I have a new Canon Pixma Pro 100 to make prints of my watercolors but printing is inconsistent

[kathyjurek]

I'm a first time Canon Pixma Pro 100 user - first time trying to print my watercolors at home. What I see on screen is not printing correctly. The colors have been too saturated. I've fiddled and wasted paper and gotten some prints to the point where they're OK but do I don't want to have to waste so much paper each time. Right now I'm tring to print a truck that is mostly green but with some lemon yellow parts and the yellow is printing more yellow green. I've downloaded the correct ICC profiles and tried Canon Print Studio. I believe my monitor is calibrated but i don't really know. What I see on the screen looks like the originals I'm looking at on my desk. When I have given my images to a local printer, they come out perfect. I am burning through very expensive paper and can't figure out what's wrong. Today I downloaded a test photograph with lots of different photos in it and it printed perfectly in my opinion. Why is my art not printing right?  Any ideas? I'm using a 2011 Macbook Pro and Photoshop CS5. Does this have something to do with my monitor? 

I would greatly appreciate any advice. 🙂

[kathyjurek · Accepted solution]

Hi John

I thought I'd give you an update in case there are other fine artists having trouble printing in the future.

I didn't order the Red River paper sample because I had a sample of all the papers in a card pack so I tried some of them after I talked to my printer friend again. He said he never lets Photoshop manage the colors when he prints art and he told me to turn off colorsync. So I tried that with some of the card samples and it worked! 

So my settings are:

- working space sRGB

- let the Printer manage color

- In printer settings, turn colorsync off

- I'm using Fine Art Other 1 for my paper type (Canson Aquarelle Rag)

Finally feeling good about my prints.

Kathy

[jrhoffman75]

That's great Kathy. Thanks for posting to help others.