Brother DCP-J4110DW Print Profile

[Zandhoeg]

Hope I post this on the right place, Brother related but maybe also more related to printing photography etc.
Brand new to the forum and tried searching a bit but found a lot of technical things I am not sure I am ready for just yet, at least not without someone holding my hand.

Got my monitor(s) calibrated the other day with a Spyder 4 I got to borrow from my father. Used DisplayCal (older version, not the re-born from GitHub)
It was not that much off, but it is better now. Before that I edited the images and did a test print and re-edited to get the color that was intended (correct on the monitor).
But I can't keep doing this. So this printer do not have any profiles except the standard "cover all" type, and two for Brother paper I do not thing I even can get my hands on atm.

So options as I see it is;
Keep editing the images with trial and error.
Use the "Color Enhancement" from the printer settings and with trial and error try to match screen to print. Unsure if this option is more a "make this color vibrant" than "add more of this".
Make a custom printer profile - issue is I got not tool to measure the colors so it have to be by eye.
Change the monitor to correspond w the colors the printer print (not a fan of as the monitor is used for other things as well).

From what I can see by eye under daylight bulbs compared to professionally printed picture (colors match screen more or less) of the one I try to print myself is that the green is dull (almost matte) brighter green (de-saturated maybe), the red as well. Blue is harder to see. And an over all, everything looks like a step or two de-saturated or faded in a strange way.

Ideas? Options?

Thanks in advance

/ Z

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

,You are lright that Brother does not support actitvely icc profiles when printing. You should not use a driver setting of which the effects are context sensitive e.g. 'Photo enhance' - you don't know what the driver is doing and what the driver is doing differently for different images e.g. contrast enhancement, you can use the standard printer setting and use the color adjustments to reduce differences between printer and monitor, and use that setting for all your images. You do this with a set of standardized test images like these

https://www.northlight-images.co.uk/printer-test-images/#colour_printer_test_images

and not with your own images.

And you do such color adjustments again if you print on another type of paper. This will get you to a somewhat better dolor presentation but not as accurate as an icc-profile . You may look for a used ColorMunki on Ebay and let the search go for a while, The ColorMunki is a pretty practical tool to create your own icc-profiles with ease.

Or you go for an external service provider, various companies selling 3rd party inks and/or papers offer as well
an icc-service - they send you a target patch file which you print , and you return that print to this company which does the patch reading and icc-profile generation. Pricing depends on the size of this target sheet and the patch count.

 

[Zandhoeg]

Thank for your answer.
The only way I can adjust colors "through the printer" is with the options i screened and attached.
Not sure if that is the same type of "Photo enhance" you meant.

I will print that test image and see what it spits out.

If the corrections can be done with the settings options I put a screenshot from that would be great. Otherwise I am in the same boat as before where I need to start adjusting things on screen way off to make it look OK on paper.