Anti-Spyware program CounterSpy
I recommend it, it worked for me at,

http://quilljar.users.btopenworld.com/

 

[deebs]

I HAVE SEVERAL EMAILED PICS ON MY XP. THE PICS ARE FINE BUT WHEN I TRY TO
PRINT THEM ON MY EPSON R310 , USING WIZARD,THEY COME OUT SO DARK. I HAVE BEEN
USING GLOSSY PAPER. PLEASE HELP OR THIS PRINTER WILL BE UNDER A BUS!!THANKS

There are workarounds Joanne

But the whole area is a tricky one for sure.

Why?
Well the monitor you use works on additive color (Red + Blue + Green =
white)

Printers on the other hand work on subtractive color (CMYK based or
similar) where Red + Blue + Green = a murky dark sort of shade.

Finetuning things is possible but getting things spot-on can require a
bit of patience and perseverence.

Commercial print shops will probably invest quite a bit of time and
money into hardare and software solutions to calibrate colors on the
monitor with colors from a printer. It really is so technical.

At the end user level it may be a matter of throroghly reading your
printer manual and recommendations and making fine adjustments on sample
prints.

Good luck! It can be done

 

[Chuck]

I'm going to make several assumptions.
1. The pictures were Emailed to you and they were correct at the source.
2. Your monitor displays the pictures more or less as others would see them
on their PC's.

If this is the case--
Did you update XP or the display driver after the printer drivers were
installed?
Is color correction on the printer, display or in an application turned on ?
Is the printer driver set properly for the paper, and in some sort of Photo
mode?
Any of the above may cause other than the desired printing.

The simplest thing to do when dark printing occurs is to check the printer
driver settings, and possibly change them to lighten the printout. Paper
varies a lot in how much ink is needed from one brand to another. Some paper
absorbs ink, and some coated paper causes it to lay on the top. With the
same printer settings, the difference is obvious when the overall amount of
ink is more or less correct for one paper and not another. I played around
with Kodak, Epson, Canon, HP, and some other house brands of inkjet photo
Glossy paper, and found quite a bit of variation. One brand, Royal, causes
the ink to dry on the top of the coating, producing an odd effect. The
others allow the ink to go into the coating, producing a more normal photo
like result. Some brands cause a slight tint to the very light grey or
color printed areas.

As a start from default, I usually set my Epson R300 for 1.8 Gamma, normal
(not vivid), kick up the slider for brightness and the slider for yellow.
The color compensation and tweaking are off. Photo Gloss paper is selected
when appropriate.

When you find a combination of settings that work as you like write them
down!


Some of the color profiles for this printer and various papers are not
correct, and produce dark output. Some of the Monitor/LCD utilities will
cause an LCD display to be set too bright, with colors unsaturated.

Remember that printers and monitors work differently, in that the monitor
generates light, and the printed page reflects it.

There are many standard reference photos and color charts available.
A few are listed below. You should adjust the display to give a believeable
image, then without changing the pictures in any way (other than printing
them at a convenient size), print them. Use the result as a guide to adjust
the printer driver for acceptable results.

http://www.brucelindbloom.com/ (info button) There is a bunch of useful
stuff as well at this site, likely more than you care to know.

http://gandygallery.com/art/color-targets.htm

http://www.scarse.org/images/reference/

http://www.targets.coloraid.de/ (Scanner targets, etc.)

http://oem.portrait.com/dtune/ivm/enu/upgrade.html

http://www.hutchcolor.com/Images_and_targets.html

http://digitaldog.net/tips/
"Printer Test File" Scroll down about half page then to the left

I HAVE SEVERAL EMAILED PICS ON MY XP. THE PICS ARE FINE BUT WHEN I TRY TO
PRINT THEM ON MY EPSON R310 , USING WIZARD,THEY COME OUT SO DARK. I HAVE BEEN
USING GLOSSY PAPER. PLEASE HELP OR THIS PRINTER WILL BE UNDER A

BUS!!THANKS