Hello, all,

I just got a Samsung CLP 325w as a early christmas gift, and I've thrown up a lot of papercrafting.

One thing I've noticed is that the prints come out a bit darker than I would like, such that the images don't really match the image on the screen.

However, changing the brightness settings has left me frustrated, as by fixing one thing, I seem to cause another problem (colors seem washed out).


I dont know much about actual printer imaging, but I was wondering if anybody could point me in the direction of figuring out what I need to do to get my printer to print out respectably accurate reproductions of the images I have on-screen.

What kind of paper are you printing on? I'm on my second printer, but I've been sticking with 110lb cardstock. The colors have always been muddier than I'd like, but it's not so bad that I've invested in anything more expensive. There are forum posts where people have demonstrated that using (for example) matte photo paper yields much nicer - more vibrant - results than the cardstock does.

I'm using 110 lb cardstock for my paper. I might pick up a few sheets of matte photo: I didn't even have the foggiest clue that paper might be involved with this.

I've also noticed that this might be my own fault: a few of the images that I'm kind of miffed about are darker images in the first place: I need to get a brighter image printed and see if the problem is just that the source image might be too dark.

Are you setting your printing paper to "Plain Paper" ? I had a similar issue with my HP 8500a when I had it set to "Cardstock". When I set it to Plain Paper the prints came out lighter and looking great!

Yeah, this is happening printing on plain paper with the plain paper setting.

Also happens on cardstock with the cardstock paper setting.

Which sets(s) are giving you issues? I know that the original Hinterlands set printed dark on my last printer and I had to change brightness setting before printing tiles.

Sounds like a printer calibration issue of some kind. Many printers have a toolset that allow minor tweaking of the colors. Maybe look into that via their site?

I second (or third or....whatever) the suggestions on looking at the paper settings in the print properties AND trying other paper. I had to do a LOT of testing with different types of photo paper and cardstock with my HP 6500 Deskjet to determine which looked best, but wasn't too expensive. AND I found that I had to fiddle with the paper type settings when I printed to get the best results. I've got a folder full of my sample prints with paper type and settings written on the back of each in case I forget what worked best. In the end, I decided to use HP Everyday Photo Paper, Glossy, with printer settings for HP Advanced Photo Paper, Glossy.

After printing and cutting a ton of stuff on paper that turned out to be a BAD choice, (paper too thick and the layers would start to separate after scoring and folding) I learned that all the extra up-front testing and fiddling is better than wasting a crap load of ink and paper and cutting time.

Having just installed a continuous ink system, I'm much more relaxed about printing out lots of test prints, and I think I finally arrived at settings that make me happy.

I use a Canon Pixma MX870 printer. The printouts have always been dark. I used to use an HP DeskJet 932c (blech - didn't print square!) and it too was printing pretty dark onto cardstock. After a little tinkering, I've settled onto the following:

1. I set the "Commonly Used Settings" to "Photo Printing" rather than "Standard"
2. I set the Media Type to "Matte Photo Paper"
3. For "Additional Features" I selected "Color/Intensity Manual Adjustment" which popped up a dialog letting me tweak the colors more.
4. I adjusted the Brightness from "Normal" to "Light" and the Intensity to -40 which really lightened up the printout.

My crummy iPhone camera won't do this justice, but here are some pictures I snapped of the original settings, and the ultimate settings I stopped at:




Hopefully, at least you can tell that the second image is not nearly as dark as the first. There's so much more detail visible now in the printouts! I can actually see the green and the grey as different colors! It might be that I'll tinker more with the settings - I tried -10 and -20 intensity too, as well as turning on a Vivid Photo setting (which made all the colors look toxic). Once I print out larger tiles, I might find that -40 washes things out too much, and -25 or -30 is really the way to go.

The point is, if you're getting dark inkjet printouts on cardstock, commit yourself to printing out 5 or 10 pages and note the adjustments, and you'll probably improve your overall quality!

Thanks for sharing. I am thinking that once I get a hold of a Robo Cutter, I will get a CIS installed.

If you have not color calibrated your monitor, then attempting to color calibrate your printer will be an exercise in frustration. The number one complaint about home printing is always the prints look too dark, because paper isn't backlit like your monitor is.

There are tons of resources about making managed color prints, monitor calibrations, and so on at many photography websites online, so that would be where you should start looking for information.