Help from color management nuts

Guys, I just bought a new calibrator for my monitor.
Should I set the gamma at 1.8 or 2.2 for LR?
Advice.
Andy

PrePress History:
Gamma 1.8 and D50 were recommended.
Why? Because this setup ensured you that your prints on an Apple Laserwriter would match what you see on the screen.
PrePress standard today:
Gamma 2.2 and Native whitepoint (D65).
Why gamma 2.2?
Because 2.2 matches the default gamma of most new printers as well as most screens, (pc:s).
Why calibrate to Native whitepoint and not to D65?
Because most new screens are very close to 6500 and you will loose in accuracy when the monitor tries to simulate a whitepoint other than it's native whitepoint.
(And for luminance there are several different recommendations. But I use 90 Candela for laptop and 140 Candela for Cinema displays.)
This is what I have learned from various sources anyway.

Similar Messages

Need help with color management

I am looking for someone to help me. Please!
I am looking for help with Photoshop/printer not printing correct colors.
I have: Windows 7, Photoshop CS5, Photoshop Elements, HP Pavillion Laptop, new Okidata C530dn color laser printer
Previously I had a Canon Pixma MP620 and a gentleman from another forum gave me the correct settings for printing on photo paper and colors were perfect. I now have a OKIdata C530dn color laser and have started a business printing business cards and greeting cards, etc., and I do advertisements on a freelance basis.
I will be working a lot with cardstock or cover stock 65-110 lbs paper. I have an old OKIdata 2024e at work, and the colors are much better with that printer than my new personal one. I have tried matching the settings of that printer to mine to no avail. I have finally gotten the color close, but not quite. When I print on my Canon injet the colors match and print perfectly.
I have tried every setting variation that I can think of to get the color correct with my new OKIdata. I have to get the colors correct or my new business will go under because I can't match colors for my customers. I am a self taught Photoshoper and a novice so please bear with me.
Using Okidata PCL. Also have PS
Color settings in Photoshop:
North America General Purpose 2
sRGB 2.1
U.S. Web Coated Swop v2
Dot gain 20 %
Dot gain 20 %
Preserve embeded profile
Preserve embeded profile
Preserve embeded profile
engine: Adobe (ACE)
Relative Colormetric
Tried RGB color mode and CMYK color mode, no difference
Printer settings:
Photoshop manages colors
sRGB 2.1 Printer profile
Relative Colormetric
Print setup:
Letter
Multipurpose tray
Weight: printer settings-default (when I used heavy setting for cardstock it printed green instead of the color light blue, so that was a start to the right color)
Job Options:
Hight Quality
Color: No color matching
Printer preferences in Printer properties:
Color management
Device: Display 1 generic PnP monitor AMD M88og with ATI Mobility Radeon HD4200
ICC Profiles: Generic PnP Monitor (default)
Advanced:
Windows Color System Defaults:
everything under this tab is set at System Default
I have gotten the color close, but colors are dull. I have tried an adjustment layer and setting the saturation higher, but that doesn't help. I know my laptop is showing the right colors, (calibrated) because I am still printing to the Canon with cardstock and the colors are perfect using the same settings above.
Tried printing in PSE and it gave me an error that it was not a post script printer. Installed ps driver, still getting errors and it wouldn't print.
I would appreciate any help you could give me before I run out of toner and have to buy the expensive toners, or just slit my wrists j/k LOL
Thanks! JS

You need an ICC profile for your printer. Chromix has an excellent service at http://www2.chromix.com/colorvalet/ which will do this calibration for you. You download some software they provide, then print a test file on the exact same paper you are using for your cards. Then send the output to them and they will calibrate the colors with their equipment and send you the ICC profile file. Once you have it, you'll be able to print accurate colors.
There are other services out there that may cost less, but I do not know how reputable they are. Chromix is a good business I've worked with many times.
If you are trying to run a business and you don't understand color management yet, you may be in for a lot of trouble. Please get the book "Real World Color Management" available at http://www.colorremedies.com/realworldcolor/ and it will save you a ton of money and headaches.

Need help with color managment addon

I am using Firefox under Fedora 14 Linux. I added the color management addon and told it which profile to use. But I am having some trouble telling if it is working. One problem is that when I use firefox to open an image file on my machine, it gives me the choice of using Image Viewer or Other. Image viewer is Eye Of Gbnome, which doesn't make use of my monitor profile, and I can't think of a convenient other program to use which does use the monitor profile.
Is there some way to get firefox to view the image directly.
I presume when I view images at a distant website, the color managment add-on is inter posing my monitor profile, but I am not sure about that. Is ther e some way to check it?

You need an ICC profile for your printer. Chromix has an excellent service at http://www2.chromix.com/colorvalet/ which will do this calibration for you. You download some software they provide, then print a test file on the exact same paper you are using for your cards. Then send the output to them and they will calibrate the colors with their equipment and send you the ICC profile file. Once you have it, you'll be able to print accurate colors.
There are other services out there that may cost less, but I do not know how reputable they are. Chromix is a good business I've worked with many times.
If you are trying to run a business and you don't understand color management yet, you may be in for a lot of trouble. Please get the book "Real World Color Management" available at http://www.colorremedies.com/realworldcolor/ and it will save you a ton of money and headaches.

Need some help from the management : A deeply dissatisfied customer

Hi,
I hope I am one of the very dissatisfied customers of you company. I bought a new T715 and it has already gone for a repair twice. I gave it for repair for the first time in october (ETA was 20 days and told by the service centre) and I got the phone after some 30days only after an intervention of a manager. Prior to that the customer care was saying that they do not have the parts and they have no idea about how much time the repair is gonna take. Surprisingly it took only 2day once the manager intervened.
When I was submitting the phone on jan 14th 2011(work order number SE311MM110015), they again said that I'll get my phone back in 20 days. This time I expected that the service center guys will learn some thing from the past incidents and provide me a better service. But this time it was even worse. I did not hear from them for 35 days. So I called the customer care and had a long conversation with them on the service that is being provided but no-one including the floor supervisor(nishant) had a clue about what happening with my phone. I was startled by thier reply that they will start working on it as I have registered the complaint. Then I asked them what were they doing till now for which they had no idea. I asked for an escalation of this case to a manager which they refused. They said that I'll get an update after 48 working hours(5days).
The episode continues. I called the help desk after 5days. Now their reply is that I will get my phone back on march 10 2011. So, it is some 57 days since the day i submitted the phone which is 3 times the ETA they promosed. Now when I ask them why is it taking so long I get the same reply as I got for the first time that they do not have parts. The I told them I cannot accept this kind of service from a company like sony erricsson for the second time. For this the floor supervisor harish said that If I want my phone back earlier they'll return the piece back to me without repairing and they are not responsible for this. This time I again asked for a managerial escalation which they again refused and asked me to call after 2 days. Can I atleast hope for a positive reply this time??
I am perfectly okay with one device out of a lakh being defective. I understand this is the reason that you provide the customers a warranty. But I have some issues with the support which you are providing:
1) Managerial escalations : I think I am entitled to talk to some one who can actually solve my issue when the lower level doesn't solve it in time. I do not understand why I am being denied the escalation which I did not find in any other support. They do not even provide me an email ID of a manager.
2) Support process : What is the use of those processes in place where the people I am talking have no idea of what the next step should be. They do not have the database or knowledge of the previous cases. Even the floor supervisor have no aswers to the legitamate questions that the customer poses, they talk as if they are not responsible for these issues.
3) Time taken: Taking some days to provide the customer a mere update is not how a 21st century support should work.
I hope you people agree with my ideas. And please I request all the managers who stumble upon this thread to reply and guide me about my next action.
Thanks and Regards
PRakash Josyula
Work order number : SE311MM110015

@management : Please help me... I did not get my phone back yet... this time they were saying that they will investigate into this case and this process can take 10 more days... When I asked for a manager escalation they dropped the call... And surprisingly they started dropping my calls which is not at all acceptable...
Please managers... I need to talk to you... I need my phone back repaired....
@others... Please lemme know a contact of a person in managerial cadre if you are ware of one...
Plleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese

Need help from Color System/Profile gurus plz!

ok here goes...
I shoot Nikon NEF files (Raw). I use a variety of converters, then move on to PS etc. For a long time I have noticed that the color of the Mac thumbnail in the finder is nice and warm looking, but then when various Raw convertor programs (including Nikon's own Capture NX) get a hold of it, it generates a picture with much more magenta, and not nearly as "golden" as the thumbnail looks.
I would *guess* this has something to do witjh how the Mac generates thumb files for Raw files. Where can I learn more about this? In hopes of one day getting the color from that thumbnail into my raw programs? I suspect it has something to do with color profiles, conversion methods, color tables etc. but I'm totally unsure where to start looking for answers.
Thanks for any help!
- Jason

I don't know why it has _unknown. Most apps are owned by root and are part of the admin group. Other options are for them to be owned by the user that installed. The group can be read only or read and write. I'm not sure whether that is important.
As I don't think you can do this in the Finder, copy and paste this command in Terminal. You will have to be logged in as an admin user. It will change the owner of Abby Fine Reader to root and set the group to admin. After pasting the command, don't hit return but drag the Abby Fine Reader app to the Terminal window. Then hit return. There should be a space after this command, so if it doesn't paste that way, add the space before draggingsudo chown -R root:admin
If that still doesn't work, give this one a try after doing the first:sudo chmod -R 775 Again, drag the app into the terminal window. That will change the group permissions to read & write.

Help with color management ...

Hi,
I have a brand new canon 5D MKII, brand new Canon ipf6100 and brand new Lightroom 3 running on brand new Win7/64. Can anyone currently using this combo please tell me what camera and printer color space you're using with happy results and whether you are using 8 or 16 bit processing? I'm getting that magenta cast probably from driver and lightroom conflicts. I'm using 24" rolls of "Satin" 300 Gsm (heavyweight) but since Canon are up to their old tricks of using different names for the same paper, I'm using the "Semi-Gloss" profile. TIA for any input whatsoever.
Brian

Hi,
Yes, it's all Canon paper and ink.
Brian

Color Manage - Yes or No?

First, I'm a color management geek and fan. Almost all of my work in the past was under my total control, so I was able to select my own commercial printer. I only worked with commercial printers who had a firm grasp on color management, had current software and equipment, and access to their prepress department. My jobs always came out great, with my proof matching theirs, and the final job being a very close match to the proof. I'm using IDCS4, Mac, etc.
OK...new ballgame. I'm now doing freelance work for mixed clients. They don't seem to have the same high standards I do. They usually want to handle the print end and often don't know who will print their jobs until after the file preparation is completed. Then, they go out for bids and I am out of the loop (until the job won't RIP or they get unexpected, lousy results, of course).
So, how is everyone preparing jobs when the commercial printer is unknown?
I have been turning color management off in InDesign, converting RGB images to US Web Coated SWOP v2, stripping the profiles, and placing them inti IDCS4. This goes against my grain, of course, being a color management nut and control freak.
Any wise suggestions to help get good color and avoid problems in this type of scenario?
Lou

My point was really that you need to know the printer to claim any kind of control if you are supplying PDF X/1a. That is really self explanatory, but Lou seemed to be saying that if your client gives you junk then you are ok to send it on as junk which I think is an addressable point for a responsible designer or file preparer (which is what I do from a prepress/design seat). The buck has to stop somewhere and the printer is the worst place!
If you supply PDF/X4, how will the average printer, currently taking X/1a know that? Depending on their settings, they might apply generic conversions!
As far as I understand it, X/4 is not an accepted industry standard yet (although I expect it will be one day) and if you supply those to a prepress, they are required to make judgements about the conversion which is not their responsibility. I say that because subjective decisions may be needed and no designer worth their salt would give up that responsibility.
I find that US SWOP is a great standard for blind submission, and since we don't have a standard option for tagged PDF under industry accepted standard of X/1a, it is better than random choice. It depends on type of work, one would never supply generic USSWOP pdf for a high end book but for a throwaway flyer it is usually acceptable when files are supplied by average designer.
A good designer will find out who is printing and prepare files correctly, if it must be unknown they will speak to the third party about the problem or else risk bad jobs at remote site in the future. If their client insists on getting a PDF they can then submit to assorted unknown printers then the client would need to (a.) advise printers of type of file being supplied... or (b.) have the ability to repurpose for printer when known, which is where X4 from designer would be good. In both of these situations, the responsibility has then shifted to the client who is choosing the printer.
If the designer is dealing with the printer directly, then it must be PDF X/1a with correct destination profile.

How do I turn off color management in Photoshop 5?

There are three selections, only the first two clickable, in PS5 under Color Management in the Print dialouge:
Printer Manages Colors
Photoshop Manages Color
Separations (grayed out/unclickable)
Under Printer Manages Colors - there is no option to turn off color management for my Canon 9500 Mark ii
Under Photoshop Manages Color - there is no option to choose "No Color Management"
You can chose "No Color Management" in PS3, but not PS5? What happened to this option?
How is it possible to create a profile from a print of color swatches if I can not turn off color management?
(I am running Mac OS 10.6.4)
PS> this is the second time I'm contacting Adobe. First was by phone but I couldn't understand the message left on my voice mail after the phone technician had to ask for help from upper management - the english was so bad. I'm hoping by the written word I'll be able to understand. Please help.

I have researched the matter a lot and I,
along with many others, still have problems with this complicated
subject.
Color management is as simple in theory as Honoring a Source Profile and CONVERTING it to a Target Profile (monitor or printer) for Proofing.
But yes, we work at the mercy of the rocket scientists who try to dumb an extremely complicated process down so regular folks (like me) can make it work — trouble is I think their approach needs a bit more distilling and common sense sometimes...but it is very doable once you put in the time to figure it out, just follow the CHAIN in your workflow if you're still having problems.
If you want a "simple button" try staying in sRGB and printing out of Apple Preview app using OEM standard papers matched to your printer and OEM ink set.

Help please. Vista / CS3 Color Managment issue. Going nuts...

Hi all.
I'm in desperate need for some assistance since time is running out on a project that needs Powerpoint.
If I use color management in Bridge and look at my NEF and Jpegs they look somewhat desaturated and lacking vibrance as in comparison to another program, like AcdSee.
When i open up in Camera Raw, and then Photoshop, it looks the same. But hwen I copy to Powerpoint - it looks very vibrant and with a lot of saturation, luminance and hue. But it looks much better "eyecatching".
If I shut of color correction in Bridge, then the picture looks just as vibrant and nice as the end result in powerpoint and it looks just as good as in AcdSee! But the steps in between, that is Camera Raw and Adobe looks awful, and I'm supposed to make some color adjustments etc, making it absolutely impossible to know what the end resutl will be, since the color management is ON in Camera Raw and Photoshop.
I've callibrated my monitor, spyder3, I've set Adobe Bridge to use CS3 for monitor. I've tried alternating between Adobe RGB and sRGB. I've tried everything there is, but the colors in Camera Raw and Phtoshop are very wrong in relation to the end result. Can I shut down color management in Photoshop? Change it to Vista's? I know Adobe is right at the end of the day, it just doesn't work with the end result!
To add on to this, I've tried AcdSee and colors are correct in the RAW format. Thus, they don't have the same color correction and this looks exactly like the end result in the powerpoint.

>> the colors in Camera Raw and Phtoshop are very wrong in relation to the end result
Then you need to Photoshop> Convert to profile> Save As to the profile based on the end result because the end result sounds like an unmanaged application.
This is likely sRGB -- have you tried this?
What monitor, what did you profile it to (2.2 gamma/6500)?
http://www.gballard.net/psd/assignconvert.html

Help - Color Management Confusion!

I'm hoping someone can give me some clear guidance as to how to configure my software to integrate color management so that what I see on my monitor is comparable to what I print or post on the web. I've read all I can find on-line and looked through a number of books and magazines, but as my reading increases, so does my confusion - too many menus, options, links and connections. I'll describe what I have in terms of hardware and software in as much detail as possible. My hope is that someone can help me figure out how to coordinate color management across all platforms and outputs.
I run an HP desktop with an ASUS IPD monitor. I have ColorMunki and have reguarly conducted their diagnostic, which gives me an updated monitor profile every two weeks - when a new profile is created, it becomes my default under Windows 7 Control Panel Color Management. I print with an Epson Stylus Photo R1900 with Epson paper and ink. I use the printer and paper profiles supplied by Epson for the R1900 and specific papers.
On the other end, I have Nikon photo equipment. I set the color space on my cameras to ProPhoto and I shoot exclusively in Nikon raw format - .NEF. I shoot a D90 and a D7000 with 12M and 16M files respectively. I download directly from the SD card using Windows Explorer and then import into Lightroom 3.
I have Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5 Extended. I use Lightroom to import raw files into the catalog and to do basic editing. From there, I publish to Smugmug as .TIFF files - directly from Lightroom. I also export files from Lightroom to Photoshop CS5 Extended and save them as .PSD and .JPEG files. The files that I export to Smugmug look pretty good - similar to what I see on my screen. My real conundrum is with the Epson printer and Lightroom/Photoshop. What I see on my monitor is very different from what prints. From both platforms. As a rule, the shots are too dark and the colors are often very muted. This is especially true with images of people and skin tones. They often come out looking pale gray or blue.
Right now, my solution is to tweak and print until I get something close enough to print, while the image on my monitor looks horrible. Needless to say, this is not a viable solution for the long term - it is too expensive and time consuming. I've tried to read and then adjust adjust both programs, but I'm confused as to what to set where. I've taken to explorting Lightroom files into Photoshop to use the soft-proof capability. it works better but still not great and not consistent. When I do the Photoshop soft-proof, I see signficant portions of most images as "out of gamut>" I also notice that these areas are often the ones with odd colors.
My problem, (well, one of them) is the multitude of menus that have color management inputs - how do I make sure they are all working together and reinforcing each other instead of working at cross purposes? In Lightroom, I have Page Setup and Print Preferences, as well as Color Management options in the Print Module right hand panel. In Photoshop, I have Print and Page setups, as well as Color Management menus. There are also the Proof menus to consider.
In Photoshop, softproofing, I think I ned to select teh printer profile so that Photoshop is showing me how the printer will interpret the color space. I also think I need to be consistent in how I define the workspace - from Nikon to Lightroom to Photoshop to Epson. If I use ProPhoto with my camera do I need to use that in every circumstance? Should I switch to Adobe RGB? I have printer setting color space turned off in both LR and PS.
Can someone walk me through any or all of this? Right now, all of these moving parts is making me dizzy. It's said that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. This proves the point. Three months ago, I had color management problems but had no idea what such a thing was. Now, I know a lot more about it, but my results are no better - worse in some respects. Anyone who can help will earn major Karma points and hae my undying gratitude for several months. Sorry - that's all the compensation I can offer!
Thanks in advance for any help.

Lundberg02 wrote:
is that the hand of God in the picture?
That was a nearly mature tornado forming in Nebraska, and it dissipated at the last moment because at that time the sun went down and the temperature dropped rapidly. I was glad, because I was camping in a travel trailer at the time, and everyone knows trailers attract tornados.
Lundberg02 wrote:
Please explain why and under what circumstances anyone would want to use a device independent profile as a monitor profile, which should be a device dependent profile.
Here's one example, to answer your specific question:
You have a monitor that provides sRGB performance (e.g., via a specific sRGB setting). You judge (and/or ensure via your own calibration) that it provides satisfactory sRGB color accuracy for your needs, so you set the monitor profile to sRGB, which is accurate in this case.
What does this do for you?
Images displayed in Internet Explorer, which assumes your monitor is sRGB regardless of your profile, are now properly color-managed because you have made IE's assumption valid. By the way, Microsoft does not appear to be going to change this behavior any time soon.
Untagged images, considering a majority of untagged images assume sRGB encoding, are displayed properly by apps that just pass them through to the display. Some browsers do this.
sRGB images (the majority) are displayed properly by non-color-managed apps. If you choose to set your preferred working space to sRGB, then your own processed images will display properly using your non-color-managed apps. Such apps include various viewers, the thumbnails in Windows Explorer, etc.
The sRGB IEC61966-2.1 profile is a clean, well-formed color profile and works well in virtually every color-managed application. It's the Windows default, so you can imagine most apps are very well tested with it.
Screen grabs are already in the sRGB color space, so if your working space is sRGB then you gain simplicity and don't have gotchas when mixing screen grabs back into your workflow.
Since the color-gamut is not wide, the distance between adjacent colors in a 24 bit color environment is smaller - the display of gradients looks smoother, and you might not crave 30 bit color quite so much.
There are other subtle advantages as well, simply because so much of software development throughout history has assumed the representation of color images on computers is sRGB. It's akin to "going with the flow".
In short, setting up a soup-to-nuts sRGB system means more images match more often across more applications with a system set up this way. If I'm not mistaken, that's about what the original poster is asking about, which is why RikRamsay's response is not unreasonable.
And there are, of course, some specific disadvantages to doing this.
For one thing, one does not have the direct ability to work with a wider gamut of colors. There are those who wish to work in wider gamut color spaces, have wide gamut monitors, and wide gamut printers. Brighter, better managed colors may well help such a person set his/her work off from the crowd. This is starting to become more and more important in this day and age of better and better wide gamut hardware.
It's not straightforward to set up a system so that its sRGB response is accurate, though it is doable. Can you trust the factory sRGB calibration of a monitor that advertises sRGB response characteristics?
-Noel

Desperately Seeking Color Management Help: iMac G5

I need some input concerning color management.
I need to find a way to match the output from
a Fuji Frontier 390 printer to the display
on my iMac G5 so that "what I see is what I get".
I use a Canon EOS 1D Mark II to capture, and I make
minimal corrections to levels or contrast in
Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0, and I find that some
prints look muddy or oversaturated coming out of the
Frontier, even though they look fine on the iMac's display.
I understand the basic concept of color management and I know that I "should" be able to get the display dialed in to match the printer using Color Sync or some other utility, but I need help with the specifics.
A FujiFilm technician explained to me that I could download a printer profile for the 390 from Fuji's website and use that with my image editor but it seems that I am unable to do that while using the "blue collar" Photoshop Elements package. I think that I would have to upgrade to the full Photoshop package (though I'm not totally certain) and I'm really not too interested in doing that.
Could I get some pointers from any of you color gurus out there? Any info will definitely be appreciated!
Thanks, Alan

I didn't mention that I am also a photofinisher and
I am the one doing the printing on the Frontier,
so I know the chemistry and the paper are all
"up to snuff". I also have seen the info on
drycreekphoto.com and they say that I cannot
do what I am wanting to do with my Photoshop Elements
because that program isn't robust enough for it.
The Frontier generates an "upkeep" print with each paper- or emulsion-change; I was wondering if I could employ one of those prints to set a benchmark for my iMac monitor, or if I would go about it some other way. I'm hoping to get some nuts-and-bolts suggestions from someone who has already dialed their iMac in to match a Frontier; I figure there must be a few out there!
Thanks for your suggestions,
Alan

Color management problems - help please!

Hello, I'm trying hard to understand color management and to make colors consistent throughout my workflow, and I'm failing miserably despite reading and re-reading the help files. I'd REALLY appreciate some help with my specific problems, which I'm going to detail here.
WHAT I DO
I make pictures for use on the Web. I do both this by photoshopping existing photos, and by digitally drawing and painting in photoshop starting from a blank document.
HOW MY SYSTEM IS SET UP
1) I have my monitor set to sRGB, and I've calibrated the colors using the Viewsonic calibration app that came with the monitor. The resulting colors look good, to my eyes at least.
2) I've set up Photoshop to use sRGB as the working RGB colorspace, and to convert RGB images to the working colorspace
3) I've set up Photoshop's Save For Web to embed the color profile, to Convert to sRGB, and to Preview with Use Document Profile
THE PROBLEM I'M HAVING
The preview I see in the Save For Web preview screen exactly matches the source document. However, after saving for web, the color of the jpg or gif is significantly different to that of the original document.
If I change the preview mode to Monitor Color, it does show an accurate representation of the jpg or gif that will be saved, but of course as I've explained that is drastically different to the source document.
WHAT I NEED
1) I need the output jpg or gif to match the source document
2) I need to understand what's going wrong so that I can gain some insight into this process. I'm finding it very confusing
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Mark

Mark,
What model of viewsonic do you have? And is it a CRT or LCD?
If it's a CRT, there are some software based "eyeball" calibrators which can get you in the ballpark. If you have an older version of Photoshop you can use the Adobe Gamma utility that was included in CS2 and earlier versions.
After that, my previous advice still stands, but the best results are still going to be to bite the bullet for a colorimeter and live with the peace of mind that will give you.
If your Viewsonic is an LCD, you're much more limited, as the eyeball calibrators were never designed for LCD's. You can try them and they may be better than nothing, but no guarantees.

Color management problems printing to Epson R2880 from CS3

I recently purchased an Epson R2880 printer. I am having a lot of trouble getting good color when printing from Photoshop CS3. I am running OS 10.4 on a G4 Mac. I have a high-quality monitor and an EyeOne calibrator. I have spent a total of a few hours on the phone with tech support from the store where I bought the monitor and calibrator, and with Epson. To try and keep it simple, I am using all Epson products (ink, paper, their ICC profiles downloaded from their site). I have calibrated my monitor to brightness: 80, white point: 5000 K, Gamma 2.2.
All that tech support has brought me to the point where prints I get on Epson Velvet Fine Art paper and almost where they match what I see on the monitor, though they still could use a touch more red. I've tried making a slight curves adjustment to the red channel but I still don't quite have it. But it's basically acceptable.
So then I tried Epson Premium Presentation Matte paper. After a lengthy session with the Epson tech, we determined that I can get a print that's almost right by printing out of Preview and letting the printer manage colors. If I make a levels adjustment and brighten it a good bit, I get a very good print. But if I try printing on that paper from CS3 I get something that looks like a washed out black-and-white print with a hint of color in it. The Epson tech (a level 2 tech) told me to use the SPR 2880 Matte Paper-HW profile. Didn't help. At that point he said that he'd done all he could do and that for further assistance I needed to contact Adobe about "advanced settings in Photoshop." Of course, I'd prefer to print out of Photoshop because it gives more options in terms of placement and size of the print on the paper.
So here are my questions:
- Is this kind of thing par for the course, and will I eventually figure out a system that gives me good results all the time with any Epson paper I choose with a minimum of tinkering with levels and curves?
- Or should I expect more from a printer that costs almost $1,000 and should I return it for, say, a Canon?
- Is there information online about those "advanced settings" the Epson tech was referring to?
- Or would I be advised to purchase a one-on-one phone consultation from Adobe Photoshop tech support to resolve these problems?
Thanks,
Helen

Mike,
Gee Ramón, I am guessing Mike did a search for Epson R2880/CS3 and noticed that a Mac user was having the same problem he was. If together, maybe Windows users and Mac users can come together and solve the problems of the Epson R2880, maybe we can set a good example for the Republicans and Democrats in Congress :-).
Anyway, since I posted this problem, I have been working on it getting input from a variety of people. The person who finally helped me was Jim, a tech at ColorHQ.com. If you are in the US or Canada and have to buy a monitor and/or calibrator, definitely consider buying it from them, because they offer free tech support to their customers!
So regarding yellowness, one thing that you definitely should look at is how you're calibrating your monitor. Despite some of the replies above that recommend calibrating to 6500K, ColorHQ, which specializes in solutions for the printing industry, told me that calibrating to 5000K is the print industry standard. (While 6500K is the standard for working on images for the web or for editing video.) 5000K will make the monitor look yellower, so see whether that's a better match to what you're printing. I have an Eizo monitor and am running their Color Navigator software. The nice thing about that is something called Color Navigator Agent that allows me to switch between calibration profiles on the fly if I'm doing some web work and then want to work on images for printing.
Calibrating to 5000K was helpful, but not the solution in my case. The ultimate solution to my problem was more of a Mac issue, so I don't know if this will help you, but I'll post it in case anyone refers to this discussion in the future: there evidently IS an issue with ColorSync Utility in the Mac interfering with Photoshop managing colors in OS 10.4. In my case, ColorSync was causing the printer to preserve RGB values rather than use the ICC profile. The afore-mentioned Jim suggested that I go to Edit: Convert to Paper Profile, then pick the profile from the list. When printing, in the first Photoshop dialog box choose Color Handling: No color management. All the other settings in the next dialog box are the same as when you don't want the Epson to manage colors. So what you're doing is making it so the profile is built into the file, and neither Photoshop nor Epson are managing colors.
The result to this was MUCH better. The soft proof is a little redder than the print, but I can adjust that by creating a curves adjustment layer and pulling down the red curve in the middle a little bit if I want to see what the print will look like. I can live with that.
Also Jim pointed out that those papers that you mentioned are in fact a little warm in tone -- put Velvet Fine Art next to a piece of ordinary copy paper from say, Staples, and you'll see the difference. He suggested that if it's the matte look I want (it is) that Hahnemuhle makes a couple of papers that are brighter: Photo Rag Baryta and Bright White He also likes Ilford Gold Fiber silk, but that's a luster satin finish. You can download the Hahnemuhle profiles from Hahnemuhle's web site and compare them in "Soft Proof" mode in Photoshop with the Epson papers you mentioned and get an idea of the difference with your images. I haven't actually printed on them yet, but I see what he means.
Good luck, and I'd be interested to know how it goes for you.
--Helen

Color management issues with Flash CS3, please help?

Hello everyone.
I am having issues with color from a Jpeg image produced in Photoshop CS4
after importing onto the stage in Flash CS3. The color in Flash changes the image to a lighter less saturated state. Yuk.
Here is a link to a screen capture to show you what's happening (for a bigger view):
http://www.rudytorres.com/color/weirdcolor.png
As you can see the front image is the Photoshop image showing the sRGB color profile embedded but Flash (behind) changes that color.
This client is quite picky and she will notice this difference.
If any one can help, please.
- Rudy
P.S. It's a button somewhere, Right?

Dougfly,
Only an hour wasted? Lucky you. Color is an incredibly complex subject. First, forget matching anything to the small LCD on the back of your camera. That's there as a basic guide and is affected by the internal jpg algorithm of your camera.
2nd, you're not really takeing a color photo with your digital camera, but three separate B&W images in a mosaic pattern, exposed thru separate red, green and blue filters. Actual color doesn't happen until that matrix is demosaiced in either your raw converter, or the in-camera processor (which relies heavily on camera settings, saturation, contrast, mode, etc.)
Having said the above, you can still get very good, predictable results in your workflow. I have a few color management articles on my website that you might find very helpful. Check out the Introduction to Color Management and Monitor and Printer Profiling. In my opinion, a monitor calibration device is the minimum entry fee if you want decent color.
http://www.dinagraphics.com/color_management.php
Lou

Color Managed Printing from LR 1.3.1 Inverse of Proper PS CS3 10.0.1 Behavior

Please excuse the length and detail of this post - I'm just trying to be very clear...
Also, it would be helpful if anyone having definitive information about this topic could please email me directly in addition to replying to this forum topic, in order that I might know a response is available sooner (I am new to this forum, and may not check it regularly). My direct email address is [email protected].
Bottom Line: Color managed printing using my own custom-generated profiles from LR 1.3.1 to my Epson 7600 (on Intel-based Mac OS X 10.5.2, but saw the same behavior with 10.5.1) using the current Epson 7600 Intel/10.5x-compatible driver (3.09) is broken, and appears to be doing the exact opposite (inverse) of what I would expect and what PS CS3 does properly.
I am color management experienced, and have been using my custom-generated EPSON 7600 profiles with reliable soft proofing and printing success in PS (both CS2 and now CS3) for some time now. I know how the EPSON printer driver should be set relative to PS/LR print settings to indicate desired function. Images exported from LR to PS and printed from PS using "Photoshop Manages Color" and proper printer driver settings ("No Color Adjustment") print perfectly, so it isn't the Intel-based Mac, the OS, the driver, the profile, or me -- it is LR behaving badly.
The specific behavior is that printing from LR using "Managed by Printer" with the EPSON driver's Color Management setting set properly to "Colorsync" prints a reasonable-looking print, about what you would expect for canned profiles from the manufacturer, and in fact identical to the results obtained printing the same image from PS using "Printer Manages Color". So far so good. Switching to my specific custom profiles in LR and printing with the driver's CM setting set properly to "No Color Adjustment" yields results that are clearly whacked, for both LR settings of "Perceptual" and "Relative CM". Just for completeness and out of curiosity, I tried printing from LR using the same profile (once for "Perceptual" and once more for "Relative CM") with the EPSON driver's CM setting set IMPROPERLY to "Colorsync", and the results were much more in line with what you would expect - I would almost say it was "correct" output. This is why I used the phrase "inverse of proper behavior" in the subject line of this topic. Going one step further, trying this same set of improper settings in PS (PS print settings set to "Photoshop Manages Color" with either Perceptual or Rel CM selected, but using "Colorsync" rather than "No Color Adjustment" in the Color Management pane of the EPSON printer driver) yields whacked results as you would expect that look identical to the whacked results obtained from LR using "proper" settings.
I said above that the improper settings from LR yielded results that I would almost say were correct. "Almost" because the benchmark results rendered by PS using proper settings are slightly different - both "better" and closer to each other - than those rendered by LR using the improper settings. The diffs between the Perceptual and Rel CM prints from LR using improper settings showed more marked differences in tone/contrast/saturation than the diffs observed between the Perceptual and Rel CM prints from PS using proper settings - the image itself was in-gamut enough that diffs between Perceptual and Rel CM in the proper PS prints were quite subtle. Even though the improper LR prints were slightly inferior to the proper PS prints, the improper LR prints were still within tolerances of what you might expect, and still better (in terms of color matching) than the "Managed by Printer" print from LR. At first guess, I would attribute this (the improper LR prints being inferior to the proper PS prints) to the CMM being used by LR being different from (inferior to) the CMM I have selected for use in PS (that being "Adobe (ACE)"). I can live with the LR CMM being slightly different from that use

(Here's the 2nd half of my post...)
I said above that the improper settings from LR yielded results that I would almost say were correct. "Almost" because the benchmark results rendered by PS using proper settings are slightly different - both "better" and closer to each other - than those rendered by LR using the improper settings. The diffs between the Perceptual and Rel CM prints from LR using improper settings showed more marked differences in tone/contrast/saturation than the diffs observed between the Perceptual and Rel CM prints from PS using proper settings - the image itself was in-gamut enough that diffs between Perceptual and Rel CM in the proper PS prints were quite subtle. Even though the improper LR prints were slightly inferior to the proper PS prints, the improper LR prints were still within tolerances of what you might expect, and still better (in terms of color matching) than the "Managed by Printer" print from LR. At first guess, I would attribute this (the improper LR prints being inferior to the proper PS prints) to the CMM being used by LR being different from (inferior to) the CMM I have selected for use in PS (that being "Adobe (ACE)"). I can live with the LR CMM being slightly different from that used in PS - that is not the issue here. What is at issue is trying to determine why LR is clearly behaving differently than PS in this well-understood area of functionality, all other variables being the same. (And, incidentally, why am I not seeing other posts raising these same questions?)
My "workaround" is to use "Managed by Printer" for printing rough prints from LR and to do all other printing from PS, especially given the noted diffs in CMM performance between LR and PS and the fact that printing from PS also supports using Photokit Sharpener for high-quality prints. Still it would be nice to understand why this is happening in LR and to be able to print "decent" prints directly from LR when it seemed appropriate.
Any insights or suggestions will be very much appreciated. Please remember to reply to my direct email address ([email protected]) in addition to your public reply to this forum.
Thank you!
/eddie

Help from color management nuts

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