printer trouble

[fil kearney]

I have a fairly basic HP printer, which is not doing me any justice when I print out sample pics. my BW work looks way off, and the color work I have printed from artists around here comes out wrong as well.

everything seems faded, kinda fake looking.

its making it very difficult for me to judge my work properly. any one else have a solution to this? either methods of fixing my printer out put,l or recommending a decent printer and monitor?

how do you mega- pros out there handle this?.


thanks in advance.

[el_kyrre]

Uhm... well monitor and printer calibration is pretty hard, and normally costs lot of money.

Here is how I did it. It´s pretty simple, and the outcome is average, but it´s still better then nothing. ;)

I took some fotography and scanned it in.

I looked at my monitor and compared the monitor picture with my fotography.and then I printed it out...

After I have done those steps, I just try to calibrate my monitor and printer, to make it look like the original fotography.
You might need to work through those steps a few times, to get things right.
If you think you´ve come to an end, take another picture of diffrent quality, scanned it in, and compare... if it looks like the original stuff you´ve done a good job.

BTW DON´T TURN YOUR MONITOR OFF! Most of those pc monitor take a long time to get warm and show the right colors!
I leave my monitor on all the time... they can handle it.
If you are not a professional, you can work with one monitor three to four years, without any drawbacks on quality.

Okay... I hope it was of some help.
el_kyrre

[el_kyrre]

The paper you are printing on is VERY important.

If you use normal paper, the colors tend to be darker, and have a slight grey hue. And the resolution is pretty poor...

I would recommend high resolution paper or foto-paper, if you want to print pictures that is! :cool:

el_kyrre

[S13Drifter]

Another thing I'd like to point out is that when your viewing pics on your monitor, they're being displayed in RGB, and things that are printed are CMYK. RGB is additive color meaning when you add all the colors together you get white. CMYK is subtractive color, where when you add all the pigment together you get black. As a digital artist it is very frustrating taking your digital image and putting it out to print. The only way to solve this problem is through just your basic trouble shooting.... print it if it comes out wrong, adjust and print it again... thats about all the advice i can give you, good luck.

[el_kyrre]

Dunno what has gotten into my mind to forget about that RGB/CMYK thingy!

stoopid me! thanks Drifter for correcting!

BTW if you are using Photoshop, there is an option where you can see your digital image how it would look in CMYK printed.

You can find that option through view/color-proof in photoshop

el_kyrre