[Clarkey]

I've recently gone back to the world of printing in a very low cost way, and I have been very impressed with the output from a low cost C315 Kodak printer with all of two cartridges!

I am running into one issue that I need some help with.

I shoot DNG's. I am using LR3.

Firstly, I know the face (of my son) in the picture is out of focus (the steering wheel is nice and focused- don't you love AF sometimes). The following images are crops from an exported low-res jpg, and scan of a 4x6 print respectively.

I have lifted the shadows that fall onto the face from the wheel in the first photo. When I print this, I end up with nasty blotchy looking brown noise. I've seen this in a number of prints, and I'd like to eliminate it prior to using larger paper.
I am guessing that at least some of this is due to gamut issues, but is there anything else I should be aware of when lifting shadows?

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[Canada_Rockies]

Are you shooting jpg or RAW? The RAW has more data in it, and won't pixelate nearly as badly. You fix it in RAW, then export the fixed jpg.

[Alfisti]

I find in general prints skew dark, yellow and red as well. Shadows being particularly bad.

[Clarkey]

Hi CR, DNG as in RAW - I forgot to say this was out of a K-7, so noise could be the issue.

Alfisti, good to hear from you - yell out if you want to catch up.
As per an online tutorial I saw, I will try and desaturate the area a little that has been lifted - I'm aware that this is a $90 printer, so not expecting miracles.
I think most of it is gamut differences that I can't see on screen. That and K-7 noise.

[Alfisti]

It's likely way more complex than that. Ideally one needs a calibrated screen and then a profile for said printer and even then you'll still see differences. You'd also need to process everything twice, once for screen and once for prints, I find prints need to be pushed VERY hard to get them bright.

Mine always skew red and in the shadows, yellow. best i have found is Vistek, they do a good job on glossy.

[dmfw]

Are you sure that the printer is working correctly?

Idea. There are books with color patches with their RBG values. Try and print a test pic. w/ bands of color using a known RGB combination. Then check to see if the print is close to the color in the book.

[Clarkey]

Thanks for all of the suggestions.
Desaturating/exposure shift with a brush did help quite a bit, rather than just pushing the shadows.
Check on the calibrated screen (I use a pantone huey pro)
In terms of the colour accuracy, the prints aren't too different from the screen (the variation in the blue above is mainly from the quick and dirty scan I did).
Also - defringing helped a lot for the edges.

So, I'm happy.

[Clarkey]

To revisit. i use a Pantone Huey Pro for screen calibration. There was an issue with ATI graphics drivers (listed in the Pantone website Huey Pro manual) that I was able to correct. Once that happened, my calibration was MUCH better onscreen.

For the printer, at least for Kodak printer paper, no ICC profile is available. Try as I may, there was no way to ensure that Lightroom wasn't disagreeing with the colour profile management on the printer software.
So, when I am printing, I am now exporting to sRGB for the applicable sized print, and using the Kodak AIO software for a final softproof and colour management.
The results are accurate, and frankly amazing for a two colour ink +black printer (up to letter size 8.5x11 prints).
Very happy.