Why are the colors on screen and print different?

Is nobody able to get the same colors on the print as they appear on screen?

I do! I do! 🙂 Well, within the limits of whatever print media you're using, anyway. Ready for some color management lessons? Here we go! 🙂

First and foremost, it's impossible to get an exact match of any RGB color space on any type of paper. Not even with sRGB, which is a deliberately short range RGB color space designed partially for that purpose. There is no paper, not inkjet or even silver halide photographic paper, that can give you a white point as bright as your monitor (an RGB device). This effects not only white, but all of your brightest colors.

Part of it is how monitors are set up by default from the factory. Normal daylight white is considered to be 6500K (Kelvin) with a gamma of 2.2 for full black, which is what Windows uses as its default. Personally, I've never understood that choice since you can look at any monitor set to that color and they have an obvious bluish cast. This is true of monitors and televisions (flat screen or tube). Compare any of them to a true gray and it sticks out like a sore thumb.

Printed output is incapable of such a range. A 6500K white point is much brighter than the brightest paper you can buy. A 2.2 gamma is a much deeper black than anything you can print. Couple in the limitation of what the inks your printer uses can reproduce and you get a pretty wide difference between your monitor and print. The higher white point of 6500K also produces very bright light colors. That is, a bright pink under 6500K will look quite a bit richer than under a monitor set to a 5000K white point using the same RGB values. The further you get away from paper white, the more pronounced the difference in what you see on the monitor and what you can print.

Knowing that, I would suggest setting your monitors to a 5000K white point and a 1.8 gamma. This is the default of any professional print shop and what I use (mainly since most of the work I do is prepress). The reason being that these settings are much closer to paper white and its reflectance value. You lose some color range on the monitor compared to 6500K/2.2 gamma, but your printed output will visually be much closer to, and in the range of your monitor. There will still be a large portion of color (particularly bright colors) that will be far outside the range of any printer, but more will be within.

When it comes to calibrating your monitor, there simply is no replacement for a hardware/software solution such as the X-Rite Eye-One Display 2 monitor calibrator. If you do a lot of prints, $200 is a cheap investment for color matching. A properly calibrated monitor is one of the most important things you can do to get color to match. It's also the cheapest as far as cost for the necessary equipment.

This is because no matter how much you move the sliders or other controls around, your Mac still does not know what your monitor actually looks like. All you're doing in the Monitors control panel is shifting your visual perception of the monitor's color. This produces a profile that is still not based on your monitor's actual display. What a good colorimeter and its software will do, is read the real LAB values the RGB phosphors of your monitor is capable of displaying and then create a profile based on those values.

As far as settings, that depends on what you can live with. The default gamma for the Mac is normally 1.8. This gamma most closely simulates the reflective density of paper (actually, it was based on the original Apple LaserWriter). Most Windows computers use a default gamma of 2.2. This a much richer and darker gamma, but it's also pretty much impossible to reproduce on paper; photographic, inkjet or otherwise.

For white point, the default is 6500K, which is daylight white. Again though, this is a very bright bluish white that cannot be reproduced on paper. A white point of 5000K is much closer to what you can print in regards to light, vibrant colors. The higher (and bluer), the white point, the brighter and richer light colors become on screen.

So your choices are:

1) Use a 6500K white point along with a 2.2 gamma for images on screen that really pop, but will look flat and with less color saturation on your prints in comparison.

2) Use a 5000K white point along with a 1.8 gamma that will cause your monitor to look somewhat flatter and a bit less colorful, but will match your prints much closer as your monitor is set up to more closely simulate a print.

If you really want, or need to fully control color, then you would also have to invest in some very expensive software and hardware to create your own profiles for your printers. One profile for each type of paper. If you can't afford that, then you must at least use the proper profile supplied with your printers for the type of paper you are using. If your printers didn't come with any profiles (or not many), check the company's web site to see if they have profiles you can download that match the types of paper they sell.

Printer are the biggest obstacle to color. Almost all consumer printers are called RGB printers. Not because they can reproduce an entire RGB color space, but because they're designed to work best with RGB images rather than CMYK. At their base though, they are still CMYK devices, as those are the inks they use. More if your printer is a 6 or 8 color inkjet. Usually a richer red and blue are added to help reproduce RGB colors that are normally well outside the range of CMYK only. However, printers are constrained by the pigments or dyes they use. When you're printing anything, the device has to use (example) the specific shade of cyan it has in its system. It can't be shifted to a different hue or saturation of cyan. It's locked to that shade and any other colors it can produce by using less of that color or in combination with the others. Its gamut and color range will always be limited to the fixed colors it has to work with. You can't just increase the saturation to get wildly vivid reds as you can on your monitor.

Paper also makes a big difference. A glossy paper will produce much richer and brighter colors than a matte paper. That's just the way it is, from professional printers on down. The type of paper used affects your color range as much, if not more than the inks used. Uncoated paper will make colors even flatter and further away from your screen.

I know this is a bit to digest, but color is much easier to control on the Mac than it is in Windows. ColorSync has been around a lot longer than the Kodak system Windows uses. It really comes down to just a two things.

1) A properly calibrated monitor.

2) When printing, choose the correct printer profile for the paper you're using.

With those, you will get color as close to your monitor as the paper and ink are capable of reproducing.

Just to add to Kurt's excellent contribution, here is some more reading for you:

You can read more about RGB here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RGB

and about Colorsync here (invented by Apple) here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ColorSync

as well as Apple's version:

http://www.apple.com/au/macosx/features/colorsync/

In most graphics applications (like those from Adobe) you can switch between Colorsync and RGB profiles, much much depends on your printer.

There are two basically different kind of printers which can be selected - RGB printers and CMYK printers. Usually a home base printer will be an RGB printer, which means, it prints with the colors Red, Green and Blue - sometimes with three, often now with more than three colors, but all of them are shades of Red, Green and Blue. I have chosen RGB and therefore I get a printer icon, which happens to be exactly the printer I used for this review, an inexpensive Epson Stylus Photo 820, and you can see the three colors as puddles in front of the printer to make sure that you have selected an RGB printer.

That was taken from this article:

http://www.gnyman.com/EyeOnePro02.htm

Colorsync works 'under the hood' but most printer drivers allow switching between RGB and CMYK. You will find the Colorsync application in your Utilities Folder, and it is worth exploring.
To quote David Pogue:

Computers aren't great with color. Each device you use to create and print digital images 'sees' color a little bit differently... colors are often inconsistent as a print job moves from design to proof to press.

Colorsync attempts to sort out this mess, serving as a translator between all the different pieces of hardware in your workflow. For this to work, each device (scanner, monitor, printer, digital camera, copier, proofer etc) has to be calibrated with a unique Colorsync Profile - a file that tells your Mac exactly how it defines colors.

Most of the people who lose sleep over color fidelity are those who do commercial color scanning and printing, where 'off' colors are a big deal.

Colorsync profiles for many color printers, scanners and monitors come built into OS X. When you but equipment from, say, Kodak, Agra or Pantone, you may get additional profiles. If your equipment didn't come with a Colorsync profile visit Profile Central at http://www.chromix.com where hundreds of model-specific profiles are available for downloading (but they are not free). You put new profiles into the Library/Colorsync/Profiles folder.

In professional graphics work, a Colorsync profile is often embedded right in the photo, making all this automatic. Using the Colorsync Utility Program you can specify which Colorsync profile each of your gadgets should use. Click the devices button, open the category for your device (scanner, camera, display, printer or proofer), click the model you have, and use the Current Profile pop-up menu to assign a profile to it.

Professional graphics people have been known to go insane doing all this. For the rest of us, where an approximation will do, just select RGB and some decent paper, and hope for the best!

Hi

Having spent 27 years in the Print Industry involving myself with the accurate reproduction of real life objects on printed media, Kurt’s explanation is as good as I’ve ever read. An observation I can add to Kurt’s lesson is that each of us have our own perception of colour. By that I mean we can all agree pretty much on what is red, however all of us will have a different view of what colour we perceive once nuances such as tint and shade are introduced. For example my wife will call something pink, but to me it looks more like a pale red, she will also refer to something being aubergine, I on the other hand see dark purple. There are just as many examples of this as there are colours – and there are billions of colours.

Dont forget our eyes are tuned to only an extremely small section of the full light spectrum.

The other observation is if you truly want to match what you see on screen with what you see on the printed sheet (and Kurt mentioned this also) is the cost. I had the benefit of extremely expensive equipment (I’m talking about at least 1-2million pounds/dollars – take your pick).

The whole process from image capture to printed sheet was controlled by monitored colour calibrated profiles. Neither could you use one catchall profile. Fleshtones can be notoriously difficult to reproduce as well as metallics. Vivid landscapes with lush greens and azure blue skies needed to be accommodated also with their own carefully adjusted profiles. As you can see there is more to colour than what you see. If you want to know more you could do no worse than consulting Isaac Newton’s 'Optiks'.

Printing is at best as near a faithful reproduction of the original. What you see on your iMac and printer should be judged on their own merits and you should really content yourself with that. If you want anything more then prepare to spend thousands as well as educating yourself as to the nature of colour.

Tony

Excellent addition, Antonio. Color is indeed a very subjective thing. I can easily see slight differences in hues that my wife would swear are identical. Very true too about how little of the color spectrum even those with the best eyesight can see. Scientists now think birds have the best color vision. They believe birds can see "color" down into the ultra violet range, allowing them to see much more vivid color, and simply more colors than we can. What we may only perceive as only one discernible shade of difference between, for example, two shades of orange, a bird could easily distinguish at least a dozen.

I've never read Newton's "Optiks". I have heard of it, but haven't picked it up yet. A book I do have that is an excellent resource for color is Real World Color Management. It does get pretty technical in places, but doesn't require an I.Q. of 180 or better to get through it, either. 😉

Hi Ron,

A pink screen shows that you aren't actually using a 5000K environment. As I mentioned above, that's why you can't use the Calibrate function in the Display settings (it is a little confusing because I said Monitor settings). Assuming your monitor has buttons that allow you to choose some color temperature presets and/or control the RGB values individually, you may have it set somewhere around 6000K. Now you go into the Calibrate function and move the slider to 5000K. If you moved it from 6500 to 5000, subtract the move from where you monitor is set and you're really using 4500K. So not only is your white point not where you think it is, but a pink gray ramp shows that your gray balance is off along the line from white to black. Fiddling with even the "expert" settings in the Calibrate function is a complete waste of time.

Spring for the colorimeter I linked to and you'll be much happier. Not only will it set the correct white point, but will adjust the RGB values along the entire curve from white to black so gray is neutral at every step.

Actually, using colorimeter is a two step process. First you calibrate your monitor. This involves adjusting the white point, brightness and contrast levels according to the white point/gamma settings you want to use on the monitor itself, if possible. After the calibration is complete (the accompanying software walks you through it), then you create a profile using the same instrument and software.

Hi Klaus1,

which means, it prints with the colors Red, Green and Blue - sometimes with three, often now with more than three colors, but all of them are shades of Red, Green and Blue.

Just to clarify, the printer does not print in Red, Green and Blue (RGB). It's impossible as RGB defines the basic colors of light, not the dyes or pigments used in printers. Regardless of what they're called, printers use CMYK inks (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black). Usually along with at least two extra colors (normally a rich dark blue and red) to expand the color space of the printer can so it can in turn cover more of an RGB color space. What any printer manufacturer is referring to when they call a device an RGB printer is that it contains a chip to convert all incoming RGB data to the nearest CMYK combination of the color the RGB values represent.

Please help. I have found this through a support search and have tried to understand what has been said. However, my similar question is still unanswered. My previous Mac (OS 9) and Epson 760 printer gave no trouble. My current macbook and Epson RX520 cannot produce simple text with accurate colours, e.g. bright blue becomes very dark navy, bright red is very dark and so on. I have tried different inks but to no avail. I would welcome any VERY SIMPLE advice. Thank you

Hello flying tart,

It's all in the profiles. You can bring over the same profiles you were using in OS 9 and use them in OS X. If you still can, check your print dialogue in OS 9. Write down the profile being used as your printer profile. Also bring over you monitor profile as that will also affect the output color. Your monitor profile name can be found in the ColorSync Utility.

Locate and copy both profiles to the /Library/ColorSync/Profiles/ folder of OS X. Open the System Preferences and set your Display to use the monitor profile you brought over from OS 9. When you print, choose the printer profile you brought over from OS 9. The resulting prints should be the same as from OS 9.

Hi, Kurt
Thanks for your reply. Have tried to follow your instructions but OSX can't open profile files from OS9 - they appear as grey oblongs and double-clicking gives message about choosing an application etc. but then tells you can't be opened. Printer does not seem to allow choice of profile - just gives coloursync in the drop down menu where copies/pages etc. is, then choice of colour conversion (standard / in printer (greyed out)and whether to use quartz filters. I know I'm probably too stupid to own a computer but I managed OK with the old one and would really like to sort this. Thanks again for your help. Any further advice gratefully received.
Regards
Tart

Hi flying tart,

Have tried to follow your instructions but OSX can't open profile files from OS9 - they appear as grey oblongs and double-clicking gives message about choosing an application etc.

Profiles are ubiquitous. It doesn't matter where they come from. You can switch them between a Mac and Windows computer if you want. It's probably just that OS X isn't recognizing them. Add a .icc suffix to the end of the files. Do they work now? If you double click on them after adding the suffix, they should open in ColorSync Utility and it will show you information about them. If they don't, then you likely didn't copy over profiles.

Printer does not seem to allow choice of profile

That part is confusing in OS X. You don't actually choose your printer profiles there. With the Epson printer chosen, you should also have a choice in the drop down menu of "Printer Color Management". There you would select the radio button for "ColorSync". Note though that you can't choose any profiles there. The print driver assumes you've already selected your profiles from the print dialogue of the application you're printing from before print drive dialogue comes up.

Let's say you're printing from Photoshop. You would:

1) Select Print from the menu. In the dialogue box that comes up, choose your printer.

2) Expand the print settings box if you need to (this doesn't apply in CS3, everything displays without having to expand the box). Where it says "Color Management", select the radio button for "Document". Under "Color Handling", choose "Photoshop Manages Colors". Select your printer profile in the drop down list. Select an Intent (I prefer Relative Colorimetric). Make sure "Black Point Compensation" is on. Click "Print".

3) When the Epson print driver box appears, choose "Printer Color Management" from the drop down menu. Select the radio button for "ColorSync".

How well color matches your screen depends greatly on choosing the correct printer profile for the type of paper you're using. Though that's only part of the full operation. Once you get it, getting the best color possible out of a ColorSync workflow is actually not that hard. But into the light goes on and you "get it", you feel like you're trying to read Egyptian hieroglyphics without ever having been taught how.

Let us know how things worked out.

Hi, Kurt,

Add a .icc suffix to the end of the files. Do they work now?

Yes, thank you. Have managed to select original SC760 plain paper profile. Blue is now much lighter , almost too light but you can't have everything, I suppose.

With the Epson printer chosen, you should also have a choice in the drop down menu of "Printer Color Management". There you would select the radio button for "ColorSync".


I am only trying to print from Word and these options don't appear. Is there anything else I could do or shall I just keep trying different profiles to see which suits best?
Thanks again,
Tart

Interesting. As far as I know, and can see in it's settings, Word is not ColorSync aware. In fact, it has no color controls at all. Where did you select your printer profile? In the Epson print dialogue? I was basing my instructions on the Epson 4000 we have here. You can't select a profile from it's print dialogue. But with the simpler C80, you can.

It sounds like you're on the right track though. While you may be using "plain" paper, there's no telling what type of plain paper Epson used when creating that profile. Various papers will give you equally various results.

Hi

I can see where Kurt is coming from and its more than possible that his suggestions will cure your problem, however I think the issue you are having is entirely different from the OP. I’ve seen a similar problem where the user has selected Photo Quality Output but installed 80gm plain paper, or selected output for plain paper and inserted Photo Quality Paper. Its also more than possible that the printer is faulty.

The Epson RX520 is an all-in-one, have you tried the photo-copy feature to see if you get a similar result? If this is a fairly new unit and it has always output prints the way you describe (as well as giving similar results when copying) then I would think about taking it back to the retail outlet you purchased it from and getting a replacement (if its still under warranty). Perhaps you should pursue this avenue rather than giving yourself a brain meltdown, it might prove to be a quicker route to a lasting solution.

One other thing, this model is pretty cheap even by all-in-one standards and to expect professional looking accurate prints similar to what you can achieve from something far more expensive is stretching your expectations a little too much.

Tony