Pro 1000, Red Printing Brown

[irkedpro]

I have a NEC Spectraview calibrated monitor and use appropriate paper profiles.  99% of the times, what I see is what I get.  However, I'm attempting to print a blood red, yellow and orange mushroom which is coming out brownish and a touch dark.  Needless to say, I'd like some advice.  My red ink is full but, my magenta and partial magenta are low.  I would expect the printer to tell me when I should change them.  Do you agree?  And as I'm at a loss for what else to check, your advice please.  And for you info, this is a Nikon NEF photo, corrected in Adobe Camera RAW (converted to 16 bit, Pro Photo and other corrrections), converted to DNG, tweaked in Lightroom and printed as TIF

[jrhoffman75]

I don't know if this is your problem, but why all the file conversions - is your LR vesrion not able to read your NEF files?

Are you exporting from LR into aTIFF and then opening the TIFF to print? Why not just print directly from LR?

Does the Pro-1000 come with Canon Print Studio Pro?

[irkedpro]

Hello John:

To answer your question about file conversion let me start by saying, I do my research, make a choice but, unfortunately I don't remember everything I read.  However, my understanding of Adobe processes is that they use 8 or 16 bit files.  For an example, my D800 can shoot in 12 or 14 bit (and the brown photo is from a Coolpix 8700 and I don't know the bits).  So, regardless of LR's ability to print NEF directly, the bit space will be modified.  Therefore to get the widest color gamut, I convert to ProPhoto 16 bit.

I use Camera Raw to convert to DNG with a sidecar XMP to keep my original NEF unaltered.  I find it very flexible and it also allows me to see the changes I made when opening in LR, which converting to TIF does not.  And lastly, yes the Pro 1000 comes with Print Studio Pro.  However, I consider it superficial driver software that doesn't need to be used considering Adobe's capabilities.

And as to converting and printing TIF, I've had some problems printing DNG directly.  And I've never figured out if its me of the file format that's the problem.

As for my problem, I intend to print the NEF directly.  I'm also considering replacing the low magenta cartridges regardless of whether the printer says they're empty.