Colours are off

[Skhirocco]

Hello!

I recently started to practice my digital painting skills in corel painter X and I am following the instructions in advanced painter techniques by don segmiller.
However when I printed out one of my practice pieces the colours were not like I did them on my screen. The colours were correct on screen in photoshop CS4, too.
I am at a loss as to how that happened and would like your opinions on it. I am going to link two pictues. The first is the one I actually painted and the second the scan of the printout. (Please be aware that, the picture isn't finished yet. I'm still mostly in the block-in stage).

Thanks in advance, I appreciate it.

Skhirocco

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Original version:

http://s393.photobucket.com/albums/pp17/2e4rd6jy/OilPortraitExercise/?action=view&current=OilPortrait.jpg

Scanned printout:

http://s393.photobucket.com/albums/pp17/2e4rd6jy/OilPortraitExercise/?action=view&current=Scan-OilPortrait.jpg

[Skhirocco]

As an addition.

Works that I did in other programmes, e.g. InDesign CS4, are printed with the correct = as on screen colours.

Thanks again,

Skhirocco

[Arshes Nei]

Sounds like you didn't set up your color management in Painter.

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=145357 It may differ from Painter version to Painter version, but it's not that different to figure it out.

[ikken]

I never print anything from Painter - saving stuff as PSD and printing through photoshop worked great.

[Skhirocco]

Thank you for your replies.

Thing is, I didn't print from Painter (had several other problems doing it that way already). I printed the picture as a .jpg from photoshop and let photoshop handle the colour management - not the printer.
By the way, photoshop displayed the colours correctly on screen.

I'll try saving and printing it as a .psd and I'll tweak the colour settings a bit more.

Regards,
Skhirocco

[jason_maranto]

convert the image to CYMK in Photoshop and see if it doesn't match your printout better.

Best,
Jason.

[Arshes Nei]

Again, make sure your color management is correct with Adobe's I provided a post with a link on how to do it earlier.

[Skhirocco]

Hello,

I followed all your suggestions and double-/ triple- checked the colour settings in both Painter X and Photoshop. I even adjusted the settings of my screen to match Adobe RGB, too. Unfortunately, the result is still the same. On the printout is no difference whatsoever. The colours are still off.

Does anyone know whether it would help if I adjusted the colour settings of my printer and if so, how to do the adjustments? Because of late Painter crashes when I click on the arrow starting in the middle and pointing in the direction of the printer, so that the colour management is also applied to the printer. By the way, Photoshop should apply its colour settings to the printer automatically, if I pick the option that Photoshop should handle the colours while printing, right?

Thanks again,
Skhirocco

[jason_maranto]

It is plenty possible to have stuff that appears fine on screen in AdobeRGB1998 and still have it fall outside of the the CYMK gamut especially saturated reds, greens and blues (RGB extremes)

A printer uses CYMK and if it is out of gamut it is out of gamut-- the only way you will see problems is to convert to CMYK or preview using soft proofing (painter 11) or gamut warning (Photoshop)

Painter is prone to give out of gamut colors if you use the color-wheel/triangle to select your colors.

Printer calibration is usually best done using very expensive hardware calibrators, and prone to becoming "off" on an hourly basis... complicated subject.

Best,
Jason.

[Skhirocco]

Finally the colours look approximately as they should.
I picked the option to let the printer handle the colour management in photoshop's printer menu and told the printer that it would print a picture with an Adobe RGB profile. Don't know why that worked of all things. Strangely, when I chose to let photoshop handle the colour management in its printer menu, picked CMYK and checked colour gamut warning and white paper the print-out looked far worse...

Thanks again,
Skhirocco

[fes]

Never convert to CMYK for a home inkjet printer. They are made to convert from RGB - whether you let the printer handle the conversion or let photoshop do it - never mind that they actually print with 4 colours (ie cmyk). A cmyk image will always print terribly on a home inkjet. Use CMYK for a professional commercial printer only.

[Skhirocco]

Good to know. Will keep that in mind.