Printing Question - another try

Folks,

I posted this question earlier on this evening, but it got lost within the
deluge of spam messages we had. If anyone can give me any advice it would be
greatly appreciated. Many thanks in advance.

JonB

"I use an Olympus C765, a Dell Latitude x300 laptop and an Epson Stylus
Colour 760 printer. The printer is old but reliable and good enough quality
for this digi photography newbie.

When I print photos they come out much darker than they look like they're
going too when they're displayed on screen. The only way I've been able to
'correct' this is to lighten the photo images so they look like they're over
exposed when displayed on screen but they print out ok. This is a very hit
and miss technique to say the least, so its pretty unsatisfactory. Is there
some way of ensuring better colour synchronisation between my laptop and my
printer?

I haven't seen a feature in the software supplied with the printer which
would allow for callibration with my laptop and given their age difference
(laptop 2 yrs old, printer at least 5 probably nearer 7) I doubt that would
be possible anyway. Also someone who thought they knew what they were doing
thought the problem would be solved by altering my screen settings, but all
that's done is to make my display darker, it doesn't seem to have changed
the difference between display and print brightness at all"


JonB

Jon,
the image you see on screen and the image that comes out the printer
are often slightly different. Try printing a web page to see if the
effect is the same. If so, it's unlikely there is a problem with the
original image captured by the camera - my next step would be to make
sure you have the most up to date OEM drivers for your laptop and
printer.
Your laptop has an integrated graphics card which uses the Intel 855GM
chipset according to the Dell site.
Latest drivers here

http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts-df-external/Product_Filter.asp...roductI


Latest printer drivers here

http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/support/supDetail.jsp?BV_UseBVCooki...es&oid=


Choose your Operating system, download and install. The chipset driver
will require a restart.
If this doesn't work, go into the display settings in windows. Click
the advanced tab under settings. You may have colour management tools
for the display here depending on how much functionality the chip
driver has.
When printing, click file/print/properties. Check you colour settings
are normal. I.e. colour and tone controls neutral (all set to 0+ or
pointer in the middle of any sliding scale). Check you are not using a
specialist colour mode/scheme i.e. text/adobe RGB. Restore defaults if
you can. When using preset quality modes such as "best photo" you may
find that prints are a lot heavier on black ink which can saturate and
darken the look of finished prints.
Next, browse any printer utilities you have. Some utils also have
colour management tools or fine tuning options.
Lastly the obvious... check the monitor brightness setting, make sure
the ink and cartridges are genuine Epson brand for 760..... buy good
quality photo paper.
bear in mind it may be that the printer just can't match the subtle
tonal rage captured by the camera.
Best of luck
Pete