Qimage used to work, but seeing a color shift

Newbie

Posts: 6

« on: December 23, 2009, 03:50:18 AM »

I am a longtime Qimage user, haven't printed in a couple of months. Tried to print some portraits today and they all came out too pale, people's faces weren't pink enough and in fact the rest of the images look like they were lacking oomph. Images were jpgs from different locations and times. I've never had this problem before. The only thing that changed on my machine (that I can think of) is that I upgraded both Lightroom (to 2.6) and idImager (to 5).

I tried printing in Lightroom and the results were different but not any better. However, idImager nailed the color (but I couldn't coax it to print borderless).

I would like to get Qimage back to where it was before and I'm not quite sure what might have changed. Qimage says Mntr ICC is sRGB IEC61966-2.1 and Prtr ICC is "Let printer/driver manage color". Printer is Canon i9100.

For idImager, "Use ICC/ICM for printing" is off. The input and output profiles are sRGB IEC61966-2.1. Rendering intent is Perceptual (same as for Qimage).

To be honest, I'm pretty green at color management so I'm reporting the settings that I see. I haven't fiddled around with any color management settings in years.

Insights would be appreciated. Thanks!

-- jeff

EDIT: I've found that Faststone printing (which doesn't seem to have any visible control over color management) seems to produce good results just like idImager.


« Last Edit: December 23, 2009, 06:06:17 AM by jd »	Logged

Terry-M

The Honourable Metric Mann
Forum Superhero

Posts: 3251

Re: Qimage used to work, but seeing a color shift

« Reply #1 on: December 23, 2009, 08:40:12 AM »

Quote

haven't printed in a couple of months.

The first thing I would suggest is that you run a nozzle clean and check. Qimage wont have changed over that period but your printer nozzles may have Shocked

What paper and ink are you using? If you are using genuine Canon inks, most papers, and Canon especially, will supply printer profiles for their products.

Quote

For idImager, "Use ICC/ICM for printing" is off.

In that case, I suspect that there is no colour management happening at all and everything is being done by the driver colour controls

When using Qimage with "Let driver manage colour", the printer driver should be set with ICM enabled. I'm not familiar with Canon drivers so cannot give you the exact details. This setting should give you a reasonable print.
Using sRGB for the monitor profile will be an approximation; some monitors are supplied with a generic profile but if you want to start on colour management seriously, buy a monitor calibration device.

Terry.


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Newbie

Posts: 6

Re: Qimage used to work, but seeing a color shift

« Reply #2 on: December 23, 2009, 09:39:38 PM »

I already ran the nozzle clean and check (that was my first guess too: problem with the magenta ink). I am using Canon paper and ink. As I mentioned, some other programs print fine.

The odd thing about idImager is that the results are the same whether or not "ICC/ICM for printing" is enabled. I am suspicious about whether idImager is properly implementing this.

I guess the next thing to try is to turn off color management with Qimage.

Thanks for your reply.

-- jeff


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Newbie

Posts: 6

Re: Qimage used to work, but seeing a color shift

« Reply #3 on: December 24, 2009, 12:19:07 AM »

The answer (from Mike Chaney):

Sounds like you might have a new driver and it is not compatible with settings from the
previous driver that was used when printer settings were saved by Qimage. To correct this,
you must recreate the driver settings from scratch. Click "Help", 'Reset printer settings"
and when you restart Qimage, set the driver settings manually (without recalling a printer
setup or job). Once you recreate the settings, you can save them for future use. The
problems occur when you load an old printer setup or job that has settings based on an old
(and now incompatible) driver.


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