Printing from Affinity Photo on an Epson Printer

[Ouroboros]

I have an Epson ET-7700 ecotank printer on which I would like to print Astrophotographs  using Affinity Photo.  

So far results have been disappointing.  The photos look dull and although I appreciate they will not look as good as on screen, I feel they could be better. 

These photos are not for exhibition. They are just for pasting into my notebook or sticking up on the wall occasionally. This is not a question about how or where to get photos printed professionally. 

Does anyone have any advice?

Some background info: 

All images are processed in Pixinsight and then saved as tif 16 bit unsigned integer for opening in Affinity.

I usually do a bit of resizing, changing DPI to 300 etc in Affinity and save as afphoto format.

I am printing onto Epson Premium Glossy PhotoPaper which I can select within the printing menu.

I have the drivers for this printer installed. They are updated. I use the printer for everyday printing, no problem. 

I have watched lots of YouTube videos on how to print in Affinity including about ICC paper profiles, Soft Proofing blar blar blar but absolutely none of them have been any help whatsoever.  

Does anyone know:

# Whether one should select ColorSync or Epson Color Control in the Color Matching menu?  I’ve tried both without much effect. 

# Within the Color Sync menu there doesn’t seem to be a profile for the Epson Glossy Paper. Should there be?

# If adding a soft proofing layer should one be able to select Epson glossy paper. The profile simply isn’t there in my case.

I can do is boost the exposure a bit which helps. But I feel there should be a more systematic approach.

Any thoughts/advice appreciated. 

 

 

 

 

[Alien 13]

The question I have is what type of monitor are you using and what colour space is it running in and is it calibrated? Lol that's three questions 😃

Alan

 

Edited November 6, 2022 by Alien 13

[The Admiral]

Well yes, if you want the print to look like the one screen, then the screen ought to be calibrated. Even that doesn't guarantee it, because if the screen is too bright  then the prints will come out dark. Another thing is what colour space are your created files in, sRGB or Adobe? If you are printing direct from Affinity, though, I would have thought it should able to accommodate, as it's a colour managed application. If not, if the Adobe colour space is printed from a non-colour managed app, then it could look washed out.

Good luck. Ian

[CedricTheBrave]

can be caused by a CMYK printer printing an RGB image the conversion process can make them look washed out

try export the image as a pdf and then print 

[The Admiral]

29 minutes ago, CedricTheBrave said:

can be caused by a CMYK printer printing an RGB image the conversion process can make them look washed out

try export the image as a pdf and then print 

Not sure about this. It's a standard consumer inkjet printer, and should be able to reproduce images correctly. I would have thought using a pdf would just add to the issues. Best to get the cause sorted in the first place. What's needed is a proper colour managed workflow.

Ian

Edited November 6, 2022 by The Admiral

[Ouroboros]

1 hour ago, Alien 13 said:

The question I have is what type of monitor are you using and what colour space is it running in and is it calibrated? Lol that's three questions 😃

Alan

OK. It’s a 13.3-inch MacBook Pro (mid-2014). Built-in Retina display. The display profile is “Colour LCD”.  The space is listed as RGB.  I think this is the standard Apple display profile. Whatever that is. I have no idea how that relates to Adobe or sRGB or anything. It cannot changed in preferences.  My screen is uncalibrated. 

[Ouroboros]

1 hour ago, The Admiral said:

Well yes, if you want the print to look like the one screen, then the screen ought to be calibrated. Even that doesn't guarantee it, because if the screen is too bright  then the prints will come out dark. Another thing is what colour space are your created files in, sRGB or Adobe? If you are printing direct from Affinity, though, I would have thought it should able to accommodate, as it's a colour managed application. If not, if the Adobe colour space is printed from a non-colour managed app, then it could look washed out.

Good luck. Ian

Yes, I realise that for best performance my screen should to be calibrated.  But I’m hoping we can think of this as a first iterative step rather than getting into calibration at this stage. To me my MacBook screen looks fine. Most people don’t calibrate their screens. So I’d be happy if I can make a bit of an improvement in the printed images. Then I can maybe look at calibrating the screen in the future.

I don’t know what the colour space of my images are. And I don’t seem able to find out either in Pixinsight or when saved as tif or when uploaded into Affinity. 

[The Admiral]

55 minutes ago, Ouroboros said:

Most people don’t calibrate their screens.

But then most people don't want to produce a print that looks broadly the same 😉. Chances are it'll be too bright for a start. It can be a frustrating process and you can end up with quite a few proof prints before you are happy. You could try Goggling something like "matching screen to print" or "colour management workflow", and seeing if there's any advice which matches what you want to do. I'm not that familiar with Affinity, but are there not any guides about printing to be found there? I'm also sure that somewhere in Affinity there will be a means to control the output colour space. Is there something like "colour management" in the set up menu? Or perhaps even in the file output dialogue?

Ian

Have a look at https://digital-photography-school.com/color-management-in-affinity-photo/

 

Edited November 6, 2022 by The Admiral

[The Admiral]

Or perhaps this

https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/tutorials/photo/desktop/video/332654440/

Or this

https://youtu.be/WknxXMLTRvI

Ian

[Ouroboros]

I’ve been batting away at this problem for a few weeks now on and off, @The Admiral.  I’ve watched more videos than you could shake a stick at.   They’re all pretty good at explaining what the objective is and what the principles are behind it, but I can’t actually do what they’re showing me because Epson does not seem to make its paper profiles available to Affinity photo. As I understand it, and this might be wrong, Epson’s paper profiles are within the driver.  This means that for just ordinary printing the right sort of paper can be selected. But basically you get what you get. 

[Ouroboros]

4 minutes ago, The Admiral said:

Or perhaps this

https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/tutorials/photo/desktop/video/332654440/

Or this

https://youtu.be/WknxXMLTRvI

Ian

Ah …. our posts crossed in the posting.  Thanks for this. I’ll take a look. 

[Alien 13]

Display calibration has been mentioned a few times but even a rough "eyeball" check with some decent test images will get you close enough to start, setting gamma contrast and brightness correctly are key.

These are some useful sites https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/monitor-calibration.htm

https://www.pcworld.com/article/394912/how-to-calibrate-your-monitor.html

Alan

Edited November 6, 2022 by Alien 13

[The Admiral]

8 minutes ago, Ouroboros said:

 

Posted in error.

[The Admiral]

At risk of flogging this one, from what I have subsequently read, the Mac Retina display should be close enough for your initial needs. Earlier versions appear to at least display the whole sRGB gamut, later ones something called P3, which is bigger, yet insufficient to include the Adobe gamut, though includes colours Adobe does not.

So, as long as your images are within the sRGB colour space then the colours should be reasonably represented by what you see on the screen. I would have thought that if you printed as per the tutorials, then you should get something pretty reasonable. If it's too dark, lower your screen brightness, or just brighten the image, until it looks OK. Affinity is a not as transparent as it should be, in that the paper profiles are not in a dropdown box that you might expect. Have you managed to find them yet? If you still can't find them, I'm not sure what you can do.

Let us know how it goes.

In fact I need to become better acquainted with Affinity myself, and could end up printing with it, so this is all grist to my mill 🙂.

Ian

Edited November 7, 2022 by The Admiral

[Alien 13]

5 hours ago, The Admiral said:

At risk of flogging this one, from what I have subsequently read, the Mac Retina display should be close enough for your initial needs. Earlier versions appear to at least display the whole sRGB gamut, later ones something called P3, which is bigger, yet insufficient to include the Adobe gamut, though includes colours Adobe does not.

So, as long as your images are within the sRGB colour space then the colours should be reasonably represented by what you see on the screen. I would have thought that if you printed as per the tutorials, then you should get something pretty reasonable. If it's too dark, lower your screen brightness, or just brighten the image, until it looks OK. Affinity is a not as transparent as it should be, in that the paper profiles are not in a dropdown box that you might expect. Have you managed to find them yet? If you still can't find them, I'm not sure what you can do.

Let us know how it goes.

In fact I need to become better acquainted with Affinity myself, and could end up printing with it, so this is all grist to my mill 🙂.

Ian

I am using Affinity myself and too would be interested in any further thoughts regarding printing or indeed even compatibility when viewing images on sites like SGL etc. Have noticed that my monitor which is running natively in the P3 colour space and close to Adobe RGB does make everything very vivid when viewed by apps that use sRGB, thankfully my display does have a REC-709 mode which allows adjustment of brightness and contrast too.

Alan

[fozzybear]

Have you  tried asking James on here he works for Serif James Ritson

[Ouroboros]

2 hours ago, fozzybear said:

Have you  tried asking James on here he works for Serif James Ritson

I haven’t. To be honest I’m not quite sure what the question is.  If he happens to read any of this he’s more than welcome to comment.

PS I’ve just clocked who you mean. I’ve watched some of his excellent videos on Affinity. 

[Ouroboros]

9 hours ago, The Admiral said:

At risk of flogging this one, from what I have subsequently read, the Mac Retina display should be close enough for your initial needs. Earlier versions appear to at least display the whole sRGB gamut, later ones something called P3, which is bigger, yet insufficient to include the Adobe gamut, though includes colours Adobe does not.

So, as long as your images are within the sRGB colour space then the colours should be reasonably represented by what you see on the screen. I would have thought that if you printed as per the tutorials, then you should get something pretty reasonable. If it's too dark, lower your screen brightness, or just brighten the image, until it looks OK. Affinity is a not as transparent as it should be, in that the paper profiles are not in a dropdown box that you might expect. Have you managed to find them yet? If you still can't find them, I'm not sure what you can do.

Let us know how it goes.

In fact I need to become better acquainted with Affinity myself, and could end up printing with it, so this is all grist to my mill 🙂.

Ian

Yes, I have made some progress on finding the ICC profiles. 

It turn out they’re locked up inside the Epson Printer Driver.  For those interested the method outlined in this video entitled How to access Epson’s ICC profiles for Lightroom for Mac works just the same for Affinity Photo.

So, great! I can now see Epson’s paper profiles from within Affinity Photo both for soft proofing and within the Color Sync in Color Matching Printer menu.

OK so how does the print look? Much better now, but only when I select Color Sync with my paper’s (Premium Glossy) profile.

I think I could marginally improve the image again by boosting the brightness and adding a subtle  S curve beneath the soft proofing adjustment layer.  

[Ouroboros]

I’m glad there’s some interest in printing from Affinity Photo.

Just going back a step …. What type of file are people using when coming out of Pixinsight and into Affinity Photo?  I’m using tif as I understand that’s the best.  What about things like colour space for the exported files? 

[The Admiral]

Was

7 minutes ago, Ouroboros said:

 only when I select Color Sync

Well, that's a step in right direction 👍. You have to use colour sync in order to complete the colour management workflow chain. You don't want the printer to go off and do its own thing.

I have a feeling that the actual brightness of a print won't be visible in the proof, as you are using the same monitor to view it. You just have to run a test print and see.

I agree, tif seems the right thing to do as a jpeg is compressed and only 8-bit. I'm guessing that for simplicity use sRGB as your screen shows sRGB colours properly. Having said that, since Affinity is a colour managed application I'd have thought you could use Adobe and the application should take care of colour space conversions before sending to the printer. Just my two pennyworth.

Ian

 

 

[The Admiral]

30 minutes ago, Ouroboros said:

For those interested the method outlined in this video entitled How to access Epson’s ICC profiles for Lightroom for Mac works just the same for Affinity Photo.

Interesting, thanks for that. I hadn't realised that access to Epson's paper profiles would not automatically be seen in the Mac. May be it happens with Windows too (?), though I don't recall printing through lightroom itself. As I'm slowly moving over to Mac, this is useful to know.

Ian

[Ouroboros]

9 hours ago, The Admiral said:

Was

Well, that's a step in right direction 👍. You have to use colour sync in order to complete the colour management workflow chain. You don't want the printer to go off and do its own thing.

I have a feeling that the actual brightness of a print won't be visible in the proof, as you are using the same monitor to view it. You just have to run a test print and see.

I agree, tif seems the right thing to do as a jpeg is compressed and only 8-bit. I'm guessing that for simplicity use sRGB as your screen shows sRGB colours properly. Having said that, since Affinity is a colour managed application I'd have thought you could use Adobe and the application should take care of colour space conversions before sending to the printer. Just my two pennyworth.

Ian

Changes in brightness of the print is visible when different papers are chosen in the soft proof adjustment layer. In fact you can also see the histogram shift when switching the visibility of the layer on and off. That’s the point of soft proofing - as I understand it - it’s an attempt to make what you see on screen something like what you might see when the image is printed.  I understand it is most effective when the screen (and prints?) are properly calibrated.

As for colour spaces of screen, Pixinsight and Affinity photo and colour profiles of images and so on, it’s all something I still have to research and understand in order to be confident that I’ve got things set up right. 

[The Admiral]

1 hour ago, Ouroboros said:

Changes in brightness of the print is visible when different papers are chosen in the soft proof adjustment layer. In fact you can also see the histogram shift when switching the visibility of the layer on and off. That’s the point of soft proofing - as I understand it - it’s an attempt to make what you see on screen something like what you might see when the image is printed.  I understand it is most effective when the screen (and prints?) are properly calibrated.

As for colour spaces of screen, Pixinsight and Affinity photo and colour profiles of images and so on, it’s all something I still have to research and understand in order to be confident that I’ve got things set up right. 

Indeed that is what soft proofing is. I think what you might be seeing,though, when you change paper is really the result of changes in the paper brightness and colour. This is something that Affinity does take account of apparently. But unless the screen brightness is visually matched to the brightness of the paper under its normal viewing conditions, it cannot be relied on to give a print which isn't too dark or light. Professionals go to significant lengths to achieve this (they need it right every time), but we amateurs have to do the best we can. Just Goggle "my print is too dark" and see. Anyway, the easiest thing will be to run off a print and just check, though it might not be so obvious with astro images rather than 'real world' images.

Ian

[fozzybear]

I see Affinity Photo now a V2 version anyone played with it yet? Demo version that is as not yet willing to part with funds on the the upgrade. I have asked James for an update for the astro cummunity for benefits apart from the 40% discount. Sorry to highjack post