Color don't match when printing from a scan (sometimes), but Digital workflow is fine

[lhalcong]

I have this very occasional (not always) color matching problem when I print from a scan. That is; I scan my film whether it was a negative or a slide and very occasionally only in some particular pictures, the colors don't match (monitor to print) and the difference is substantial when this happens. I wish I had established a pattern that would give me/you a clue as to what particular situation causes the color mismatch, but I have not been able to put my finger on it because it doesn't happen in all pictures. For instance, A while back I had a picture of Monument Valley at Sunset taken on Velvia 50 , when viewed on the monitor , it looked fantastic with intense redish rocks, but when printed , the red fainted into a dull brown-ish. I didnt get the same intense colors and saturation I could see on the screen. I will make a pause here to write a statement;

Before anybody jumps into calibration answers, I have a calibrated professional NEC monitor. I must note that when I print from a fully digital workflow, (a digital camera picture) to the same printer, same computer, same workflow except the origin of the file (scanner vs. digital camera file) the match is perfect. I never have a mismatch when printing files from my Canon 5D II camera.

Going back to the scanner, you would immediately think the scanner must be the problem, but as I noted , it doesnt always happen. This is a good scanner. A Nikon CoolScan 9000ED set to generate Nikon_AdobeRGB profiles. For the most part , it gives me very good scans and print look great in all but these occasional cases. I am not sure what to look for.

The latest tonight, was a scan from a T-MAX 100 Film, Yes, I know this is true B&W film but when scanned in Color RGB, it gives a distinctive tone that I like. So I opened it in photoshop this way. It looks great on the screen. I soft proof to the paper profile= Epson R2880 Luster paper . it looks great. So I decided to print it: I got a redish print. the skin is magenta-redish horrible mismatch.

Thank you for giving me any clues as to what could it be. ? or why this may happen or if need more information.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

I'm not a digital guru,but from my calibration efforts, Iwill arguethat monitor and print will never match entirely,because one is a luminating and the other is a reflecting surface. your problem seems to be with the reds which is not anuncommon 'out -of gamut error'your printer inksjust cannot replicatethem as well as your monitor can. a monitor calibration may be able toshow that in advance ,using the 'color preview' feature in P|S.
all the best.do not dispair. this is a very complexissue, and you're not alonebut at least aware of it, which is the first step

 

[lhalcong]

Hi Ralph. Thank you for your kind answer.
I think there is something deeper going on. I am aware I'm just not giving enough facts in this thread to be able to troubleshoot in the right direction , mostly because I just dont have them at this time.

I have made the mistake of double managing (ex. Printer and photoshop) some times but those aside, the best example was the slide I described above. I may be wrong but I was thinking more on the profile the scanner generates may not be exactly what Photoshop is correctly able to translate. I think I may need to play with rendering intents and with different engines. The reason I say that is because , and here is a good fact. If I print the same picture from my other PC (XP machine) using Microsoft built-in engine instead of Adobe's , I did get the saturation and deeper reds I was looking for.

I think I should move this thread to the scanner forum.