Prints too dark in Lightroom3

Hi All

First off I'm sure this topic has been covered elsewhere, but I've spent hours researching this problem but can't get the specific answer to my problem.

Before I became 'an enthusiastic amateur' photographer I used Picasa to manage & print my photos without issue.

Now I'm using Lightroom 3.4 & all of mt prints are coming out terribly dark.

Now before you all chorus 'profiling' & 'ICC this' & 'paper types that' let me tell you what's puzzling me.

Why is it that changing the printer profile setting in the 'print' screen of Lightroom doesn't change the outcome at all? I must have tried 20-30 different profiles & the print images all come out the same - dark.

The reason I'm having to '2nd guess' my icc profile is that I own an Epson sx415 print which isn't a 'photo' printer (can't yet afford adecent photo printer otherwise I'd get one & wouldn't be having this problem) I've tried the Epson profiles & most of the other ones too.

But what gets me is why does my printer print out correctly 'exposed' prints with picasa & not Lightroom? Further in the 'print preview' window the image looks great in all profile settings, but when I come to print it comes out dark?

Has anyone else suffered this frustration?

Any help gratefully received

Robert

As a temporary measure till you sort the basic problem out - try a test print using a Satin finish paper - this worked with my HP PSC 1410 and iPhoto - a gloss photo paper gave a very dark result but the same photo printed on the Satin Finish was spot on .

No , I don't understand why - but it did and as I wasn't a geek then and am even less of one now, I was happy just to buy good Satin finish paper and print on that.

OH and my paper didn't match the printer - I used Fuji Photo Paper

Interesting. I am on my second Epsom printer and have the same problem - prints a bit dark - I then have to lighten the photo to get a decent print.

This may sound daft but is it anything to do with the angle you view your monitor - especially on a laptop? Depending whether the monitor is at a sloping forward or sloping backward angle the picture lightens/darkens. Or at least that's my experience. So when editing a photo it could be important, from a brightness point of view, what angle you are viewing the photo. Is there a correct angle for viewing so that you get the correct print?

As I said it sounds a bit daft - but I've often pondered about this - nows my opportunity to ask. Any advice/help would be appreciated.

Cheers...John

Your prints aren't probably dark, your monitor is probably too bright.

One way to get them the same is to make the screen mostly white and then hold the photo paper next to it and adjust the brightness till the whites match each other.

I admit that until recently my monitors were too bright, but they are now calibrated & indeed the brightness is now turn to zero.

This still doesn't explain why the images printed from picasa resemble what I'm seeing on the screen & the Lightroom prints look fine on the screen but dark when they come out of the printer

I'm not familiar with Lightroom as I usually use Photoshop, but have you checked that Lightroom is set to control the printer, rather than the printer driver doing it?

Have you also checked that both the camera and Lightroom are set to the same colour space? That is, either sRGB or AdobeRGB, but certainly not mixing them.