Printed perspective drawings are very dark

[Grayling]

They always look great on the screen. Then I print and they are so dark they are worthless for client meetings. I save them as jpeg and open on photoshop and fix. That’s the only way I can use the perspectives. I have adjusted lighting in the plan and found no difference. I’ve adjusted everything I can possibly find and can’t figure it out. 

 

Ive looked for a video that shows the steps to create a perspective and put it into a layout page. It would be nice to find out what I’m doing wrong. I’ve looked at a lot of videos, but none really focus on proper settings for correct lighting for perspectives. This shouldn’t be this difficult. 

[TheKitchenAbode]

An example would be great. Maybe it's the printer settings that are the issue, most printers have setting controls that allow you to adjust brightness, contrast, colour saturation and more so you can align/calibrate the printer with your screen.

[Grayling]

Here's 2 examples. I can print them on 2 totally different printers. Both show them incredibly dark. They look great on the screen. But definitely not something you could print and share with a client.

example 1.pdf

example2.pdf

[Chopsaw]

I have been experimenting with adjusting the ambient light levels to compensate for that issue.  I just wish there was a better way.

 

Not all of us have our own printers that can be adjusted to compensate.

[Grayling]

It shouldn't take adjusting the printer. There has to be something else wrong.

[TheKitchenAbode]

your posted PDf's printed out fine for me. Is this something that has just started to happen or does everything outputted from your computer print overly dark?

[Chopsaw]

Graham,  This has been happening to me as long as I can remember.  It does not seem to matter where I have my PDF's printed.  You must have your printer calibrated to Chief's PDF output somehow which must be different from everyone else's general default settings.  Unfortunately that is a big investment for someone just starting out.

[Grayling]

I agree. It's kind of crazy how CA doesn't work with Xerox printers and that you can't get a decent print from a xerox using CA. I don't know who is at fault, but it has been driving me crazy for years.

[TheKitchenAbode]

14 hours ago, Chopsaw said:

Graham,  This has been happening to me as long as I can remember.  It does not seem to matter where I have my PDF's printed.  You must have your printer calibrated to Chief's PDF output somehow which must be different from everyone else's general default settings.  Unfortunately that is a big investment for someone just starting out.

 

I don't use any special calibration hardware/software, just do this by eye using some pics that I'm very familiar with and some free test patterns. What's important is that your monitors brightness and colour settings are independent of the actual pic's data, so the pic can look great on your screen but is in fact too dark. When you make changes in brightness, color, etc. in say Photoshop that data is stored in the pic and will be interpreted properly by the receiving device such as a printer. There may be something else going on but the first place I would take a look at is if your monitors settings such as brightness, gamma, color saturation is reasonably balanced. This can be done directly in your monitor settings or through your graphics card control DBX. When you do this you must face the fact that the proper settings may not always result in your screen looking right according to your personal preferences, many prefer overly saturated colors and higher than normal contrast, which is fine but when working with pics this will give you a false impression as to how your pic will really look when reproduced according to it's true data profile.