Color management settings for the best print output

Color Management while Printing has been one of the challenging areas which has been discussed a lot over user forums and has been a painful area in terms of clear understanding while taking print outputs.
Here is an easy-to-understand KB (Knowledge Base) article ‘Color management settings for the best print output’ to help you get the best from your printers using PSE and bridge that knowledge gap.
This article explains color management in Photoshop Elements, how to get better prints, and addresses some of the following issues like horizontal/vertical streaks in print output, too dark or too light print output, ICC profile problems and Color differences between prints from PSE and other applications.
Thanks,
Garry

Thanks Noel.
Yes have shared in PSE forum as well. But I usually drop such posts on PS General forum so community moderators as well as our power users who mostly use both PS or PSE or are aware about can communicate to their students, audiences etc.
The idea is to reach out the message to as many as folks via relevant forums. Most of my otehr posts have found mentioned only on PSE forum.
Thanks for the feedback Nice to hear such a great feedback within 5 mts of publishing
Regards,
Garry

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I've seen tons of info on what color management settings can be used in CS3, but most seemed to favor work for printing. I'm just wondering what settings people think are best for color and B&W photo web work in particular... I already have both the monitor and PS set for 'sRGB IEC61966-2.1', but other than that, there seems to be a lot of opinions. I just want everything to have the best chance of looking the same on other comps as it did on mine. I also have Proof Setup set to 'Monitor RGB'.
Thanks,

1. Calibrate (I use ColorVision's Spyder http://aps8.com/spyder.html , but any hardware calibration device will be better than calibration by eye).
2. Set the Working Space to sRGB.
3. Set the Color Management Policy for RGB to Convert to Working to be sure you are converting content to sRGB. (2 & 3 addressses pfigen's concern about making sure all images are sRGB.)
4. Make sure your monitor is set to use the ICC profile generated by the calibration device.
5. Turn off Proof Colors.
6. Embed profiles or not, but if you do use the sRGB profile. Whether it gets used or not is another story.
As far as B&W, pfigen suggests Gamma 2.2, which would seem to be right for PC. Mac users might consider Gamma 1.8.
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Color management settings for HP Photosmart d7460 printer?

Hi,
HP Photosmart d7460
Windows 7 Pro 64 bit
I have the above printer, and I have recently used Datacolor devices to manually calibrate both my monitor and printer. I notice that when, for example, I use Adobe Photoshop Elements or Corel Photopaint X4 to print photos, that I am advised to select software to handle color management. I also receive a message informing me that i should switch off printer color management in printing preferences (i.e. the printer driver software). Unfortunately the only options available in the printer driver 'color management' drop down menu appear to be either Colorsmart/sRGB or AdobeRGB. I understand that there should be another option, either 'no color management' or 'application controlled' but it is not present. There is also no option, in this menu, for the ICC profile that I have created for the printer, although the profile is present in the Adobe Photoshop Elements application, and in Corel.
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does anyone have any suggestions, any help appreciated.
regards

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Rob
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Rob:
“I am using Print Studio Pro, under color management I'm selecting the ICC profile for the paper being used, the printer profile was downloaded from Canon's web site and that's selected the same paper type. Color matching is grayed out.”
I use the same setup as you and I print with, Print Studio Pro and LR4. My monitor is not calibrated. I only use Canon ink and Canon paper and the corresponding ICC profiles. My color output is exceptional. Black & white is good but not exceptional.
When I purchased this printer (a couple of months ago) I just followed the installation instructions and it worked great (for color prints) right out of the box. You may want to try a reinstall to see if that solves the issue. The Pro-100 is a very good printer.
Tinman
Mesa, AZ
Nikon D600; Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G, 85mm f/1.8G, 70-300mmG f/4.5 - 5.6 VR

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Settings for the best QT video for web use

I hope you didn't look here thinking I had them.
I don't but I want to know them.
I see great looking quicktime videos that perform automatically and perfectly all the time but I can't seem to make them.
Two of the best are Lynda.com and DigitalJuice.com.
Their videos play instantly, you can push the cursor to the end and the data is there. They just work great, but they are both unwilling to share what they do other than saying it's a combination of Sorenson and Quicktime.
Why is this such a closely guarded secret? I understand that it often takes weeks to uncover this combination on your own, but I've never seen this unwillingness to share in this community any stronger than in these two web sites.
Thay talk all around it but they just won't tell.
I'm hoping someone here might look at their sites and their movies and figure it out and then share it with the rest of us.
Thanks for any help you can provide.
Steve

[email protected] wrote:
> I work for a software company and we make intructional videos and product videos all the time and we are starting to use .flv's a lot more these days. I usually export them in AE and have them set to about 800kbps, preserve RGB and 15fps. But the file sizes are a little bigger then what I thought they would be, the videos are generally around 5 minutes, were green screened so there is some compositing work going on in the timeline and the file sizes are generally around 40mbs....I feel like I can get those down so any help you guys can give me would be amazing!
> Thanks
> - Jim
The 512K setting with a 2Pass encode (using On2's Flix Pro) gives me
files sizes about half of what your getting. I don't tweak anything more
than that because there really doesn't seem any need to.
(I am assuming that the size matters because you intend for web delivery
of the final product.)

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Can't access Color Management options for HP 6700 under Mac OS 10.8.5 (Mountain Lion)

Hello.
I've got the HP Officejet 6700 Premium e-All-in-One and I can't find any way to access Color Management options.
The printer is attached (Wi-Fi) to my iMac running Mac OS 10.8.5 (Mountain Lion).
I want to correct a magenta cast to photographs that I've printed. I've had the magenta-cast problem under Lightroom and using Preview to print the photographs, so now I want to work with color profiles in Photoshop Elements.
Photoshop Elements recommends that I "disable color management in the printer preferences dialog".
However, I'm not able to find color management preferences for the 6700 in any of the settings under Mountain Lion:
Not under (Apple) > System Preferences > Print & Scan.
Not under (HP Utility) > Open Embedded Web Server.
Not under (HP Utility) > Printer Settings.
Not under Preview's print dialog.
Nor can I find any clear direction in the online help (at HP or elsewhere) that I've read so far.
Any suggestions would be most appreciated.
Thank you!
Michael
This question was solved.
View Solution.

Please note that in the Print dialog I get "Color Matching" not "Color Management."
Still, I am (at this point) able to control color from Photoshop Elements, so that's good enough to proceed.
Thanks again.

Best printer settings for the Officejet 8625 for glossy label printing

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pendavinci
Welcome to the HP Community Forum.
The following might be helpful to resolve the issue:
Printing Labels_Business-Cards_Cards
See the section on Printing and Printing Preferences
Click the Kudos Thumbs-Up to show you appreciate the help.
Click Accept as Solution when the Answer provides a Fix or Workaround!
I am pleased to provide assistance on behalf of HP. I do not work for HP.
Kind Regards,
Dragon-Fur

The best export settings for 6x4 & 5x7 prints...

Hi guys,
I am using iphoto '08 and was hoping that someone can assist me with what export settings to use for 6x4 and 5x7 prints. I have 800 odd pics that I want to upload to an online printing company who happen to have a special on at the moment. If I export all the pics at full resolution i get over 1GB of data that I can't upload to the site. So my question is what setting should I use to reduce the file size so that I get a decent print and file size.
Most of the pics are currently JPEG and 3456 × 2304 in size giving a file size of 3.1-3.3MB. When exporting should I leave the JPEG Quality at maximum and change the file size?
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What quality print do you want?
THe more pixels the better - in theory
most people want a minimum of 300 dpi so you need to multiple the print size in inches by 300 to get the DPI - 4x6 == 1200x1800 - and crop to 4x6 first so the photo processor does not crop for you
5x7 == 1500x2100 (and again you are better off to do the 5x7 crop)
150 DPI is generally a very acceptable print - so for 150 DPI cut the above number in 1/2
And use maximum quality JPEG for the best quality - a lower quality for a smaller size
LN

In PS C6 I'm getting a warning that "No color management" setting for printer isn't supported. Why?

I'm using Photoshop Extended CS6. I'm printing to either an Epson Stylus Pro 9900 or an Epson SP4900. In the print dialog, I get a warning I haven't seen in a long time. It says the setting "No Color Management" at the printer is not supported. This is patently false. I am given a link to download the Adobe Color Print Utility (which gives abominable results; I know this from repeated uses in the past), and a service note saying this issue is for Photoshop CS5. Clearly there is a problem, possibly a bug.
I have never had CS5 installed on this machine. I do have PS CS5.5 and PS CS6 on this machine (I have used all versions of CS in various suites from the start of the product line).
Can anyone explain this annoying intrusion on my workflow? Of course "no printer management on printer/Photoshop manages color" works... There must be an explanation.
Thanks.

An excellent question, and worthy, in fact of an essay, if not a chapter in a book on color management and proofing issues. And as you suggested earlier, it's a philosophical question (not strictly conceptual to my way of thinking).
It's also a question I can't answer, in terms of practicality and a personal sense of efficacy in dealing with a monolithic process (producing a print). That is, I can't answer for you, or anyone else I'd venture to say.
Stepping back for the briefest of moments, we should remember we live, on computers, in a virtual world. Whatever we see is a simulation, or if you prefer a simulacrum. Plato would probably say, not much better than the play of shadows on the cave wall from the flickering flames.
It's called soft proofing for a reason. The only hard proof is a print. I am old enough to remember the days when producing a color print from a chrome (requiring an internegative) or even directly from negative images, was an art, best left to skilled technicians in a lab. And even then it was an iterative process. Making an image ready for accurate color rendition in lithographic reproduction was the same things, maybe times ten. And required sometimes a whole team of skilled technicians, the last of them being the press operator. You can't appreciate the full impact of these facts of life back then unless you have been "on press" in some plant, invariably in the hinterlands, looking at actual press proofs under 6500K calibrated proofing lights, comparing them against the original chrome, the separation proofs used to make the plates. You had to understand not only the physics (and biology) of RGB imaging, but the intricacies of subtractive technology, aka CMYK. As in so much else in life, less is more, and so you had to understand that sometimes the least adjustment was the best (because you were also dealing with the physical constraints of layers of ink on paper), so if an image looked too green on the press sheet, it might be best to throttle up on the magenta just a touch, rather than cut back on the yellow and cyan. You balanced one against the other, because of the possible effects on other parts of the image.
This long-winded, probably tiresome if not boring, anecdote is meant to be illustrative of the analogous situation in which we find ourselves printing images with digital technology, combined with electromechanical devices spraying pigmented fluids in drops measured in picoliters of volume on substrates of varying physical properties related to absorbency, refractive index, contribution to an arcane phenomenon known as metamerism.
We can't hope to see anything but a, pardon the expression, simulacrum of the combination of the effects of these phenomena (and other phenomena as a result of the interdigitation of these different technologies, at the software level, and even more so at the hardware level), at least not on a screen (which introduces a whole other set of variables). We can't see what we will get unless we actually go through the ordeal and expense of producing a hard proof. And then using our experience and deductive skills to make adjustments, not unlike maneuvering a rover on the moon from a control station on earth, that will produce the desired outcome within a very narrow (I assume) set of parameters.
Personally, I prefer working in Lightroom and in Photoshop in order to produce the image I would like to see in an ideal, if you like a Platonic, world. If what was on the screen could somehow be transferred magically to the surface of a lovely unsullied sheet of Arches cold press watercolor paper, 350g/m^2 coming out of an Epson 9900... (I've done it). Not so easy.
What the soft proofing capabilities of Photoshop are good for, from my point of view, is to show me how far off the image I am looking at as ideal will fall short on the intended target substrate. I must always remember, it is not a wholly accurate rendition of what the printer will do with a sheet of paper from a particular production run, with the particular combination of inks (with varying dates of origin of manufacture), never mind the vagaries of temperamental nozzles in the printhead, not to mention conditions of humidity, temperature, etc.
What the softproof tells me is that the red in that scarf on my subject really needs bumping up, if I expect the level of vibrancy I see I need in the ideal rendition. And I make the adjustment in the RGB representation on the screen, etc. When I have made my by guess and by gosh adjustments to all problem areas as suggested by the soft proof (it is only as accurate after all as the RGB image is in depicting any realistic expectation of a final result—the only assurance I have is that if I really want people to see my image as I see it on the screen I had better show them the screen...), I make a print. Sometimes I have to make two or three until I am satisfied this is truly the best I will get from the beautiful, but arcane, surface of the paper I have chosen.
In short, it's a risky business, and expensive.
If you want fast and affordable, frankly, stick to premium grade high gloss surfaces, preferably from Epson, in your case, or the manufacturer of your printer in general (Canon, incidentally, produces spectacular results on their Pixma Pro series printers and their own papers, especially the Pro Luster surface... I don't even bother with soft proofing... so there is an exception even to this rule I am taking a lot of time to point out to you). High gloss papers tend to have the widest gamut, give the deepest blacks, and the best renditions of saturated color, red and blue particularly, for some reason often the hardest spectral colors to render with the level of saturation you might like. Especially if you tend to shoot vividly colored subjects.
If you regularly use matte surface, or so-called fine art or watercolor surfaces, I think even if you adhere to the workflow implied in your question... Just set the computer and screen to "soft proof" in effect in Photoshop and work from their, and hope for the best... you are in for massive chronic dissatisfaction.
One last thing, I produce what I consider a basic working image in Lightroom, add further effects using a battery of third party effects software (from Google Nik, OnOne, Imagenomic, AlienSkin, etc.) and then go to work further on the image in Photoshop, but I never save the image, except as a revised file, once I'm done with Lightroom adjustments (which are never applied to the RAW file, but kept as meta-instructions separately in the LR database). So any effects added produce a new file. Any changes in Photoshop produce a new file. And when I am working, finally on an image to make into a committed hard print, I NEVER save the settings I use to produce a print, including a print I deem acceptable for exhibition. If nothing else, I can honestly tell a print buyer they are getting a unique "hand-made" image. I don't feel I'm operating a factory after all, but a studio. Further, changes in technology occur dynamically and continuously. I don't know what I would do with the settings I derived from working solely in the "soft-proofing" mode you think you might prefer in your workflow, if a new paper or ink set, or printer came along that solved the problems I had to fudge around to get a decent print with the existing technology at the time. At least if I work solely in RGB trying to achieve an "ideal" rendition, I will always be able to start from that same point, the next time I want a print worth saving of that image.
We've gone, or I've gone, way off topic here, and I beg the indulgence of anyone else who might be reading this, hoping for a simple fix to the original simple problem.
H

Best color matching settings for canon pro9500

I tried different settings for printing 13x19 photos. Printer color management, photoshop color management with different color options. Always a difference with preview... Help please. I have no problem when printing with my old ip6700d!

1. Calibrate (I use ColorVision's Spyder http://aps8.com/spyder.html , but any hardware calibration device will be better than calibration by eye).
2. Set the Working Space to sRGB.
3. Set the Color Management Policy for RGB to Convert to Working to be sure you are converting content to sRGB. (2 & 3 addressses pfigen's concern about making sure all images are sRGB.)
4. Make sure your monitor is set to use the ICC profile generated by the calibration device.
5. Turn off Proof Colors.
6. Embed profiles or not, but if you do use the sRGB profile. Whether it gets used or not is another story.
As far as B&W, pfigen suggests Gamma 2.2, which would seem to be right for PC. Mac users might consider Gamma 1.8.
This should work well for most situations, but guaranteed consistency is an impossible task at this point.

How can I set the default print settings of my document as color. I want the default print setting to be color when someone opens a document. similar to duplex print preset is there a color print preset?

How can I set the default print settings of my document as color. I want the default print setting to be color when someone opens a document. similar to duplex print preset is there a color print preset?

Hi,
Try saving your settings as a Preset by clicking the Preset drop down and then select Save Current Settings as a Preset.
Next try changing the settings by selecting the saved preset.
That allow saving the settings for a specific printer, I assume it may also allow selecting these settings for another printer.

Possibility to assign a color profile in the color management tab for more video formats

Presently, in After Effects CS5, in the color management tab of the "Interpret Footage" dialog box the possibility to assign a color profile to footage is grayed out for many video formats.
Formats that allow to assign a color profile include Quicktime/JPEG2000, Quicktime/Motion JPEG A, Quicktime/Motion JPEG B, Quicktime/MPEG-4, Quicktime/Animation as well as various image sequences, like tiff-sequences. (Motion JPEG A,B and Quicktime/MPEG-4 are not very helpful in this context because they have a small color shift when reimported to After Effects.)
Formats that do not allow to assign a color profile include Quicktime/PhotoJPEG, Quicktime/H264, H264 main concept, DVCPRO HD 1080p30, F4V. (Here, H264 main concept has anyway the disadvantage that it has a color shift when reimported into After Effects.)
In After Effects CS4 it was possible to assign a color profile to Quicktime/H264, Quicktime/PhotoJPEG, DVCPRO HD 1080p30, but in CS5 this is no longer possible.
Those video formats that do not allow to assign a color profile automatically are interpreted as having the color profile HDTV (Rec. 709) Y'CbCr in case that the videos have 1920x1080 format; similar applies to PAL formats which get SDTV (Rec. 709) Y'CbCr color profile.
(I did not find anything of this automatic assignment to HDTV or SDTV color profile in the "interpretation rules.txt" file, therefore it must be written into the programme itself.)
With growing popularity of wide gamut monitors it becomes necessary to produce footage and other videos that have a color profile different from HDTV or sRGB. When such footage is reimported to After Effects it has the wrong color and the only workarounds are either to use (in After Effects) the effect "Color profile converter" which necessitates extra render time or to use somewhat unpopular formats, like JPEG2000 that has very large filesize.
Presently many footage is produced in Quicktime/PhotoJPEG and therefore it would be very desirable to allow to assign a color profile to such footage in the color management tab of the "Interpret Footage" dialog box.
Does anyone know why in AE CS5 the video formats Quicktime/PhotoJPEG and Quicktime/H264 do not allow to have an arbitrary color profile assigned (although it was possible in CS4), is it a bug, or does it have a deeper reason.
In this context I have a related question, often I read that Quicktime videos have a gamma tag. Does this mean that part of the color profile (the gamma value) is actually embedded/remembered, like you have it for images where the gamma is part the embedded color profile.
I use AE CS5 on Mac Pro 2009 with OS 10.6.7.
Thanks,
Volker

Thank you Rick for this interesting explanations and the links to articles.
In the past few days I performed a few tests in After Effects and it is interesting that you mention that cameras, like the Sony EX3, allow videos to have embedded color profiles. I am not working myself with cameras but either get footage from the internet or sometimes videos from our video department which produces videos with professional SONY cameras, usually I get them in a matrox mxf format.
As far as my test with After Effects show it is not possible to embed color profiles in the videos rendered with After Effects. Independent of the color profile in the working space and independent from the color profile in the output module I always get the same reaction if I reimport videos rendered by After Effects back to After Effects:
In AE CS5 videos made in the formats Quicktime/PhotoJPEG, Quicktime/H264, H264 main concept, DVCPRO HD 1080p30, F4V are always interpreted as color profile SDTV/HDTV (Rec. 709) Y'CbCr (even if I made them in other color profiles, such as Adobe RGB, Photo RGB, sRGB); and there is no possibility to change this interpretation rule.
In contrast videos made in the formats Quicktime/JPEG2000, Quicktime/Motion JPEG A, Quicktime/Motion JPEG B, Quicktime/MPEG-4, Quicktime/Animation are always interpreted as sRGB (even if if I made them in other color profiles, such as Adobe RGB, Photo RGB, HDTV); only this time I can change the interpretation rule. Therefore if I know for example that if I had selected Photo RGB in the Output module I can change after the reimport the interpretation rule from sRGB to Photo RGB and only then I get again the original colors.
The only exceptions are picture sequences, such as tiff-sequences, where the original color profile is automatically selected in the interpretation of the footage.
Therefore, unfortunately for videos produced by After Effects your advice "If it says something like sRGB and you can change it, in most cases you shouldn't change it because the guess is probably right. If there is no color profile assigned then you should assume that is correct." is not so easy to be applied. You have to know how you did it originally in the Output module and hope that you can change it to the proper color profile, in case that the original color profile in the Output module was different from sRGB and HDTV/SDTV. But it is interesting to hear from you that with cameras there seem to be more possibilities.
For this reason it would be nice if in future versions of After Effects one could change the color profile in the the color management tab of the "Interpret Footage" dialog box also for formats such as Quicktime/PhotoJPEG, Quicktime/H264, H264 main concept, DVCPRO HD 1080p30, F4V.
Of course one can always circumvent shortcomings by using tiff-sequences, QT/jpeg2000, or QT/Animation as formats for storing, which is anyway better for lossless or nearly lossless storing, but the files are then too large and also cannot be played easily with a player.
Volker

Color management settings for the best print output

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