Help! My pages print the wrong color at printer!

[anitab]

I've completed pages for a heritage photo album (for Christmas gifts), but when I take them (as JPEG and/or PSEpdf) to two different local printshops, the pages print out (they made a number of attempts) with a yellowish, greenish cast - quite unattractive, and not at all what I get when I print them on my HP printer at home (and not at all what I see on my monitor!). The ones from the printshop are also a bit darker...

Because of the volume of pages I wish to print, I would prefer to take them to the printshop. I anticipate doing a number of albums in the future, so this is something I need desperately to figure out.

Any help will be appreciated so very much!

[troush]

Anita,

Even though they look the same on your printer and monitor, have you run adobe Gamma and calibrated your monitor?

-Trish

[anitab]

Thank you for telling me something to try! Since I don't know what Adobe Gamma is, and I haven't Calibrated my monitor, I'm off to try to find out about that!!

(Note) When I realized I should have posted to PSE, since I use PSE5, I posted there, as well. Today I added to following to my post there:

I talked to my son this morning, and he said I need CMYK, not RGB, to have things printed at a printer; so I looked up CMYK on PSE help menu, and this is what the PSE 5 Help menu says:

"CMYK
Cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. A color space used by most printers to render colored images. Photoshop Elements does not support CMYK color mode."

So now I'm basically in panic mode and feeling like I've bought the wrong program, and I've invested all this time and money -- is there a way around this issue, besides investing more money in gobs of printing supplies? My whole purpose in doing this was to create multiple, hands-on memory albums for family members...

[troush]

Anita,

I don't think you've done it wrong. Many people do their own work, and then use Costco, Wolf Camera, Walgreens, Walmart, etc, and have no problems.

Adobe Gamma is on the PSE 5 CD somewhere. Sorry, I don't know how to install it off the CD, but I think there is a help doc at Adobe's web site. Calibrate your monitor. Then, if/when you take your cd in (or you upload) tell them NOT to adjust color. Like at Costco's website, there is a button you click to say "Don't adjust the color" or something.

-Trish

[anitab]

Trish,
Thank you so much for your responses! I'll let you know how this turns out!

[fotogirl19]

Hi Anita,
You might do better with the pdf. As a professional printer, my advice to you is save your file as a pdf, ask your printer to convert the file to CMYK, then proof (look at the document) before they print it. Chances are they need to adjust the color or HSB a little to produce a quality print. If you have a yellowish cast, they can easily fix that and usually don't mind. PDF files are easier to convert to CMYK and with a good copier, easy to color correct.

[audreyt]

You need to calibrate your monitor and you need a printer profile in order to calibrate your printer or the printer that you will use. This will guarantee that the colors you see on the screen will be the same colors that will be printed. DryCreekPhoto (http://www.drycreekphoto.com/) has free printer profiles. I download and use use their printer profile to print to the Costco Printer. Then I use the do not adjust option because I have already applied the printer profile via Adobe Photoshop. I do not believe you can apply a printer profile with PSE.

[Ritasdigs]

Trish, I just went with a different monitor then I had & the colors look a little different from what I had. I use PSE 4. Does that have Adobe gamma? I never used it with my HP monitor & never had a problem with the colors being different when I printed them myself or took them to a lab. I also just finished making 40 pages of Heritage pages as gifts. I printed them myself on HP.But that was before I got this new monitor!

[Wendy]

Hi ...

All of the Windows versions of Elements have Adobe Gamma ... take a look in the Control panel and hopefully you will find it there :)

There was a problem with with previous issues ... if you had say PSE3 then installed PSE4 and later removed PSE3 then Adobe Gamma was also removed. The solution was to uninstall PSE4 and then do a new install of it.

Because of this problem Adobe put a copy of Adobe Gamma on the PSE5 disk ... that way you can just use the disk to install it without having to unistall then reinstall Elements :)

Wendy

[Ritasdigs]

Wendy, I still have 3 on my computer even though I've gone to 4 so what do I need to do? Still go ahead & run Adobe gamma? I hate to sound so "dense" but this is all so new to me! My new monitor colors don't look as good as the old one, even though this is a better one(so I'm told)

[Wendy]

Hi ...

What sort of a monitor is it ... if its a CRT one then do try Adobe Gamma. If its an LCD one then it gets a little more complicated :)

Wendy

[anitab]

Thank you all for your help!

Trish, thank you so much for your responses. Once I found Adobe Gamma on my set-up disc, I found that 'Adobe Gamma does not support LCD monistors' - which is what my laptop has...

A complicating factor for me is that I have a MacBook. It has an Intel processor, so I can run Windows programs on it; so I thought I'd be smart and get the windows version of PSE; but I'm finding that a lot of processes are not simple - especially the fact that I have to shut down the Windows side in order to get to the Mac side (which is what I primarily use)...

One thing I found out yesterday is that Windows uses ICM, a built-in image color management system, which is similar to Apple's ColorSync on Mac OS, but not the same - so could that be a factor, as well?

Jackie, thank you for the excellent advice. Sounds like once I find out how to calibrate an LCD monitor (?) things will be simpler; but maybe with the information you gave me, I can get the work I've already done print okay!

Wendy, is there anything I can do to calibrate my LCD monitor??

[Wendy]

Hi Anita ...

Oh I didn't realise you were a Mac user ... don't try to calibrate using Adobe Gamma !! Use either ColourSync ... which I am not too keen on or try the one I use SuperCal ... here is a link to it.

http://www.bergdesign.com/supercal/

Now about running Elements on the Intel Mac ... well I guess that you are using Boot Camp to do it ... I think that Parallels is a lot better as you can then have both Mac & Windows open at the same time. Do remember though that you will need virus protection for the windows section of your hard disk.

I have run PSE5 on the Mac and it runs OK but to be honest I much prefer using the Mac side so I stay with PSE4 because of that. I really would be inclined to speak to Adobe about switching your disk to the Mac one :) and then use PSE4 as your Editor and iPhoto to organise your images.

Hopefully at some stage Adobe will bring out a Mac version of PSE5 but until then I would use PSE4 :)

Wendy

[Jan]

Excellent solution posted by Jackie! (fotogirl)

I create most stuff in Elements, just because it's faster and easier for me, and then I take it into PSCS2 to convert it to CMYK.

I would think that most printers you take your disk to would be able to open your files in Photoshop and just convert them for you. It's not that big a deal, so it's always worth asking.

And you might also ask for color proof before you commit your designs to expensive, archival paper.

[fotogirl19]

Thank you Jan! Most of my walk-in customers create their business cards, greeting cards and fliers in RGB. I run a Xerox digital press copier in CMYK. First I'll convert the file to CMYK, then I show the proof to the customer. If there is any adjustment to the color, I can do it right then and there. If the file is sent electronically, then the file can be converted, saved as a pdf and emailed back to the customer to proof.

[Priss]

Thank you Jan! Most of my walk-in customers create their business cards, greeting cards and fliers in RGB. I run a Xerox digital press copier in CMYK. First I'll convert the file to CMYK, then I show the proof to the customer. If there is any adjustment to the color, I can do it right then and there. If the file is sent electronically, then the file can be converted, saved as a pdf and emailed back to the customer to proof.

Thank you Jackie (fotogirl), we struggled with the research on this and thank you so much for the information you gave about prepping our work for commercial printing. In the meantime, I rounded up the following other ideas, and maybe parts to this puzzle.

Anita---Do any of your print shops have an inkjet printer they can use rather than one that would require CMYK? Linda said that she'd found that pages often are slightly darker when printed, unless you're using an Epson 1800 printer-that thing is right on with no adjustments necessary! Color on a monitor and printed color don't display exactly the same usually. (Epson must have factored this in on their new printer.) I've had just the opposite, many pages are a tad too "overexposed" on my HP's

Linda also zeroed in on this issue with this suggestion. "It will be a bit of work, but here's what I used to do with printers: put a Levels adjustment layer at the very top of my Layers palette and adjust the middle slighter to the left so it's about 20 points lighter, e.g. from 1.0 to 1.20. Open up your other images and drag the adjustment layer across to all of them. You can leave this layer visible when printing, but turn it off when viewing on your monitor." (Interesting idea, huh!)

Regarding the green tint. Any chance that this might be the kind of paper they're using?

---all the answers are so helpful in this thread. Thank you for asking the question, and for this excursion into the world of commercial printing. PLEASE let us know how you did!

[photobookmemories]

You have several problems here... you are using a Mac, and running PSE in Windows on your Mac? There's more than just getting your monitor calibrated. Windows runs in a different gamma than Mac... I don't know if it switches back and forth or not for you. Windows gamma is 2.2, Mac is 1.5 so Windows is much darker than Mac.

As for prints being darker, here's the deal. A computer uses additive color - light. You add color and you get white. With a printer, you add color and get black. They will never match perfectly... close, but not perfect. There are also some colors that are a real pain for CMYK, like blues and purples.

I have a customer in a very similar predicament as you. She has created a 100 page book in Microsoft Word. It looks fabulous on her laptop (PC) and prints great on an inkjet. The photos come out yellow when I print them on the press. With so many pages, it was not feasible for her to fix them all, so I simply lowered the yellow output on the press for her and we have great pages.

I do convert files to pdf, but I don't convert them to CMYK - I let the printer itself do the conversion.

[dkc]

I didn't know printers (commercial, you mean?) could convert files to cmyk. Is that commonly done? I'm on the fence about getting cs2 mainly so I could do cmyk. Is that a valid reason?

Thanks.

[Jan]

Hi dkc,
Please see my answer to your question in the thread about the CS2 upgrade...

[photobookmemories]

I didn't know printers (commercial, you mean?) could convert files to cmyk. Is that commonly done? I'm on the fence about getting cs2 mainly so I could do cmyk. Is that a valid reason?

Thanks.

Are you talking about just for scrapbooking pages? No, absolutely not a valid reason. I print on a digital press - a Xerox. It's basically a giant glorified laser printer. Every print shop is different and uses different equipment - although that being said, there are only a handful of printers that can print a 12 x 12 full bleed page. It really depends on who you use. I always recommend Elements over Photoshop because of the cost. Most people will never miss what they are missing. If you can afford it and will learn to use it well, get Photoshop.

Traditional pre-press printing is entirely different. They use 4 color plates - CMYK and the files must be in CMYK to create the plates. Each plate costs about $9 each, so anything you print this way you want to be printing lots of the same thing over an over.

[anitab]

Oh, dear! I'm so embarrassed that it's taken me so long to respond. I guess my excuse is Christmas, being out of town, etc.; but mostly I've been trying one thing after another to solve the problem I was having, wanting to report that I had succeeded!

I think a lot of different things may have contributed to the difficulty I had in having my album pages printed. I really do appreciate everyone's input, and I have learned a few things on this journey! : )

I never found a local printer (I tried three) who could print pages resembling the ones I printed on my printer. In fact, in some cases the journaling was so 'muddy' that it was not really readable - not too mention the colors; and the sepia tones were very poor. I tried PDF's, I tried JPGs, I didn't give up easily. I took my CD of pages to one place that converted RGB to CMYK for me, but would charge $40 and hour to do that, and once they did that they said (over the phone, since it was not one of the closer shops & they didn't have time to do it while I was there) that it 'didn't make any difference.' The small shops didn't appear to have much choice in printers... I'm 45 minutes from a city with more choices, so I ended up printing the albums for gifts at home. (They were well-received, by the way.)

Jackie, I really appreciated all your helpful suggestions. I only wish your shop were located near me! : )

Melissa, thank you for continuing my education about computers and printers and colors! It sounds like I needed to talk to you in December - lowering the yellow output would have been great - my ancestors all looked like they had jaundice! : )

Thank you, Priss, for forwarding Linda's suggestions; I apologize for not letting you know sooner how I did. I really have appreciated the support on this whole issue!

Thank you, Linda, for the suggestion for using a levels adjustment layer. I've been using that idea now, as I'm finally creating (and adjusting) pages on my Mac desktop. I was new to PSE Elements in September, and also was working with a new computer (MacBook); thought I'd be smart and get the Windows version of PSE Elements, since it can be run on the MacBook, but found it inconvenient to work from that side, when I do most things from my Mac desktop. Thanks to counsel from Wendy, I 'downgraded' to PSE El 4 for Mac, and I'm loving it; it's really much simpler to just work on the Mac side! (Interestingly enough, I have had no problem using PSE El 4 to open pages I made with PSE El 5 for Windows!)

I did re-calibrate my LCD MacBook monitor, using SuperCal (thank you, Wendy, for your help with that!). I've noticed this week that the pages I brought over from the Windows side do look darker when viewing them on the Mac side, so that's why I've being using levels adjustment layers... The colors printed well before, but there was an issue of 'darkness' with the ones I printed on my printer for the heritage album, so I'm glad to have solved that now that I'm on the Mac side and benefitting from the calibrating I did!

By the way, I'm very anxious to send off to viovio.com to have a book made. I was researching printing options via Google, and they seem to have incredible prices. Viovio has a base book price (5.00 for softcover, 15.00 for hardcover) with .25 for each additional page. I read a review which gives them good press, comparing quality on a hardbound book done at Shutterfly (64 pages, $73.99) and one done at Viovio (64 pages, $30.99), with some pages in common...
http://www.viovio.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=423

Thank you again to Linda, Priss, Wendy, Jan, Trish, and everyone who gave their time to encourage me and help me solve this!
Blessings!
Anita