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Please help me rescue shadow detail in print


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I've got a problem with an image I'm trying to print. It has a

heavily shadowed area with important details. When I print the

image, the shadowed areas come out looking all "blobby" and

desaturated and I find the print to be quite horrific; whereas I

find the image on screen to be quite pleasing. I am printing with an

Epson 2200 printer using relative colorimetric with black point

compensation as my rendering intent on Epson's ehnanced matte paper

at 2880 dpi with the matte black ink cartridge. I'm allowing

Photoshop CS2 to do the color management. My monitor is calibrated

so that is not the problem.

 

Soft proofing does show fairly well what the image looks like in

print. To help you understand what I'm seeing I have included

(assuming I can figure out how to attach images) a small copy of the

image as well as what the image looks like with both relative

colorimetric soft proofing and perceptual soft proofing. These

images were captured using screen capture. Please help me rescue

this print.<div>00D5l4-24992684.jpg.17f3faff100438847d630e4897d54ef6.jpg</div>

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Bruce:

 

Two things. First, the 2200 will plug shadows, particularly using Epson's canned profiles,

(although some more than others), so I am not surprised with your results here. Using a

RIP (like ImagePrint) helps the printer be more linear/consistent but a well done custom

profile for your particular printer can go a long way toward helping with shadow detail.

 

You can certainly try a print adjustment layers) to recover some detail. Add a levels

adjustment layer and change the Output levels slider from "0" on the black side of the

scale to around 10 or so. Look at the impact while in soft print mode. It should help.

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I used the level tools to adjust the black and white points for the shadows and highlights in the dark area using the eye droppers and then made small manually adjustments for color correction and adjusting the midtones over all the channels. I then merged an unedited version with the edited one to not blow out the foreground detail.

 

The level settings were:

R: 24,1,154

G: 15,1,139

B: 12,1,159

RBG: 2,1.58,251<div>00D5yb-24997484.jpg.f382a356ecfe746d61e6d84e0e4eb337.jpg</div>

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Thanks for the many good replies so far. My comments to your replies:

 

Patricia: I agree, the 2200 really plugs up the shadows, this is the first where I've found it to be really unacceptable. I like the simplicity of printing with photoshop and don't want to add another step with a RIP, nor do I want to spend more money now, but if that's truly the answer, then maybe I'll try. As for recovering some detail with a print adjustment layer, whenever I do that to get acceptable results, the blacks become washed out and I'm not happy with the print. I should have said that I've tried that before.

 

David: Again, when I try this the blacks seem washed out in the print if I recover enough shadow to not get the blotchy look in the print.

 

Brett: Yours recovered maybe a little more shadows than I wanted on screen (I like the face peering out of the blackness) but may work in print as the blacks still look fairly black. I'll try when I return home tonight.

 

Roger: black pt compensation turned off yielded even worse results.

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