Lightroom printing woes

[pingflood]

Hi all,

Was hoping for some advice on getting good results from LR 2.0.

I use an Epson R280 printer and premium glossy photo paper (Epson brand). Epson inks.

Out of the box, with LR letting printer handle color management it looked like, well, ass. Pink/magenta cast and generally horrible.

Went into printer setup, turned off color management, and picked the printer/paper profile in Lightroom. Colors are now much better (I'd go as far as saying they look good enough to me), but all the prints come out dark. Like 2 stops too dark dark.

Now, I do not have a properly calibrated monitor, BUT some informal checks tell me it's not too far off, and viewing professionals' image galleries all the images look just like they should. I've posted images for others to review and nobody's ever mentioned them looking too dark.

So while my monitor settings are no doubt not perfect, I cannot for a second believe that they are off far enough to make it look this bad when printing.

I spent some time googling the issue and it did not make me any wiser. I am pretty much an idiot when it comes to color profiles and digital prints (I usually send it off but wanted to do some smaller ones at home), which doesn't help as half the time I have no clue what I am even supposed to be looking for.

Any help is much appreciated!

[pingflood]

Followup. After spending the money for a decent monitor and Spyder 2, my prints are now very close to what I see. So much for thinking my monitor was "close enough". Proper calibration hardware really makes a world of difference.

[Wheatfield]

Originally Posted by pingflood

Followup. After spending the money for a decent monitor and Spyder 2, my prints are now very close to what I see. So much for thinking my monitor was "close enough". Proper calibration hardware really makes a world of difference.

Amazing, no?
Also, learn about "soft proofing" (Google is your friend).