2405 LCD: How To Print From This Monitor

What do you mean by "print directly from the monitor"? Are you asking if a USB printer can be connected to one of the ports on the monitor? Pretty sure I just saw a recent post from our official Dell Moderator Jesse that said they weren't meant to support devices like printers. :smileyindifferent:

I just remember that before I bought the 24" LCD, I read a review where the author said "that the prints she made from her Dell 2405 were the best prints she'd ever made."

I did try printing directly from the USB port to an Epson R1800 and it didn't work. So I guess you can't print from it. That's a shame...because if the LCD is properly calibrated and the colors, etc. are as you want them, there's no sense in doing any type of photo/graphics editing on the LCD, if printing is going to be coming from the attached computer's monitor, which will never have the same color/contrast attributes. If this is the case, then the 24" monitor is almost useless to me!

Thanks for your response,
Brent

I have to disagree with what you say about what's on the monitor looking different from what's printed from the printer. If the two devices are properly calibrated (using something like Monico Optix), the resulting print will be almost identical to the image on the monitor. True, if the monitor and printer aren't properly calibrated, and/or if the printer is a very old inkjet, the resulting print will never be satisfactory. When I print from my Mac Powerbook G4 to my Epson R1800 or Epson 1280, the prints match my Mac's monitor, almost dead-on. This is because I have properly calibrated both devices. There's no sense in making prints from your computer if they are off in color, contrast, and saturation.

I'm a professional photographer, and it's essential that what I see on screen is what is printed on paper. I bought the Dell 2405 to have more screen space when working in PhotoShop. It defeats the purpose of editing photos on a monitor that can't print them.

Unfortunately, I don't know where I saw the review. I'm going to have to do some more investigating on printing from the 2405, otherwise I will most likely return it.

Brent

Of course it's all about the calibration of the two devices. If both printer and monitor are properly calibrated, then what you print will match what you see. Especially important for the kind of work you are doing with it.

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@bc2121 wrote:
I'm a professional photographer, and it's essential that what I see on screen is what is printed on paper. I bought the Dell 2405 to have more screen space when working in PhotoShop. It defeats the purpose of editing photos on a monitor that can't print them.

Unfortunately, I don't know where I saw the review. I'm going to have to do some more investigating on printing from the 2405, otherwise I will most likely return it.

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Hold on... I think things are a little confused here. I know I am. :smileyindifferent:

What a printed image looks like and how the original images look on your monitor are two completely different and unrelated things. You can have the greatest monitor and a beautiful image on the screen that looks terrible when printed if the printer isn't the worlds greatest. Vice-versa: your monitor may not be able to do a certain image justice, but with a high-class printer it may print out very nicely.

I'd be curious if you still had a link to that review, as she probably meant "screen prints" from the monitor, screen captures that you then store in bmps or jpegs, for example and include in documents or later print on a printer.

If you are thinking there's some way to directly transfer / print an image from the monitor to an attached printer - there isn't.

Again, I have to disagree. If there's no way to send what is on the monitor to a printer, then photographers, graphic designers, and the like would never buy secondaary monitors. And there would be no reason to calibrate the monitor, unless the only output was the web.

This just isn't making sense to me. It doesn't make sense to do photo editing on one monitor (the Dell 24"), then print the image from a differently calibrated monitor (my Mac Powerbook).

There has to be someway to send information to my printer so that the information is coming from the image on the Dell monitor, not the Powerbook monitor.

That's fine. It's obvious we have a disconnect here and I'm not sure how else to explain it so that we can connect.

The image is stored on your computer's hard drive. You can print something without ever having viewed it or ever having displayed it on your monitor. The printer will take all of its information from what is stored in the image file itself. No information comes directly from "the image on the monitor". I could have a monochrome monitor, bring up a full color image that would show me nothing but shades of grey on the screen and then print it in full color. Nothing is sent to the printer from the monitor itself. The monitor is just a visual interface device for the human at the keyboard. The printer is going to print it, driven by the information stored in the image, regardless of what you happen to see on the monitor or which monitor you viewed it on last.

However, it is like you said when you compare the two images... assuming the two devices have been calibrated properly and color matched, what you see on the monitor will match what comes out on the printer.

One last example and then I'll stop. Let's say you work on an image and it's perfect. You send it to me. My monitor isn't calibrated properly so when I view it on my monitor it's a little off... too blue or some such. It's not quite right. But I have an excellent printer and when I print that too blue image it again comes out... perfect. :smileyhappy:

Hope this all helps somehow...

wkearney99, I never said the monitor's color calibration had anything to do with the printer. I said that you properly calibrate a monitor using a device like EyeOne, Spyder, Optix, etc. I know that has nothing to do with the printer. But you can also, and should, calibrate your printer for optimal color matching. It makes no sense to calibrate one and not the other.

I understand that the information comes from the computer, but you don't calibrate the PC, as you say. You calibrate the monitor, and a monitor profile is stored on the computer, which is then sent to the printer. If you don't create an optimal monitor profile, the computer will send the default profile to the printer...not ideal in most situations.

The original point of this thread is that there must be a way to calibrate my Dell 24" LCD, so that my computer (Mac PowerBook) can send that monitor profile information to the attached printer.

There is no 'monitor profile' that is sent to the printer when you print.

We're going in circles now. You've said that 'you properly calibrate a monitor using a device like EyeOne, Spyder, Optix, etc'. And then you close with 'there must be a way to calibrate my Dell 24" LCD'. Seems like you already know the answer. Or... are you saying that the items you've listed are only good for calibrating a CRT monitor and you are looking for the equivalent tools to use to calibrate an LCD monitor? That would make some sense.

Craig,

We're not going around in circles here...I think you're a little confused with the color management workflow. I didn't just say 'there must be a way to calibrate my Dell 24" LCD'. I said "there must be a way to calibrate my Dell 24" LCD, so that my computer (Mac PowerBook) can send that monitor profile information to the attached printer."

There absolutely is a way to send the monitor profile information to a printer when you print. Otherwise, there's no sense in creating a monitor profile, unless as I stated in a previous post, that your only purpose for images and graphics is to view them on the monitor and nothing else.

The monitor devices I've mentioned are able to calibrate CRT's and LCD's. The question here isn't about how to calibrate the Dell LCD - I've already done that. The question is how do I send that Dell monitor profile information to the printer.

If you want to learn more about color management, read the following Color Management 101 document:

http://visual-vacations.com/ColorManagement/cm_101/01intro.htm

Brent

Nothing in the link you posted contradicts what I've been saying. There's a section on Monitor Profiling where we all agree how important it is properly calibrate your monitor. There's also a section on Printer Profiling basically going over the same information for a printer.

Nothing there mentions anything about the monitor profile being 'sent to the printer'. However, this is probably where the misunderstanding comes from. From your linked site:

Profiles bring order to the chaos of device color performance. By accurately documenting the relationship between device color numbers and standard colors, it becomes possible to capture, display, and print colors consistently using devices from many different manufacturers. If you want to print a certain shade of green, the printer profile will tell you what color numbers to send to the printer to get that shade of green. A monitor profile will tell you what color numbers to send to the monitor to make it display that shade of green. Color managed applications like Adobe Photoshop utilize monitor and printer profiles to ensure that monitor and print colors match. But the important thing to remember is that the quality and accuracy of the profiles is critical. Monitor-to-print matching can only be as good as the monitor and printer profiles and the ability of your monitor and printer to consistently match them.

I highlighted what seems to me to be the sticking point. While the monitor profile is not sent to the printer in a literal sense, smart applications like Photoshop will compare the monitor's profile with the printer's profile and translate any color numbers needed so that the printed output matches what is displayed on the monitor. So, calibration is a completely separate issue from 'sending monitor profile information to the attached printer' and has nothing to do with the fact that you have a 2405FPW or any other specific monitor for that matter.

If you've already calibrated the monitor, then you are good. If you've got a printer that is properly calibrated as well then you are even better. All that's left is the use of a 'color managed application like Photoshop' to facilitate the translation of one to another when you print.

I can't see any of the previous posts while replying here, so don't recall if you are using something like Photoshop to do your work. If so, it sounds to me like you should be fine at this point. If not, what actually happens when you print from Photoshop or whatever application you are using?