Printing results are darker than screen. Any help!

Your screen gives off light. Paper reflects light. In almost all instances, an on-screen image is actually brighter than a print of the same image.

Hardware calibration is the solution to this problem. Note that proper calibration involves not just calibrating the monitor and the printer and profiling the paper, but also creating an editing environment free of distorting light through the use of a monitor hood, greatly reduced ambient light, elimination of reflections and glare, and in general lowering of the screen brightness below what most people find desirable.

If hardware calibration is out of the question, you can still take a few helpful steps:
- Use a good monitor, and make sure the drivers are up-to-date.
- Lower your screen brightness to something below what feels normal. You might be able to perceive at which point white on screen appears as a very light gray, rather than as an emanating light. That is about where you want it to be. Note that many inexpensive monitors cannot be adjusted to that point.
- Work in a dimly-lit room with no on-screen glare.
- Use the "by eye" calibration built into OS X. It's better than nothing.
- Try with and with-out using OS X's Color Sync.
- Use a good printer with specific paper profiles.
- Don't look at your prints next to your monitor. Look at them in the environment in which they will be seen.

Beyond that you will have to then translate what you see on screen to what you see in your prints. There is, at best, a rough equivalency between an uncalibrated monitor and an uncalibrated printer/paper, but you may be able to arrive at some adjustments to what you see on-screen which create the prints you want.

Kirby is correct that hardware calibration is the only sure answer to this, and even then it's tricky and requires some work.

However, with that in mind, there is a trick that I think you'll find to be useful. The darkening of the print version comes from the fact that during printing, the ink dots expand ever so slightly when they hit the paper surface, causing the ink coverage to be a little bit more than initially desired. One thing you might try is to make alternate versions of all of your book images, and increase their *Brightness value by 5–10%*. This will make them too bright on-screen, but the printing process will reverse this effect, and the images on-page should look fairly decent (probably not perfect, but closer than you're getting now).

I'd be curious to see if this helps. Best of luck!
~M

What suggestions do you have for 3rd party, monitor, color calibrators? There seems to be a a large number of manufacturers, models, features and prices.

I am primarily using Aperture for printing books by others (Apple) and doing little printing myself.

Thanks

What is controlling you profile when you print? The printer or aperture. Have you turned off the printer profile when you sent the print to the printer? Is aperture in control the profile going to the printer? Otherwise it may be difficult to get a good print. There are few other variables in there to make a good print as well.

Also calibrate your monitor or you'll be wasting your money on the out sourcing of your prints, books or ect. Just because you are using a said profile does not mean you monitor/system is in calibration with the lab or binder. as mention above you can do it by eye using OS X or by hardware.

Even if you got an X-Rite i1Display 2 puck (or something there of) for your monitor that would help. I learned my lesson the hard way too. As the others have said before me you need to calibrate your monitor at least. I'd almost be willing to wager that 2 bad print runs would be close to the cost of a monitor puck. Give or take 50$.
Good luck!
K-

I agree with Kirby and Michael completely.

I have made many books (with a couple of various 'self-publishing' provider such as Blurb, and Pro Photo lab such as Pikto in Toronto, Canada, and Apple). My workflow is used with Adobe Creative Suite CS5 (Design Premium CS5 and uses Design Premium versions over the years with Adobe), Apple Aperture and Adobe Ps Lightroom 3, and PhaseOne's Capture One PRO 5. My photography books included black and white, as well as color.

Before I work with my photo files for book projects, I always calibrate monitors with X-Rite ColorMunki Photo. I recommend it highly. I calibrate my monitors EVERY week. In some instance, for extremely important project, I calibrate monitors for that project.

I notice that Kirby (or Michael) or as in many other forum discussion here at Apple Aperture community forums, I don't see any mentions of 'proper' set up with monitor in a room. For example, it is best to *AVOID ANY* light reflection toward monitor by any means. This includes reflection from bright color shirts, room wall, windows and desk lamp. Remove ALL of light reflection distractions! In order to do a proper calibration set up, you need to make sure that there are absolutely NO distractions of light reflections toward monitor. You might want to use grey shirt or black turtleneck similar to that of Steve Job's trademark black turtleneck as an example. The point is to reduce all kind of reflection of lights toward monitor. With the right set up in the 'digital workflow lab' in your room, then proceed with calibration hardware such as ColorMunki Photo from X-Rite.

Additionally, few months ago, I bought ColorChecker Passport, also a product of X-Rite. Very nice workflow, too.

Anyway, once done with proper calibration set up (and regularly), you'll do well with your workflow for your book project. But be cautious and very conservative with yourself. Don't let your eyeballs fool you. Your eyeballs aren't always accurate due to many factors involved mentioned as above. That is where calibration hardware (and specialized software that comes with calibration device provided by vendors such as X-Rite and similar high-end professional-grade third-party vendors).

Don't even think about adjusting brightness manually in monitor's physical setting, it actually ruin the entire workflow process. Don't do it! I had seen many, many, and many (if you will MANY times) discussion about it all over the Internet. This amaze me that there are millions, millions and millions of such similar problems as yours. If done manually and messing around with monitor's physical settings, this really screw this whole work up. This means bad output - simple as that. Unfortunately, some people didn't realize that. There is workaround solution to this, either use Aperture or Photoshop with level or curve adjustment.

However, like I said, once with proper set up in room setting by removing ALL kinds of distraction of light reflections, and all other proper set up (such as neutral darken shirt, wall painted in grey (specialized painting stores offer this), so on, AND IF you believe you think you are seeing some issues with certain images, use it with caution approach in Photoshop with curve or level to brighten or darken.

You want to learn a bit about soft-proofing. Aperture has this capacity to softproof your images whether your images look good for output such as book.

Understand that you can't even get 100% of what you are seeing in monitor with output (books or fine art prints etc). With proper calibration set up, this will get you very close what you are seeing in monitor vs outputs. But with extreme cautious approach, this gets very close, but not 100 percent, though. But pretty close.

You also want to learn more about ICC profile for preparing book files. I don't want to go on and bore you and afraid to confuse you even more. For example, if working with different printers such as Pro Photo lab or other self-publishing companies, or any other printers, DO consider to contact them about ICC profile where you can download these ICC profile. Please note that if they have different paper and types, consider downloading different profiles FOR these paper used in book. But don't worry too much about this, because Apple is pretty good with books and Aperture is pretty good. BUT you gotta to calibrate monitor in order to do a successful digital photo workflow.

Well, you mentioned you don't want to invest in calibration hardware, perhaps that you want to hire a book designer to do a professional wedding book. But if you plan to make many books, DO consider to invest calibration device, this means this save you tons of time, money, effort and saving trees at the same time.

All in all, it is really up to you.

Hope some of tips, ideas and suggestion be of help and informative and educational perspective. Best of luck! Color Management topic itself is very complicated and very highly technical, it takes pro photographers, printers finally to understand what works, why and what's not. Perhaps that you want to look at X-Rite ColorMunki educational webinars about this - just to give you some ideas about why. Again, it is up to you. But the concept is the same with all other calibration device process. X-Rite has many pretty nice informative webinars. I wish that Apple offer this educational webinar about this too.

Brian

A useful review of the topic at hand was just published at Luminous Landscape (a site chock full of valuable information).

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/whyare_my_prints_toodark.shtml

Don't even think about adjusting brightness manually in monitor's physical setting, it actually ruin the entire workflow process. Don't do it!

Not to open a can of worms but… If you have something like a new iMac *you absolutely need* to lower the brightness of the monitor. The new SpyderPro Elite software now even does it during the calibration process. Those LED screens are way beyond the kind of brightness output possible with paper. At 100% they're spectacular to look at, but can seriously mess with your perception.

And as Kirby said, at the very least using OS X's built-in display calibration should get anyone pretty close. I never had serious problems with bad prints, even before I started doing this professionally. Now with calibration they're always bang on.

It's a complicated subject but it's really not that hard. Good calibration software will get you there without any voodoo, house remodelling - or serious wardrobe changes 😉

It's a complicated subject but it's really not that hard. Good calibration software will get you there without any voodoo, house remodelling - or serious wardrobe changes

I didn't say 'house remodeling' nor 'serious' wardrobe changes or haven't used this term 'voodoo', what are you thinking? Come on, Jade. All you have to do is use your commonsense and best use of your judgement rather than mocking at some people. What I had offered some tips, this works real well and often save lot of time - especially for SERIOUS photographers work on important project then this approach works.

As for your mockery words such as "house remodeling", I didn't say. Just in that digital photography workflow room, not the entire house. Please give us a break.

As for serious wardrobe changes, I am pretty sure many people have neutral wardrobe such as black or grey ones. I didn't say to buy all wardrobes all black or grey. Again, give us or OP a break.

Have a good one, Jade!

Cordially, Brian

Brian,
I guess the wink was lost on you wasn't it?
It's called tongue in cheek, and it was prompted by the somewhat dramatic tone of your otherwise very thorough response. When you say:

Don't even think about adjusting brightness manually in monitor's physical setting, it actually ruin the entire workflow process. Don't do it!

I'm sorry, but I find that a bit over the top. And wrong in some cases, again sorry to say. And yes, I understand the importance of everything you said regarding a neutral colour environment. And lighting. And calibration. But I was using humour - or so i thought - to illustrate the point that it's not THAT hard to get good prints without wearing a special grey jumpsuit. There, I did it again didn't I? Sorry. But it's just a joke man. Lighten up.

The OP has dark prints. He needs to calibrate his monitor so the brightness reflects what will be achieved on paper. A simple OS X calibration will probably get him close. Not perfect, but close. For personal use that may be enough.

Personally, I use a Spyder3Elite colorimeter on a 27in i7 iMac (LED) and get consistent colour from books (Apple), print houses or my own Ultrachrome K3 prints (Epson). No density problems either, in black and white OR colour. I've seen my pictures in magazines, posters, busses, album covers and I've never had any bad surprises. For the record, my iMac's brightness is almost halfway down. This was set by the colorimeter software as part of the calibration process.

Seriously yours,
Jade

Ernie Stamper wrote:
The Print dialogue in Aperture 3 has a Brightness slider. This allows you to control the brightness of the print without altering your file version that looks right on the screen.

Ooh, cool, that's handy. Does this work for the book ordering process as well (not around my Aperture setup at the moment…)?

Does this work for the book ordering process as well

It doesn't AFAIK, because the print dialog doesn't show up during book ordering. But it does work with the Print as PDF function - something you could use with another service.

You should really look into solving the problem though. Chances are it's mostly your iMac's screen brightness playing tricks on you, but good calibration will save you tons of headaches down the road. Not to mention money saved on bad prints. Lots of good advice in this thread and it doesn't have to be expensive.

JL,

I never expect what prints well to look good either on my monitor, or on Slideshows transfered to video usage. If it looks good on my monitor, that is what I want the settings and adjustments to be locked into for my files. I think my monitor is very true -- some proof of this is evidenced by prints I have made via the print services I have available to me via SmugMug. Those prints (either Bay Photo or EZPrints per my choice) look just like what is on my monitor when shipped to me, and that is super! The print process fundamentally must compensate in some manner to achieve the backlit look of a monitor. I get very close to that in the prints from Aperture now, by using the Brightness and other controls in the Print Dialogue.

Ernie

Very common problem (print "too dark" relative to display).

It's really all about "viewing conditions" both with your environment and your display. Here's some things to try:

* The first "do not pass go, do not collect $200" is getting your display under control and getting in calibrated/profiled. Usually the first problem is display luminance level....turn it down! Most flat panel display's default luminance level is simply way to high for critical print viewing or "soft proofing". With a monitor calibration/profile package, you'll want to set the display to <150 cd/m2....100-120 is about ideal if you want the display to simulate normal viewing conditions (I use mine closer to 140 since I'm using a graphic arts viewing booth).
Other parts of good display calibration would be color temperature/white point (between 5000K and 6500K would be ideal....I use 5500K to match my photo printing paper) and the gamma setting...but there are relatively minor considerations to getting the luminance set correctly.

* A couple of very good "pro level" display calibration/profiling packages would be ColorEyes Display Pro and basICColor Display...along with a good colorimeter or a spectrophotometer. You can get software bundles that include both the software and the hardware colorimeter. Both of these packages support some of the higher-end displays that use internal hardware calibration LUTs.
A slightly less professional package would be the XRite ColorMunki Photo. The instrument itself is very good but the software is not quite at the level of the other two I mentioned. As far as I know, it does not support the internal hardware LUTs of some of the high-end displays from EIZO and others. But if you're a non-professional, it's a decent package.

* Once you've got your display under control, you need to look at how you're "color-managing" the rest of your workflow. For book printing, I would suggest you stick with a straight "sRGB" color-managed workflow as this is probably the assumed profile for these book printers....or at least convert from "higher-end" (wider gamut) profiles such as AdobeRGB to sRGB. If I'm not mistaken, I believe Aperture uses AdobeRGB as it's internal color space so it wouldn't surprise me if the printed results look "duller"/less saturated and possibly darker than what you're seeing on your display.

If I were to bet, I would say getting your display under control (dimmer) and getting it calibrated/profiled will probably solve 90% of your problem.

Regards,
Terry

Sorry Ernie, but I must take issue with a couple of your statements...

You feel your monitor "is very true"...by "true" I assume you mean "accurate". Unless you've invested in a decent monitor calibration/profiling package, you simply have no idea if that's the case. Even WITH calibration software/hardware, there's no guarantee that this is the case since you could choose calibration parameters that are inappropriate for your environment. Using monitor calibration software along with a good measurement instrument (colorimeter or spectro) is a very simple process and requires no special knowledge or "black art"....but you do have to know your application before proceeding. Bottom line, unless you're actually able to MEASURE your display and use software to keep it under control and consistent, the accuracy of your monitor is completely unknown at this point. The fact that some print services meet your expectation with regards to "accuracy" may only be a coincidence....or luck.

You go on to say "The print process fundamentally must compensate in some manner to achieve the backlit look of a monitor". Untrue....the opposite is the case. Assuming that the print process is at least under some measure of control/consistency, there's only so much that can be done with it. The primary limitation of the print process is the paper/substrate and, to a lesser extent, the viewing conditions. The paper has "X" amount of brightness or reflectivity that cannot be changed. The only way to "increase" the luminance level of the paper is increase the luminance of the viewing conditions, something you have virtually no control over....unless you choose to run around your living area replacing all those 40 watt bulbs for 150 watt bulbs! 🙂 For sure, you have no control under what conditions your prints will be viewed by others.

The fact of the matter is, it's your display conditions that need to change. As I mentioned in another post, the biggest offender/problem are flat panel displays with extreme brightness (>200 cd/m2 or "candelas per meter squared")....these nice big beautiful bright displays need to be throttled back to perhaps half of their default luminance level.

Given the inherent limitations of the various printing processes (offset, photographic, inkjet, etc.), either user expectations must change or the user must take whatever steps necessary to bring their environment in line with these limitations.

Regards,
Terry

For non-professionals, X-Rite's ColorMunki Photo is, imho, an excellent choice. I think X-Rite just upgraded their entire line of spectrophotometers.