[brian.austin]

I'm about done with attempting this but I thought I'd toss it out to someone smarter than me...

I have an Epson R1900 as a first foray into self-printing. So far...unimpressed. Great for changing out pics on the walls and whatever but overall, this is far more trouble than its worth.

Printing from Photoshop requires a +2/3 to +1 exposure adjustment. It requires a bit more soft proofing than I feel is really necessary. It's not quite perfectly matched up to the monitor but pretty close.

The details:

Lightroom 2.3, latest Epson printer drivers, paper profiles for Epson Ultra Premium Glossy Photo paper. Monitored calibrated with Spyder2Pro.

I have tried printing from Lightroom with every single configuration available. Nothing matches my screen. Absolutely nothing.

Managing the color profiles from LR gives me overexposures with a green hue. Whites aren't even close. It doesn't seem to matter if it's ICM and Color Management is unchecked or the ICM driver is customized. Input color profiles don't seem to matter either.

Letting the printer manage them gives the complete opposite: at least 2 stops underexposed. Doesn't matter if it's PhotoEnhance or Color Controls. I got closer with adjusting the brightness on Color Controls but lost my black points.

Here's what I don't get. Export the same image to JPG with a sRGB color profile, use Windows Photo Printing Wizard and print it at defaults...and it's fine. Hold it up to the monitor and it's right on. White points, black points and color saturation are matches, at least to my eyes.

What am I missing??