Looking for help with an Epson 4900 Printer

[Polar01]

Here is my problem, I did up a image last night and it just pops , good oranges, pinks, blues, purples', when I printed it flat and dull. Reworked an older image, printed it right on colour out of the printer to what was on the screen. Redid the first one, looked great on screen, soft proofed looked good, print flat and dull. A problem can up a short time ago, as if I printed on Epson stock (exbition Paper) I would let the printer manage colour changing the setting to what was needed, now everytime I try to do this it changes back to photoshop manages colour. Up until this time I never had and problem matching colour from screen to printer.

Any suggestions

Cheers:

Allan

[Manfred M]

You can't compare an image that you see on a screen with a printed image. An image on your screen uses transmitted light and it will seem to "pop" while a print is viewed by reflected light and will seem duller. There is no way around this. Both can be totally correct from a colour balance standpoint, but will look different. In fact any area in a print that shows white number of less than around 245/245/245 (RGB) will not get any ink deposited during the printing process and the base colour of the paper will be as white as it gets. If your paper has any kind of a tint, this will be the white you get.

Having a properly profiled screen and using the correct ICC profile for the printer and paper will get you close. There is a way of emulating what the print will look like in Photoshop, based the paper / printer ICC profile. Go to (View> <Proof Setup> <Custom> and select the printer / paper profile you are planning to print with and you will see how the image will look in a print. If you duplicate <Image> <Duplicate> your original image and open a view that lets you see both image at the same time, you can try to adjust the print image to make it better match the original.

The other thing to remember is that a print has to be viewed under proper, balanced light. If you look at an image under cool white fluorescent lights, any warm tones, including skin tons, will look terrible because your light source is deficient at the yellow and red end of the spectrum.

[Polar01]

Manfred: sorry to take so long to thank you for your information. I have since printed 3 more images (different) and they are spot on. I think what was the problem was even though my screen is set to 90dm because of the brightness the printer was putting down to much ink as the colours were very saturated. I took the image into one of my NIK programs increase the brightness to 45 then printed and I got almost what I was seeing on the orginal image. However the image on the screen was real bad looking, but printed as I said more to the orginal image for brightness, now it poped. All the items in your second paragraph were done as they are like second nature to me, after spending 8 of my 20 years in the print industry as a colour matcher.
A question on a different line as your tag is "GrumpyDiver" how many years did you dive or are you still diving, I myself dove for almost eleven years mainly off of Kingston, I guess about 640hrs or about 400+ at about 80-100ft. Dove out of the Ajax club for a number of years back in the mid 80's.

Cheers:

Allan