Draft Mode Printing with Colour Management

Hi
A simple change to the print module that would improve matters for me.
Draft Mode Printing disables all print enhancements, I can understand the reasoning behind this BUT for me the main advantage is the speed of generation using only the existing previews, I would still like to be able to print using the correct colours. Proofs don't have to be high quality or particularly sharp but if you present a client with proofs that have a colour cast or other colour fault they are going to think your final images are also suspect.
Please consider re-enabling Colour Management in Draft Mode.
Thanks
Mike

u are probably not getting much help on this unless you post screenshot of your process (starting with File> Print window)
remember, Photoshop can print a document correct regardless of how it looks on the monitor (and vice versa: Photoshop can display a document correct regardless of how it prints)
i recommend getting a known target like the WhackedRGB.jpg and see where the problem is occuring (in Photoshop color management settings, on the monitor, on the printer or both)...

Similar Messages

Wrong colors when printing PDF in Draft Mode Printing (Win)

I am using Acrobat to print my contact sheets from the Print module (Windows). If I use the "Draft Mode Printing" in LR, colors in the resulting PDF are way off. Any idea what the settings in Acrobat should be, to obtain correct colors? I have tried many combinations in the "Adobe PDF Conversion Settings", especially in the "Color" tab, but with no success.
Note that colors in the resulting PDF are correct instead when I disable the "Draft Mode Printing" from LR.

No I did not build 1:1 previews first. The point of using the draft print is to me to do quick, so would rather not build any 1:1 preview. Anyway, I don't believe I got what you wrote: if I do not build the 1:1 preview, what is the color space of the print output in Draft Mode?

Printing in Draft Mode Printing

The tip I received to use the Canon MP800 SP2 color profile, as present in the printing module improved the print reproduction quality.
However I had to conclude that the color reproduction (too redish) varies strongly among the photos I printed.
To my surprise when I selected 'Draft Mode Printing' I got the best print reproduction ever! I understood that Draft mode printing uses the cached previews or if necessary the built-in previews, which seems to be acceptable when the photos are small (from Scott Kelby's Lightroom Book).
I am tempted to print in Draft, to finally solve my LR' print repro problem, but would like to understand whether this an option?
Thank you for your advise!

Hi,
Please download and install the most recent drivers from this location.
"Although I work for HP, I'm speaking for myself and not on behalf of HP"
"Say "Thanks" by clicking the Kudos Star in the post that helped you.
--Please mark the post that solves your problem as "Accepted Solution"

ACPU disables printer driver colour management; how?

Having developed a printing app for Mac Large Format Printers which uses its own CMM, I am finding it increasingly difficult to print natively, so without color management applied to it outside my App.
Before, drivers had an option to set the simulation to None, which would make the printer use the entire gamut available.
Now (I believe from OS 10.9.6 and up), this option has been taken out of the HP Designjet PCL drivers, and no longer works properly for RGB in HP designjet PS drivers.
Adobe Color Printer Utility (ACPU) allows for targets to be printed correctly. It works great. But as my App has its own CMM, it needs to be able to print natively using the drivers.
My question is; is there an API or documentation on how to make your mac App tell the driver not to do colour management, just like ACPU does?
Or can you make Cups to this by setting a Cups option?
Currently, only Adobe Apps like PhotoShop can do this.
I understand that Adobe will suggest that using Adobe software is a good idea (which it is) but the App I made goes way beyond normal printing functionality offered in these applications and offers hot folders, automatic custom page size definition droplet actions, canvas border creation, nesting, printer load sharing etc. etc.
Any help/information would be very very very much appreciated.
Boudewijn Krijger
ColorPlaza

The behavior in screen capture two with the two radio buttons grayed out is correct. You cannot turn off color management anyway. The magenta cast is another problem.

Help with Colour Management

Hi I'm a first year Graphic Design student and have agreed to design a logo for a friends business as a freebie in order to get some experience. However I have just 24 hours to get it to him and I am starting to panic about file formats and colour as I have a very limited knowledge about both !
I have designed a simple logo in Illustrator and I am going to use just one or maybe two colours. The logo will be used for print as well as web. I have been advised to use a Pantone Solid Coated Spot colour to make life easy when using litho printing for large runs.
Am I right in assuming that I should do the following:
1. Pick the Panatone Solid Coated colour/s that I want to use whilst in Illustrator
2. Make sure the document is set up as CMYK
3. Save the file as .EPS and place it in Indesign
4. Export and package the document
5. Save a Hi-res Jpeg for use in Print in CMYK
6. Save a Hi-res Jpeg for use on the Web in RGB
7. Save a GIFF/PNG for use on non-white backgrounds on screen
1. Assuming that I want to initialy set the document up as a print job, should the document be set up as CMYK? I read somewhere that when using spot colours you should covert the file to Greyscale? But obviously this turns everything to black and white so doesn't make sense.
2.I am designing in Illustrator. Do I definetly need to import the file into Indesign? And if so, is this so I can Package and Export the document?
3. I have been told that I need to save a PNG or GIFF file for circumstances when it is used on the web and placed on non white backgrounds. I have looked and cant seem to find the option to do this in either Indesign or Illlustrator. Any ideas?
My friend needs the logo by Thus evening so he can email it to the government to go on their websites and be printed in their brochures so I need to make sure that all of the files are saved in the right format etc.
Sorry for so many questions! Any advice much appreciated.

I have designed a simple logo in Illustrator and I am going to use just one or maybe two colours. The logo will be used for print as well as web. I have been advised to use a Pantone Solid Coated Spot colour to make life easy when using litho printing for large runs.
1. Assuming that I want to initialy set the document up as a print job, should the document be set up as CMYK? I read somewhere that when using spot colours you should covert the file to Greyscale? But obviously this turns everything to black and white so doesn't make sense.
2.I am designing in Illustrator. Do I definetly need to import the file into Indesign? And if so, is this so I can Package and Export the document?
1. For doing logos and such the Logo should be created as Vector in Illustrator. Again, pantone colours should be used after being picked from a book.
If the document is going to be CMYK then you need to convert the spots to CMYK on export, or change the spot colour to CMYK before exporting. If it's the case the logo will be printed full colour you'd be better of getting a colour value from a Pantone Solid to Coated book, which would give the CMYK breakdown for the Pantone colour you need, you can then create a new CMYK using these values and name it according to the name in the book.
I don't know why you'd convert the file to grayscale? You only do this if you want to place the image into indesign and have indesign colour the whole job with a spot colour, but this only works on raster images, not Vector images. So what you read/or understood from what you read is false to a degree.
2. If you're desiging in Illustrator for a logo you're doing it right. Using spot colours and etc. is the right way to go.
You don't need to import the file to InDesign, this is where you'd layout a magazine, business card, or anything that needs laying out. InDesign is the Layout Application, you can do anything from b/cards, to comp slips, to posters, to brochures to booklets to books that are 1000's of pages long.
So no, you don't need to import the Logo to Indesign, you can just supply a .ai file to whomever needs it.
You only need to Package and Export if you're archiving your work, in this case if you imported the logo to InDesign and the choose Package, you'd get a folder with your indesign file and links folder with the placed graphic from Illustrator. Which isn't much use.
Package only really is necessary if you've laid out a piece for printing, like b/cards, comp slips and all the other things I mentioned.
You just need to design the logo in illustrator then save it as .ai with PDF compatibility. The PDF compatibility will embed the fonts used in the logo for printing purposes.

Issues with colour management when printing since resetting cs5

I have recently reset my CS5 so that I could attempt to restore my auto color and auto tone options. Since doing this, my color management is very off when printing. The images are darker, and more saturated than usual, as well as significant colour shifting. I have tried various printer and computer settings and tests, recalibrating my monitor and printer, and attempting troubleshooting with articles online. I have also tried resetting photoshop again, thinking that I may have thrown off the settings when trying to fix my auto color options. I have also run nozzle and print head checks, and everything has come up fine. I am pretty sure there is something wrong with the photoshop side of the printing. I am kind of at my wits end as I am running out of ideas to resolve this issue. I am a windows user, and I am printing on a Canon ipf8100. Please help!

u are probably not getting much help on this unless you post screenshot of your process (starting with File> Print window)
remember, Photoshop can print a document correct regardless of how it looks on the monitor (and vice versa: Photoshop can display a document correct regardless of how it prints)
i recommend getting a known target like the WhackedRGB.jpg and see where the problem is occuring (in Photoshop color management settings, on the monitor, on the printer or both)...

Photoshop Help | Printing with color management in Photoshop CS6

This question was posted in response to the following article: http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/printing-color-management-photoshop1.html

This is usually done in the printer driver's console.
What make/model printer do you have?
Good luck,
Hunt

Printing with color management

This question was posted in response to the following article: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/illustrator/cs/using/WSfd1234e1c4b69f30d2a5051004d659b1c-7ff6a .html

You will need a printer which will print "Borderless" to print a full page; usually a Desktop Inkjet.

Issue with Colour Management

One of our technican has installed a peice of software on the computer and (I believe) edited some colour settings which has caused this issue.
The issue I have is that the colour are not displaying correctly, see the picutre below. After selecting 100% Magenta the colour is appearing and exporting as Purple?
http://i47.tinypic.com/3586w0h.png
I've reinstalled Adobe Suite and tested Colour Profiles and Colour setting but haven't been able to make any progress.
Thanks.

Contribution deleted, because the OP did not respond.
Message was edited by: G.Hoffmann

TO not printing with SU management

Hi Guys ,
I want to print TO and SU form on the same printer automatically upon goods receipt for PO.I did the required OMLV settings but not printing the TO and SU forms.Can any one sugest what could be wrong ?
Thanks

Did you do the printer assignment in warehouse movements in define print control ? You need to assign the same printer for SU and TO printing , i e specify your TO and SU forms in this configuration and specify your printer.select spool code 1 for printing immediately.
Thanks

Firefox 3.6.6 doesn't display text correctly (looks like draft mode) in web pages (I have compared it sidse by side with IE8)

Using Firefox 3.6.6 text displays on the screen looking like a draft mode print, or like it was printed with a dot matrix printer. I have compared it to IE8, which displays much better. I was thinking it was a display setting until I compared it to IE8. I have looked thru all the settings in Firefox I can find, but no improvement. Also thought it might be my new (second hand) monitor until I did the side by side comparison with IE8.
== This happened ==
Every time Firefox opened
== Got new computer and updated to Firefox 3.6.6

I also have this problem and it just started in the last week or so. It seems to be dependent on my home network and the problem only exists with firefox. I have used chrome and IE8 with no issues. I can verify tomorrow that it only exists in my network but one thing I was able to test is that the problem exists even on my linux boot. I am totally dumbfounded with this problem and I can't find anything that will allow the gmail page to load. All other pages I have tried load fine, all be it a little slower than normal but they load. If anyone knows of a difference between firefox and all other browsers on how it goes through the router I would appreciate the info cause I don't know of any differences.

Colour Management - who does what - Some thoughts now the smoke is clearing

First up, thanks very much to everyone who contributed their ideas and expertise to my recent query here, when I was seeking help for a problem with colour management issues when printing a magazine I edit. I have a ton of suggestions to work through and study but the smoke is slowly clearing and it raises some interesting points which I think are worth recounting.
First of all, I have been editing short run magazines now for 25 years, at first part time and later on a professional contract basis. I am not a trained graphic designer nor a trained printer. I did start out training as a graphic designer, many years ago but gave it up for a career in IT (as a networking specialist). That was full time until 10 years ago, although I did some freelance writing and editing in my spare time.
And yes, I did start originally with scissors and cut and paste, and moved on through black and white with spot colour and Pagemaker software to full colour and InDesign today. One thing which may be different about my experience to most of yours is that I am a PC user and always have been. All my editing and graphics work has always been done on a PC - Pagemaker was our DTP package of choice for a long time and we supplemented this with Corel-Draw (which has a range of graphics handling options). All my software is legal and I always register it and keep it up to date. I have used the same graphic designer for quite a few years now and whenever we upgrade our software he goes and gets trained on the latest release.
Around 10 years ago I was offered the chance to edit a specialist short run magazine (not the current one). This was a chance I took and gave up the day job and became a full time freelance. Editing is not my main or only source of income. I am also a freelance writer and photographer and heritage consultant and I have a specialist image library.   I sell my own sell my work - articles and pictures - to the national and local press. I also write books (non fiction) on commission. The magazine editing is really an extension of my interest in historic landscapes. I have never had any complaints, or problems, with the freelance work, photos and archived images I sell. Clients include national newspapers here in the UK, national magazine groups and my books are available in national bookstore chains. I supply my work digitally, naturally, and it includes photos I have taken myself and items which I have scanned into my library of historical images and store on line. No reported colour management issues there.
I have always enjoyed a good relationship with my publishers and printers because I seek to be as professional as possible, which means delivering my stuff on time, to the required standard so that minimum intervention is required from them. This does assume that I have a clear brief from them on what they need from me.
Recently this approach has not been enough to avoid colour management issues with the short run magazine I currently edit. I have been wondering when and where things went astray and date it back to the upgrade to InDesign two years ago. However it may have its roots in my earlier decision to use PCs not Macs for my work.
Until 4 years ago I had used the same printers for magazine editing for many years. They were a well respected firm specialising in short run magazines. They were not far from where I live and work and if there was a problem I would go over and discuss it with them. They were happy, and competent, to handle Pagemaker files generated on a PC and convert my rgb images to cmyk if there was any concern about the colour balance. On a few occasions I paid them to scan a photo for me. However 4 years ago the owner decided to retire and shut up shop. I needed to find a new printers and it had to be someone who specialised in short run magazines and could meet the budget of the charity I edit for. Also someone who could handle copy generated using Pagemaker running on a PC. I chose a printers I had used briefly in the past where I knew some of the staff and was promised PC based Pagemaker would not be a problem. I even got this in writing. I started to send them proofs generated using Pagemaker v7 on my PC.
I soon found that although they had agreed they could handle Pagemaker on a PC in fact they had only a few PC based clients and were using a single ageing PC running Pagemaker to proof their work. In fact nearly all their jobs were Quark based. I was also told we had to supply CMYK images although not given any further requirement so I now did the conversions from rgb to CMYK using my PhotoPaint software. (There are quite a few settings in Corel for the conversion but there was no guidance by the printer on which to use so to be honest it did not occur to me that it might be a problem).
Now of course I understand that the drive to get customers to supply CMYK images was a Quark driven requirement back in the late 1990s. I did not and do not use Quark so knew nothing for this. I did have some early colour problems and font incompatibilities with the new printers and was pressured by their senior Graphic Designer (who designed for their own contract clients) to upgrade to InDesign and provide them with a .pdf, which I was assured would solve all my problems. The .pdf would be the same as the final printed magazine because "it would not require any further intervention by the printers".
I expect you are collectively throwing up your hands in horror at this point, but I think he was speaking genuinely. The creation of a .pdf using InDesign, is widely promoted as the ultimate answer to all printing issues.   I have encountered it recently with a lot of printers' salesmen and my friend, who edits a learned journal, has just been told the same thing by her printers, to get her to upgrade to ID. Incidentally she also uses a PC.
So we upgraded our design process in house to InDesign and our graphic designer went on a course, two courses in fact. When we came to produce our first .pdf using ID, the printers' Senior Graphic designer came on the phone and talked our designer through the ID Export function. I think he may at that time have told him to create a preset profile with MPC and the defaults, but to be honest I don't recall. We were never sent anything in writing about what settings we needed to match theirs. I continued to have intermittant colour management problems but put this down to my photos. Things came to head with the most recent issue where the colours were badly out on the cover, supplied by a press agency and taken by a professional photographer. The printers seemed to have little or no idea about possible causes.
Initially I thought that part of the underlying cause must lie in some mismatch between what I was sending the printers and what they expected to receive so I asked them to specify what I should send. All they said was use Profile preset as MPC setting and accept the defaults which accompany it.
So I came on here looking for a solution. A lot of people were keen to offer their own experience which I really appreciate. However the messages could be conflicting. Some of you suggested it was the underlying cover photo which was at fault, some that it was my monitor which needed better calibration.
Many of you here said that part of the problem, if not the whole problem, was the way I was generating my CMYKs for the printer and I should use Photoshop to do this. You also mentioned a number of possible colour management settings which I should try.
At times the advice seemed to change tack. There were suggestions that the colour management issues I had were nothing to do with the printers, that it was up to me not them. Quite a lot of you said I needed to be better informed about Colour Management issues. I agree, but I had never had any previously (maybe good luck, maybe good support from my previous printer) so I was not even aware that I needed to be better informed. Some of you mildly chastised me for not finding out more and doing more to manage my own colour management with the switch to ID. To which I can only say if I had needed to train up, I would have done. I did not realise I needed to. Nor was my designer aware of the issues as colour management was not really covered on his ID courses which were about typesetting and design.
Some of you even seemed to hint that unless I was prepared to use an expensive high end printer or effectively retrain as a print specialist or get my graphic designer to do so, then I probably shouldn't be in the magazine editing game at all. OK maybe that is a bit harsh but you get the drift.
The fact is that printing is much more accessible these days to all sorts of people and in particular to people with PCs. My brother lives in a large village in an isolated area and produces a village magazine which has been a great success. It is in black and white with spot colour but he would like to move to an all colour issue. He is a bit nervous of the colour management issues as he has no experience of graphic design and is his own designer using a low end entry level design package. He too uses a PC. The printers reps all tell him the same thing they tell me, that all he needs to supply is a .pdf using InDesign.
Somewhere I feel a black hole has developed, maybe back in the 1990s with Quark 4.11. A lot of printers standardised on that, and set up a work flow and prepress dependent on CMYK images as provided by the clients. They assumed the the clients would doing their own colour management. This approach also assumes everyone is using Quark on a Mac with the full range of Adobe software. When it became possible to generate .pdfs using InDesign, this was held out to users as the Holy Grail of magazine printing, even though their workflows and prepress were still based on Quark 4.11 principles. Any underlying colour management issues the clients now have to tackle themselves.
So now we have the situation in which I find myself, having to learn from scratch a good deal about colour management issues so that I can tell the printers what is needed for my magazine. Meanwhile all the printing salesmen, the ones I encounter anyway, are still busy pushing the InDesign to .pdf as the "be all and end all" solution. Some re-education is needed for all parties I think.

I am glad to see that the sun is peeping through the clouds.
I apologise for my Aussie-style straight talk earlier, but as I said before it was not directed personally at you but in the direction of others whom you epitomize, repeating a conversation I have had many times over the last 10 years or so where respectable, well-meaning photographers, designers and other contributors refuse to accept that colour management is being thrust upon them.
It is a simple fact of life, there is this 'new' thing that has butted into the very root of our trades and changed the most basic principles of printing and photography. We expect that this kind of thing does not happen but the industry we now work in is not the same one we trained in twenty years ago.
Many printers are still struggling with the same conflict, so many tradespeople cannot accept this change.
This is exacerbated by the fact that colour management is so complicated to learn and implement and confounded by the fact that the default settings and a clumsy workflow often yield acceptable results with incorrect, generic settings, hence the old 'use InDesign and make a PDF and it will be ok' route.
When the chain of colour management includes the photographer, the photographer's client, the designer, the other designer maybe, the prepress person, and the platemaker, and a single incorrect click by any one of those can kill the CM it is not surprising that in the end when someone is looking back to see where it fell over they usually never find out.....   They will meet someone who says ' I never touched it, I simply opened the file and scaled it and closed it'. And that person will be a reputable photographer or designer (and CLIENT) who has no idea they just broke it. So what do we do? We go with the generic setting that seems to yield adequate results therefore avoiding the confrontation.
You need to understand the situation of the printer who took his business through the 'early' days of colour management, we had all kinds of very reputable sources supplying incorrect files, we did not have the expertise yet to be able to address the entire workflow, it would have meant training photographers and designers all through the best design houses and national institutions, because they blamed the printer. Only in the last few years have I seen these people coming around to the fact that they bear responsibility for implementing their own cm and maintaining it through their own work.
Sadly, many high end sources are still not there, and I mean HIGH end! Probably the ones that don't even visit this forum because they want to keep blaming the printer... They tend to live with the poor quality reproductions and just pull up the worst ones and fiddle with those and try to avoid the 'elephant in the room'.
I am sorry to say that it was not practical for a printer to reject mismanaged files for fear of losing clients who would happily accept less than perfect results in order to avoid the painful truth that was being told to them. The best thing we could do was to gently make those clients aware that their workflow was imperfect and hope to show them how we could help... Many print shops do not have someone knowledgeable enough or patient enough to do this, or the boss does not understand the issue either and tries to work around it to keep his jobs flowing in the expectation that all those experts in the chain will eventually tame the thing.
The many experts on this holy forum are waaaaayyyy ahead of the printing industry in general and photographers and designers in general in their understanding of colour management workflow. I have seen first hand how reputable local industry people and trainers alike are spreading misinformation and bad techniques, when I discovered these forums back in about 2002 I found that they opened up a whole new galaxy of knowledge and facts that actually worked and made sense, unlike what I had been told locally.... This forum taught me what the Adobe text books did not, the Tech' teachers did not, local 'experts' did not!
I tell all interested people to join these forums and learn to discriminate between the good and bad information.

Snow Leopard 10.6.3 - Colour Management Fix ?

MacFixit has posted an article about the beta release of Snow Leopard 10.6.3.
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10456820-263.html?tag=mostDis;di
Intriguingly, the article lists one "focus areas from this build" as:
• Improves printing reliability and compatibility with 3rd party printers.
Could this be the fix for printing non-colour managed files we are all hoping for ?

Hi Doyle.
You have but a short memory !
Can I suggest you go back and read all the posts on this and the Luminous Landscape sites. This will disabuse you of the notion that the issue only effects "some Epson drivers". At the present time I can categorically include Canon in this, there is some evidence (on web postings) to suggest that HP printers are effected, it clearly effects colour profiling software from Colorvison and X-Rite – and, I would suggest, (from what I have read) that most if not all Epson drivers are thus effected.
We all know that you say that your Canon printers can do no wrong but sadly this is not the same story for the rest of us unlucky users.
It is unclear whose problem it is (as no one has yet owned up) but the evidence would seem to suggest that it is common to all printers and profiling software that are using untagged files (files with no profiles) and need no colour management in the printing path. Adobe have stated that Apple changed the printing APIs and that the new printing path "will not permit" files without a profile attached. From here on in it appears that ColorSync (part of the Mac OS) starts introducing errors by attempting to colour manage the un-tagged file in some undiscovered way. Thereafter the whole thing becomes a mystery – and no one really knows what the printer makes of it all ! My observation is that the results always seem to be the same, a file which is printed too dark - once again suggesting a common denominator.
Will 10.6.3 fix this ? We will have to wait and see.

Color shift when printing with LR 3.6

LR 3.6, win 7, screen Nec PA 241 W, Epson R 3000. When printing with colors managed by LR and paper/R 3000 profiles, I get prints with a strong color shift (printer pilot "mode" : desactivated) . How can I correct it ?

You answered your own question: CS5. There have been a slew of reports of workflows spun upside down when upgrading to CS5. It may require updating your system software and/or Adobe applications, along with any printer driver updates that may be lurking out there somewhere. The twist to your situation is ( and is very common ) that everything was working before and now it does not. Or there is a certain print disorder of some sort. Very troubling. I wish I had a smoking gun answer for you, but I don't. It sounds like you have a very viable workflow in place that worked before and damn well should perform for you now. I'd stick with what works and dump what doesn't ( if you can ).

How do I fix colour picker to work across different colour-managed monitors?

Hey everyone!
I'm assuming this problem I'm having stems from having colour-calibrated monitors, but let me know if I'm wrong!
To preface, this is the setup I have:
Windows 7
3 monitors as follows, all have individual colour profiles calibrated using the Spyder 3
Cintiq 12WX
Dell U2410
Dell 2409WFP
Photoshop CS6 - Proofed with Monitor RGB, and tested with colour-managed and non-colour-managed documents
I usually do most of my work on the Cintiq 12WX, but pull the photoshop window to my main monitor to do large previews and some corrections. I noticed that the colour picker wouldn't pick colours consistently depending on the monitor the Photoshop window is on.
Here are some video examples:
This is how the colour picker works on my Dell U2410: http://screencast.com/t/lVevxk5Ihk
This is how it works on my Cintiq 12WX: http://screencast.com/t/tdREx4Xyhw9
Main Question
I know the Cintiq's video capture makes the picture look more saturated than the Dell's, but it actually looks fine physically, which is okay. But notice how the Cintiq's colour picker doesn't pick a matching colour. It was actually happening the opposite way for a while (Dell was off, Cintiq was fine), but it magically swapped while I was trying to figure out what was going on. Anyone know what's going on, and how I might fix it?
Thanks for *any* help!
Semi-related Question regarding Colour Management
Colour management has always been the elephant-in-the-room for me when I first tried to calibrate my monitors with a Spyder colourimeter years ago. My monitors looked great, but Photoshop's colours became unpredictable and I decided to abandon the idea of calibrating my monitors for years until recently. I decided to give it another chance and follow some tutorials and articles in an attempt to keep my colours consistent across Photoshop and web browsers, at least. I've been proofing against monitor colour and exporting for web without an attached profile to keep pictures looking good on web browsers. However, pictures exported as such will look horrible when uploaded to Facebook. Uploading pictures with an attached colour profile makes it look good on Facebook. This has forced me to export 2 versions of a picture, one with an attached colour profile and one without, each time I want to share it across different platform. Is there no way to fix this issue?
Pictures viewed in Windows Photo Viewer are also off-colour, but I think that's because it's not colour managed... but that's a lesser concern.

I think I've figured out the colour management stuff in the secondary question, but the weird eyedropper issue is still happening. Could just be a quirk from working on things across multiple monitors, but I'm hoping someone might know if this is a bug/artifact.
Going to lay out what I inferred from my experiments regarding colour management in case other noobs like me run into the same frustrations as I did. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong - the following are all based on observation.
General Explanation
A major source of my problems stem from my erroneous assumption that all browsers will use sRGB when rendering images. Apparently, most popular browsers today are colour-managed, and will use an image's embedded colour profile if it exists, and the monitor's colour profile if it doesn't. This was all well and good before I calibrated my monitors, because the profile attached to them by default were either sRGB or a monitor default that's close to it. While you can never guarantee consistency on other people's monitors, you can catch most cases by embedding a colour profile - even if it is sRGB. This forces colour-managed browsers to use sRGB to render your image, while non-colour-managed browsers will simply default to sRGB. sRGB seems to be the profile used by Windows Photo Viewer too, so images saved in other wider gamut colour spaces will look relatively drab when viewed in WPV versus a colour-managed browser.
Another key to figuring all this out was understanding how Profile Assignment and Conversion work, and the somewhat-related soft-proofing feature. Under Edit, you are given the option to either assign a colour profile to the image, or convert the image to another colour profile. Converting an image to a colour profile will replace the colour profile and perform colour compensations so that the image will look as physically close to the original as possible. Assigning a profile only replaces the colour profile but performs no compensations. The latter is simulated when soft-proofing (View > Proof Colors or ctrl/cmd-Y). I had followed bad advice and made the mistake of setting up my proofing to Monitor Color because this made images edited in Photoshop look identical when the same image is viewed in the browser, which was rendering my images with the Monitor's colour profile, which in turn stemmed from yet another bad advice I got against embedding profiles . This should formally answer Lundberg's bewilderment over my mention of soft-proofing against Monitor Colour.
Conclusion and Typical Workflow (aka TL;DR)
To begin, these are the settings I use:
Color Settings: I leave it default at North American General Purpose 2, but probably switch from sRGB to AdobeRGB or ProPhoto RGB so I can play in a wider gamut.
Proof Setup: I don't really care about this anymore because I do not soft-proof (ctrl/cmd-Y) in this new workflow.
Let's assume that I have a bunch of photographs I want to post online. RAWs usually come down in the AdobeRGB colour space - a nice, wide gamut that I'll keep while editing. Once I've made my edits, I save the source PSD to prep for export for web.
To export to web, I first Convert to the sRGB profile by going to Edit > Convert to Profile. I select sRGB as the destination space, and change the Intent to either Perceptual or Relative Colorimetric, depending on what looks best to me. This will convert the image to the sRGB colour space while trying to keep the colours as close to the original as possible, although some shift may occur to compensate for the narrower gamut. Next, go to Save for Web. The settings you'll use:
Embed Color Profile CHECKED
Convert to sRGB UNCHECKED (really doesn't matter since you're already in the sRGB colour space)
and Preview set to Internet Standard RGB (this is of no consequence - but it will give a preview of what the image will look like in the sRGB space)
That's it! While there might be a slight shift in colour when you converted from AdobeRGB to sRGB, everything from then on should stay consistent from Photoshop to the browser
Edit: Of course, if you'd like people to view your photos in glorious wide gamut in their colour-managed browsers, you can skip the conversion to sRGB and keep them in AdobeRGB. When Saving for Web, simply remember to Embed the Color Profile, DO NOT convert to sRGB, and set Preview to "Use Document Profile" to see what the image would look like when drawn with the embedded color profile

Draft Mode Printing with Colour Management

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