Printing too Dark

I refer to the profiles for different paper types?

The drivers were already in the OSX, but I did install the latest from Epson.

Its of no consequence now as I sold the Epson.

Would be interested on HP though, I have the A3 1280 which is a few years old, but the software for it does not work to well, for instance I cannot launch the utility in order to check the ink, it just launches a pointless HP programme for choosing the printer you want to launch the utility, which then, does not launch. haha.

If they didn't already come with the driver for your printer, you can find icc profiles for virtually all of the printers and papers HP, Canon, and Epson sell on their web sites. For each Canon printer I use regularly (Pro9000, ip8500, 6700d), there are profiles installed in my system for every paper type they sell, and for each quality setting I can apply in the dialogue box. I haven't counted, but it's roughly 40 or so profiles just for the three printers. Add the ones I've made myself, and it's an icc cornucopia! 🙂

If you're not using the HP, Canon, or Epson papers, it can be tricky to get good icc profiles. These days, many of the more popular third party paper companies, like Moab, offer them, but just for the more popular printers. If you can't find any you can locate several places online that'll create custom icc profiles for your paper and printer. In fact, and this is unsupported conjecture, I think Aperture 2 & Leopard require updated icc profiles due to changes in the print and color engines, so custom profiles are the way to go.

Gary,

Canon bundles the icc profiles with their drivers. If you've installed the latest driver for your printer or are using the driver bundled with Leopard (btw, if you're signature is accurate, be sure to upgrade to 10.5.2) you should have the Canon icc profiles already. However, they don't appear in the ColorSync folder in your Library folder like most other icc profiles. Rather they are contained in the driver package itself and only available from the pop up menu in the print dialogue box.

Thanks Kbeat. I do have the canon ICC profiles already. Embarrassingly I am not 100% what they mean, perhaps you could help me out?

To be fair I have tried all of them and still no joy on print outs. I use canon glossy paper and canon inks.

http://homepage.mac.com/garethirwin/.Pictures/icc.jpg



I am fully up to date on software and have a new 24 incher, I must fix my sig..

Ernie,

Thanks for helping.

I use an Epson R2400 with MIS quadtone inks driven by QuadToneRIP. I only do B&W.

So you see, not at all a standard setup.

However it should not be relevant. An ICC profile is an ICC profile. PhotoShop has a predictable behaviour and I cannot understand Aperture's behaviour.

Maybe a problem is that there is no way to control the working space in Aperture.

I will try to print from Preview to see how that behaves.

Sure, they're not very intuitive. The codes are as follows:

PR = Photo Paper Pro
SP = Photo Paper Plus Glossy
MP = Matte Photo Paper
SG = Photo Paper Plus Semi-Gloss
GL = Photo Paper Plus Glossy II

The number at the end represents the quality setting. 1 is the finest, 3 is medium, etc. So, if you use the detailed setting and move the slider to the far right for the finest quality, and say you're printing on Canon's Photo Paper Plus Glossy paper, you would choose the icc profile for your printer with the suffix "SP1". Hope that helps!

Stephane,

In Aperture, please open Print Image, and then open Print Settings. Then navigate down through the categories of settings to look at Summary. In the Summary, under Print Settings if the triangle is rotated downward, the first thing reported is Version, which is the driver that will be used. Does this report what you expect it to report?

Start to print from CS3, and again observe the info in the Summary report of the Print dialogues. Is all the same?

Ernie

Gary I'm so grateful for your posts, at least because I don't have to write the same thing...

I was using Aperture 1.5 on Tiger and had no problem printing. Then I upgraded to Leopard using Aperture 2.1 and the prints are so bad I can't even send them to my grandma. Whereas printing exactly the same image from Photoshop CS3 via Leopard is pixel sharp and great colours.

I don't even need color-matching or high spec proofs - I just need half decent prints from my Canon Pixma inkjet. I've also destroyed a tree or two and wasted a whole set of cartridges and more trying to get this thing to print with every different setting I can muster.

Transfer the same image back with the same driver to either CS3 or Preview on Leopard or even back to Aperture 1.5 on Tiger and everything is fine.

Aperture is a dream to use in so many aspects, how come printing is so hard? I hate to pay for an upgrade and get a worse program, but I'm seriously thinking or destroying my Aperture library, reimporting as referenced images back into 1.5.1 to get round the printing problem.

And I appreciate the fact that some people can do it via color management, I'm sure you can, but I'm an amateur photographer that does stuff for people just for the sheer enjoyment, so I can't afford / nor should it be required, to spend £XXXXX on a calibration just to get half decent over saturated glossy snaps.

I don't have a lot of experience with the Guten drivers, but they're probably worth a try. Manufacturers seem to be slowly upgrading their drivers for CUPS in Leopard. For my Pro9000, Canon lists the drivers as follows on their download page:

Pro9000 Printer Driver Ver. 4.8.6 (Mac OS X)
Pro9000 Printer Driver Ver. 10.1.0.0 (Mac OS X CUPS)

They claim that the CUPS driver is only necessary for 16-bit and Airport printing, but I use it for all printing situations. I imagine it's just a matter of time before more drivers are released to better support Leopard printing.

I have now found a temporary (while not ideal in any way) solution : ) Thanks to the above link...

Interestingly, it's not an Aperture 2 problem. Well, more specifically, it's not an Aperture 2 on Tiger problem. It's an Aperture 2 on Leopard problem.

Amazingly, printing exactly the same photograph from Aperture 2 on Tiger and printing the same photo on Leopard give totally different results.

The photo from Aperture 2 on Tiger is great and very acceptable matching screen colours very well. The photo from Aperture 2 on Leopard is dark, grey, muddy and quite unusable.

So much for an upgrade?! Apple - please can we have a 'legacy' print option on Leopard that uses Tiger technology for older printer drivers please?

This is with a Canon iPixma5200 inkjet.

So, borrowing my wife's macbook is now the way forward - So my workflow now involves Aperture 2 on Leopard > Export > Transfer > Import in Aperture 2 on Tiger > Print. Not a very tight or sophisticated workflow is it?!!

PS I tried Guten-Print only to result in the most psychedelic pink and purple images being printed even when it had an exact driver to match my printer 😟

Message was edited by: cjcj

Hi Kbeat - thanks for your suggestions and help.

With a 'cheap inkjet' it looks like I'm in for a long wait.
Updated CUPS drivers aren't available for my printer 😟
But I really appreciate all your hard work, blog and postings - the driver / leopard combo is definitely the issue.

However I still don't see why if Photoshop can get round it why Aperture can't?

Thanks again for your help : )

I too have been suffering this and did not join in the discussion but thanks to everyone who persevered. It never seemed logical the claim that you had to crawl over glass blindfold, sleep in fire and swim in ice naked in order to get this right and still it didn't work. I kept on with two standard prints on my HP B9180. One of them now 'pops', exactly as I wanted since 10.5.3. One is still muddy but this is progress and I am reinvigorated to keep on trying.
I worked for a large IT supplier for many years and of course there was a never ending list of problems and fixe. It was important for us to acknowledge these to our customers, devise on workarounds if we could and give a timescale for delivering a solution. Of course it wasn't always easy but at least our customers were not in the dark.
It would be help everybody, in my view, if Apple could acknowledge some of these problems, especially for professionals. It looks to me as though many people unnecessarily spent a lot of time trying to fix this when a simple acknowledgment would have helped everybody. In my case, I learnt a lot and realize that there is much more to learn.
Now to spend a day trying to get some top quality prints (sorry dear, I'll fix the lights and paint the fence tomorrow - okay, I'll do the prints tomorrow).

{quote:title=cjcj wrote:}PS I tried Guten-Print only to result in the most psychedelic pink and purple images being printed even when it had an exact driver to match my printer :({quote}

Same here. I tried several settings in Guten-Print and never got even close to a print ressembling the intended one.

Oh, I know this problem. My display is calibrated but all printouts are too dark (even the printouts using apple's photo service).

My workaround is to increase the brightness before printing...