I recently purchased an Epson R3000 and am having terrible trouble with the colour management from Corel. Everything I output has a very yellowy/browny caste over it when compared to my screen (for example a slightly warm grey comes out brown-grey and light blues come out very murky in colour tone). I have applied Adobe RGB (1998) to the document, opted for Corel to manage colours and turned off colour management in my printer. I am also using IC profiles specific to my papers. My monitor is self-calibrated but up until now the colour difference between screen and output device has never been a problem. Does anyone have any suggestions about where I am going wrong...
David I have done up a comprehensive file of my testings which I shall email through - am just summarising here in case it is of use to anyone else!
My default and document settings are Adobe RGB (1998).
I heeded your advice about turning off colour proofing and converted all mention of rendering intent to perceptual.
When I allowed the printer to handle the conversion, the result was absolutely terrible when I allowed colour correction based on ICC profiles relating to either my specific paper (MOAB entrada natuarl rag) or the EPSON watercolour paper which is the media type the MOAB paper recommends. In both cases while the yellow caste disappeared, everyone's faces were bright red and blues were turqouise!
Once colour correction was set to be based on the Document setting (Adobe RGB) the yellow caste went away. YAY!
I then experimented with all the same settings but for sRGB (in printer, colour management and the document settings). The result from this have a very very mild yellow caste but the skin tones were actually more realistic than the Adobe RGB printout or in fact the actual image on my screen (which in reality was a little saturated and red in the skin tones for my liking). Will need to experiment more between sRGB and Adobe RGB, particularly in relation to blue/green tones which were very murky prior to these new settings. Do you have any advice about which I should use?
While this result is much more promising, what I don't understand is why with all the talk about color management, and the advice from both EPSON and Corel to use the software to color manage, do I get a better result when I let the printer manage the colour??? And why do the custom ICC profiles not work at all? It makes absolutely no sense to me.
For the moment the 'printer manages colour correction' approach is probably OK because I intend to output my own work and can just cross my fingers and fiddle around as I try different papers. However, given ICC profiles for papers are supplied (and recommended) I would prefer if this function actually worked! What's more, if I need to output at A2 or A1 size I shall have to use an external printer and if the ICC profile function is so terrible how will I know what I am seeing as a 'proof' using their ICC profile is what I am going to get when they actually print for me??? I thought the whole idea was that ICC profiles took the guess work out... If you could provide any clarification on this whole matter I would be very grateful. Alternately if you know who/how I should talk to at Corel about this I shall try that avenue. I feel it's very counter-intuitive to not be using these features and I'd like to explore it further.
With regards to your final comment, I don't understand what it means at all. I can select a media type (which presumably carries a profile, although you are limited to EPSON's preset paper profiles) and if you select for the printer to manage colour conversion there is a second 'Advanced' screen where you can adjust brightness, contrast and saturation and a colour wheel or slider bars for the inks. There is no where to 'load' or apply a specific profile that I can find. Does that help?
David, thanks for taking the time to help me with this, I really appreciate it. Having just invested well over $2000 on Corel software and my new printer it's nice to find somewhere that I can actually get some help and reassurance about what I am doing! EPSON's tech support just told me not to use anyone else's paper! HA!
KateA said:With regards to your final comment, I don't understand what it means at all.
Can you e-mail captures the different selection available in this setting. BTW i would paste the captures in a CorelDRAW doucment and publish a PDF as I can more easily enlarge the captures to see with my old eyes. It looks like we are making progress but I would like to make sure we are getting somewhere that is repeatable for you.
BTW all you need do is buy davidmilisock paper for your Epson printer
I've just sent through the file.
BTW if you can supply textured fine art paper in a range of sizes including A4 and A3+ to the far north of Australia for a good price I'm all ears!!!
KateA said: I'm all ears!!!
That was a joke as is I suspect the all ears comment you do know Easter's coming.
BTW I have an Epson 4000 with an Onyx RIP and have never bought Epson paper. What BS from Epson.
David
I've set everything to Adobe RGB (color management default settings, document settings, print dialogue boxes and color managment tabs etc) and am colour managing through the printer. I've tried a variety of the EPSON fine art and matte paper settings and seem to be getting exactly the same result - saturation and colour tone - regardless of what I select. Is this normal?? Thankfully the result is pretty nice, although I think it may still be a touch warm (or maybe I'm just paranoid now). I shall muck around with some real files instead of samples and see how I go. Thank you so much for all your help. You're a life-saver!
Kate