Prints from Gimp, Eye Of Mate etc. are a bit too dark and red, how to adjust?

[wally333]

I've a new Epson XP-15000 printer and have installed the latest ( 11/22) drivers from Epson. I get very nice borderless prints very close to matching the on-screen colors, problem is they are a tad too dark and colors are a bit too red. I can't find anyway to adjust the gamma or color balance in the printer drivers to change the printer output.

I installed the Gutenprint plugin from the repos and it has some gamma and color adjustments but I can't get it to talk to the printer.

What am I missing?

The color fidelity on the screen is a great match to the actual colors of the clothes and other things in the photo, it is the print that has drifted towards the dark and red. If you couldn't see the original items that were in the photos you'd probably think the color balance was good, but oranges have shifted towards reds. But the extra darkness compared to the monitor display can't be missed.

I loaded a PSD file of a print made in Photoshop with my old Stylus 2200 that is hanging on our wall into Gimp and printed it. It picked up a bit of contrast and shifted slightly towards red (warm). Compared to the print hanging on the wall. I then printed the jpg from the camera in Gimp and it is virtually indistinguishable from the print from the PSD file. Viewed in Gimp on my monitor the two images are also virtually indistinguishable and each print has picked up a bit of contrast and shifted slightly warm compared to the image displayed in Gimp.

For this image one could argue that the gimp print is "better" than the display, but the point is the printer driver needs to be adjusted for best match of what is displayed for "digital darkroom" work.

As an aside the results on this XP-15000 show minimal variations among different photo papers. For example Kodak Premium Picture Paper (PPP-3-A) never gave good results with my Stylus 2200 no matter what I did which is why I've got most of a 50 pack left. With the XP-15000, prints on it are darn close to what I get with Epson Premium Photo Paper Glossy (S041808).

[alpinejohn]

Hello wally333

I am not an expert on this topic, but know that for graphics professionals it is "daily business" - it has to work.
You might find this set of replies to a similar question to be of interest/use:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/9443/how-to-calibrate-the-monitor-on-an-ubuntu-system

• I suggest you read all the posts.
• The post by j. Michael Hill is perhaps the most relevant. Note that he seems to be a photography professional.

Let us know if you find a solution that works for you.

[mickee]

can you set up a custom colour profile for the printer?

[wally333]

I'm well aware of the issues and hassles of color management and the need for ICM/ICC profiles for displays, scanners, and printers for serious work -- like having the "fucia" color on a website match the fucia color of the product so you don't get a ton of "wrong color" returns. But that is not me.

The 22.04 built in sRGB color space display profile gives my on screen display of my photos a good enough match to reality -- the color of my wife's dress in the photo displayed on computer screen is a good match to the color of the actual dress.

The issue is I installed the XP-15000 printer drivers from epson and it makes very nice prints from either GIMP or "Eye Of Mate", but they have shifted a bit too red and quite a bit too dark compared to what is on screen. I could find no way in the Epson drivers to change anything other than "paper type" and "print quality" -- I always want "best" on "premium photo paper".

So I tried the Gutenprint Gimp plug-in and couldn't get it to print, which led to my post.

Unfortunately I can't really tell anyone what I did to get it working other than that I dicked around enough until I got it to print with the non-Epson driver, a sorry state of affairs for open source documentation. Then the adjustments also started to work and I'm getting as good a match as I need now between the digital photo displayed on screen and the photo paper print held up next to the display.

In case it might help someone down the road, here are the the "extras" I installed:

gimp-gutenprint
gutenprint-doc
gutenprint-locales
printer-driver-gutenprint

and from the snap store:
sudo snap install gutenprint-printer-app --edge

I created various "gutenprint" printers to no avail until I finally got this one to print from the Gimp File->Print menu selection ( how I printed using the Epson drivers)

These are the "properties" of the three printers I created for this device:

All print the ubuntu test page correctly. I can choose any of these in the Gimp File->Print dialog.

From the File->Print iwth Gutenprint dialog I have this set:

No adjustments can be made if I choose from File->Print but I can change the print that will be printed by "gutenprint" printer if I first go to: http://localhost:8000/gutenprint/printing and change settings, although there is a bewildering array of options.

So I went from have no way to adjust the printout results without changing the original to now apparently having two.

The localhost website adjust and gutenprint driver should work with "Eye of Mate" as well as anything else, but the Print With Gutenprint seems easier to tweak and I can create "virtual printers" if the tweaks for various photo papers are not handled adequately by the various photo paper selections.