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Looking for some help with what i think is a monitor calibration issue.

My monitor is a Eizo EV2336W, system is windows 7, using adobe products (PS, etc), also have a datacolor sypder. Within color management (windows) i have the ICC profile for the monitor, the Adobe RGB profile, and the profile calibrated by the Spyder. I'm mostly doing small print jobs in CYMK either digitally printed, or offset printed.

Irrespective of which profile i use; I'm ending up with to much magenta when printing compared to what i'm seeing on my monitor. For example; when picking a color that looks cobalt blue on my screen, when printing it will end up much more purple. Even a color that appears grey on the monitor will print with a red tint.

If i inspect the CYMK values, I can see that i'm ending up with to much in the M channel, but this is always being caused by what i think is the monitor configuration reducing the amount of red channel it is displaying.

I've tried endless settings between the monitor and color profiles in windows, and i can't seem to figure out how to correct it. If i increase the amount of red in the monitor it doesn't translate very well to correct for CMYK printing.

In the end, a CMYK value of (0,0,0,10) and (8,6,6,0) appear exactly the same, but print quite differently.

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    I would use sRGB not Adobe RGB. And are you printing yourself? Have you calibrated the printer? Are you sending things to an "online printer"? Who is doing the actual printing? Color management is a 2-part process at a minimum.. the display AND the output device. A properly calibrated display should show good results for a properly calibrated output device. – Scott Oct 18 '19 at 20:25
  • The sujets on your monitor are RGB then. Have you ever tried to simulate a print? Is the print afterwards also too magentaish compared to a Softproof of your RGB data? – Stefan Bollmann Oct 18 '19 at 20:31
  • Related, if not dupes: graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/q/80915/23061 graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/q/89951/23061 – Zach Saucier Oct 18 '19 at 20:43
  • Are you using the CMYK color profile recommended by the print shop? If you always use the wrong color profile and always use the same print shop, it could explain why your prints are always too magenta even though your monitor is correctly calibrated. – Wolff Oct 18 '19 at 20:51
  • What kind of printer are you using? Most home/office inkjets can't print CMYK image files. They're set up to expect RGB files. Printing a CMYK file will result in weird colour shifts. Also the best colour profile for printing with these home/office inkjet machines is sRGB. – Billy Kerr Oct 19 '19 at 8:55
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I am sorry. I am not attempting to solve your problem but to give you some clues on what to explore next.

  1. I feel you are assuming the printer profiles are ok and your monitor is wrong. You would need to profile the printer or use one well-calibrated.

  2. Trying to tweak your monitor manually is a strange option when you actually have a data spyder. But I doubt that is the correct path.

  3. Here is something weird:

If I inspect the CYMK values, I can see that I'm ending up with too much in the M channel

My question is: Too much with respect to what?

The conversion of an RGB image is independent of your monitor. Your monitor could be turned off, but a conversion from RGB to CMYK needs not to take into account the monitor calibration, but the internal values of the conversion.

  1. So here are my tips.

a. Prepare some neutral gray gradients in RGB from white to black.

b. When converting the file to CMYK with your given profiles it should still look neutral.

c. If you flatten the black channel the image should still look neutral. Print this as a reference.

d. If the image does not look neutral on the monitor, yes, probably something is a bit off on your monitor calibration. If it still looks good on the monitor but it is off on print, it is pretty obvious that the printer is wrong.

e. If the print, with the K channel all the way down (removed) still uses black dots of ink it is simply changing the color mode to RGB and then using its internal driver to separate again the channels according to whatever it wants. Again a printer problem.

f. If the case e is positive, try sending the files as RGB and see how similar a CMYK profile on your computer simulates the resulted RGB print.

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