rcirr Loc: Gilbert, Arizona

I have an Epson Artisan 837 all in one I use to print pictures. Whenever I printed from PSE the prints were very dark. If I printed them from Windows Photo Viewer they come out perfect. After trying a number of suggested fixes, I finally turned off all color management in PSE8. The pictures now are printing much better but still a slight bit on the dark side. Anyone know how to fix this? It would really be nice to use color management in PSE since that would allow me to use Color Checker as part of my processing.
Any advice would be appreciated.

Leicaflex Loc: Cymru

In a word, Calibration, calibrate your monitor so what you see on your monitor will be what you get from your printer.
Go a step further and have bespoke profiles for the papers you use.

paulw Loc: nottinghamshire

Have you tried turning off colour management on your printer? This should print ok straight from elements , that's what I have to do in Lightroom. Also if your printer shows a preview before printing in a separate box ignore it it looks bad but print anyway and your prints should be as you see them

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

You most likely experience interference from your printer driver. Whenever you set up PS, or PSE for color management, one should turn color management to >OFF<! If not, the printers own color management will also try to manage colors and you get a mix-up!

G Brown Loc: Sunny Bognor Regis West Sussex UK

I was always advised to use the printer software to print pictures. You can set all your software to RGB and different software makes each picture look differently. Depending on how much printing you need to do, I would suggest doing a test run and then fix it. This is especially true if you are using different paper's.
If you have a LED monitor some allow you to set it on a graphics setting which lowers the back-lighting (looks darker)which will be more like the printed image.
If you calibrate everything there is a large cost outlay, but a test on a small run is much less money.

I have a question for you though. If you take a photo using auto 'everything' and print it without PP using camera software - what does it come out like to you? It could be that you are looking for a bright monitor picture,rather than a well exposed printed picture. Two things that are rarely the same....nowerdays we see more pictures on a monitor than we do in print. we should look at printed images more, so that we can train our eyes to see what we are looking at.

have fun

rcirr Loc: Gilbert, Arizona

In answer to your question, it turned out dark until I turned off color management in the Epson software. The results are the same no matter how I took a picture....or even what camera I used. The color management of the printer software or Photoshop elements must be turned off or the picture is dark. If I print using Windows Viewer and turn off color management in the printer software I get good results that match what I see on my monitor. The problem is the color keeps getting turned on and I'm not sure how. Until I do I will check every time I print.
Thanks for your response.

rcirr Loc: Gilbert, Arizona

You seem to be right. The only good results I get are when I turn off all color management. I find it somewhat annoying because as I stated, I wanted to use Color Checker to build profiles to ensure color fidelity in my pictures.

Thank you for your response.

rcirr Loc: Gilbert, Arizona

Thanks for your response. I re-calibrated my monitor but nothing changed. As I mentioned below, the problem seems to be related to color management features in the printer software as well as Photoshop.

rcirr Loc: Gilbert, Arizona

You seem to be right. The only good results I get are when I turn off all color management. I find it somewhat annoying because as I stated, I wanted to use Color Checker to build profiles to ensure color fidelity in my pictures.

Thank you for your response.

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

You are not turning off all color management (only the printers color management, which is the standard setting), then you can set up your own (Color Checker, or run a certain software, like X-right etc., or do it all in Photoshop!The main thing is, you have to stop the printers driver to interfere with what ever you're doing, or you will get disappointing results!!!

rcirr Loc: Gilbert, Arizona

Thank you!