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It must not be my day... Photo printing grainy issues

February 03, 2008, 11:03:12 AM

My images are beautiful on the screen, no graininess whatsoever. When I print, you can barely even make out their eyes! I did a regular cleaning and the effect is the same. So now, I'm in the middle of a "power cleaning", which wastes a TON of ink. Times like this make me want to start going to a lab instead of using my Epson 4800. If I can't figure this out, I may just have to. Sad

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Comments and Harsh Critiques gladly accepted. My photos are ok to edit.

My photos and art: http://wildmaven.org

Ryan Nutt

Reply #1 - February 03, 2008, 11:17:45 AM

It was trying to get my colors matched that finally convinced me to start sending most of my prints to the lab instead of trying to do it myself. Sure, a lot of people are printing their own with great success. I'm just not patient enough to do it. Although I'm working with a little r220 that I spent $99 on and not a 4800. I suppose if I had that big sucker sitting on my desk, and I really would like to, I would probably be printing more of my own work.

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Ryan

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Marian Murdoch

Reply #2 - February 03, 2008, 11:26:24 AM

Quote from: Ryan Nutt on February 03, 2008, 11:17:45 AM

Although I'm working with a little r220 that I spent $99 on and not a 4800. I suppose if I had that big sucker sitting on my desk, and I really would like to, I would probably be printing more of my own work.

Well, I've had it for 3 years now, and it's more than paid for itself. I print all of the fine art prints of my drawings on it, and since I do pointillism, it's very forgiving for small printing problems. Now that I'm doing photography, I'm running out of patience for the darn thing. Tongue

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Comments and Harsh Critiques gladly accepted. My photos are ok to edit.

My photos and art: http://wildmaven.org

Marian Murdoch

Reply #3 - February 03, 2008, 11:42:33 AM

Well, power cleaning did not help. I don't know what's going wrong. Sad

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Comments and Harsh Critiques gladly accepted. My photos are ok to edit.

My photos and art: http://wildmaven.org

Marian Murdoch

Reply #4 - February 03, 2008, 02:48:43 PM

Okay...here's jpg of the image I'm trying to print. The file I'm using to print is a .tiff and much larger than this image. Do you see any reason why it would come out grainy in a 3x5 or 5x7 print?

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« Last Edit: February 03, 2008, 02:50:47 PM by wildmaven »

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Comments and Harsh Critiques gladly accepted. My photos are ok to edit.

My photos and art: http://wildmaven.org

Ryan Nutt

Reply #5 - February 03, 2008, 02:52:29 PM

How are you cropping it? I've used the crop tool in PS before when I forgot to change the dpi back to 300 from when I was doing something else. I've also entered 10px when I meant to 10in, although you'd probably catch that.

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Ryan

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Marian Murdoch

Reply #6 - February 03, 2008, 03:18:54 PM

It doesn't have anything to do with the crop, as I've printed it out full size and got the same problem. I just tried printing out a black and white image of a rose that I already have an existing print of and got a very muted, no bright whites, image. Something really weird is going on here.

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Comments and Harsh Critiques gladly accepted. My photos are ok to edit.

My photos and art: http://wildmaven.org

Marian Murdoch

Reply #7 - February 03, 2008, 03:40:26 PM

I just tried 3 different papers, HP Premium Glossy, HP Premium Soft Gloss, and HP Everyday Photo Paper (never use this stuff!) and all showed the same graininess. They mystery continues...

Oh, I also tried changing it from Relative Colormetric to Perceptual with no change. Tongue

Any other ideas?

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Comments and Harsh Critiques gladly accepted. My photos are ok to edit.

My photos and art: http://wildmaven.org

Ryan Nutt

Reply #8 - February 03, 2008, 03:48:06 PM

Different printer?

When you did the cleaning, did you print out the page where it prints the lines of each color? I usually have to clean mine 3 or 4 times to get all the lines to show up completely.

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Ryan

ProofBuddy Online Proofing - Free Download

Marian Murdoch

Reply #9 - February 03, 2008, 04:28:41 PM

Re: cleaning. I did the regular cleaning, which printed out a good color chart. The only reason I did a power cleaning was because I was desparate, LOL.

I changed the printing configuration to 1440 dpi, the weave to superx, color management to photo enhance, and digital camera correction, smooth skin correction. Crossing fingers..................

Ok...graininess is GONE! But hair is too smooth now. I'm going to try it without the skin smooth correction now...

Hmmm...still too smooth. I'll turn off the digital camera correction now.

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Where's the dancing icons?! Ah...here they are:

Party Time

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Comments and Harsh Critiques gladly accepted. My photos are ok to edit.

My photos and art: http://wildmaven.org

Ginnypenny

Reply #10 - February 03, 2008, 06:22:05 PM

Yay, I am so so so glad you figured it out. I didn't know how to help since I don't have a "real" printer. I have a $100 printer that I use to print out contracts, coloring pages for my daughter, and her nanny's homework. Oh, and it's out of blue ink which baffles me since we print mainly with black only.

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Susie
www.charlesbarnardphotography.com
www.definitionimages.com

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