I'm not sure where this topic should live, whether here or in software, but it's a mixture of the two areas really.

I've had calibrated monitors & printer profiles for ages, but I don't really print that much so I've never been too worried about my printer not really printing that accurately. Most of my work is press work & whilst it has to be correct as long as my shots are correctly exposed, the ICC profile is not so important.

However, I'm moving into other areas as well now & this has now become very important for my work.

I have my monitor calibrated using colormunki (I used to use Spyer) & I use Ilford paper who supply the ICC printer profiles for their specific paper, with specific ink & printer combinations. I have downloaded the correct one for my Pixma IP5000 & Canon Ink combo. I print using photoshop with all the correct set ups & the correct profile, but the final prints are about 5 times as dark as the image on screen. No exaggeration either.

I'm at a loss as to what to do. All I can do now is create my own printer profile using the colormunki device & see if that's any better than the ilford supplied one, I would kind of doubt it.

I know colour management is thought of as a bit of a minefield, but it's not that difficult to understand, I've worked as a print buyer for years so I have to know about it. I have all my devices correctly profiled, but it's still not right, not even close.

Any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Pete

Well I can say  I have seen this before!!

I use lightroom and a 9500 printer. With colour management set in lightroom and disabled in the print driver i experienced the dark prints you are describing.

At the time I was using the spyder 2 to calibrate the monitor and paper profiles provided by the paper manufacturer, to say I was disappointed would be an uderstatement.

The break through for me was a change to spyder studio, this gave the opportunity to profile papers independandtly, moreover the final part of the process allows the density to be set, using this and about 4 test prints per paper i found i can replicate the screen to printer consistently; it worked!!

The other thing I have recently noticed, with lightroom you have the ability to use more than one screen so  I now use 2 calibrated screens, one a backlit flat screen and one CRT. It is fair to say that  although the colours are identical the flat screen is significantly more vibrant and i percieve it to be "brighter" than the CRT.

The ability to colour profile from  screen to print has solved my issues. hope you find a solution!

Ray

Cheers Ray,

 You're dead right it's very frustrating. I've now profiled the paper using the colormunki itself rather then the ilford profiles & yes it's much better. It's still dark though, but I can adjust the density as well so I'll have a go at that.

 Cheers,

 Pete