Why are my prints too dark?

Still thinking about a new printer and delving further into Keith Cooper’s excellent Northlight Images site I found this article on monitor calibration, dealing with the specific issue of prints looking darker than the screen image. Towards the bottom of the article there are also further links to managing and improving colour output from your printer

“One of the questions we often get asked at Northlight is: ‘Why are my prints too dark?”

Often this comes with a query as to whether it’s worth getting print profiling equipment such as the ColorMunki or SpyderPrint.

‘Your monitor is probably too bright’ is our most common answer.

You’ve spent a lot of time getting an image to look just right on your screen, you select your paper, you hit the ‘Print’ button, out comes the print.

Something doesn’t look right. You take the finished print out of the printer and it’s just too dark. That shadow detail you’d worked on in Photoshop – all gone.”

 Keith looks briefly at the issues and suggests some differing approaches to dealing with the problem here.