I Don't Understand Color Management

I'm a relative newbe, but have been digging into Photoshop CS4 pretty intensely the last several months. All in all I think I'm getting a pretty good handle on it and can pretty much do what I want to do ........ EXCEPT Color Management. No matter how much I read on the subject I still don't have even the basic concepts.
First off, my tools include a Nikon D90 -> HP Touchsmart Notebook (uncalibrated lcd screen) ->Photoshop CS4 -> a just purchased Epson r2880.
Let's ignore the Nikon for now and just concentrate on PS and the r2880.
My color settings in PS are Adobe RGB98 and CYMK US Web coated (SWOP) v2
Assuming this is OK must I assign a profile to each individual photo, or is that taken care of automatically? What is the purpose of the profile?
Then when I get ready to print and Color Management is being taken care of by Adobe, do I turn off all color correction in the r2880 or do I use the ICM (which I have downloaded from the web)?
I experiment with the different settings and one seems to work better sometimes than the other, but not consistently.
Any help (to include recommended documentation or literature) would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks very much. Some of this is starting to make sense in a (It Depends on ....) sorta way.
Going to your analogy, isn't it true when the photographer takes a picture in RAW
there is no profile, but this is done when opening the image in PS?
I do use adjustment layers pretty effectively.
It's when I'm ready to print that it gets confusing. Is the most likely scenario
to let Adobe of the Printer (with it's premium ICC) handle color management,
or let Adobe handle color management?
And if I let Adobe handle color management, is the most likely scenario to have the printer set
to "No color management" or "ICC color management"?
I suspect the answer is "Experiment and see", but thus far that has produced
a mixed bag of tricks.
A few questions:
1. Are you doing photography?
Yes, that's all I'm doing at the Present.
2. When you print to the Epson - are you trying to proof for a commercial print job, or are you just printing for yourself?
No, this is strictly a hobby.
3. Are you supplying files to a commercial printer?
Again, no.
4. Have you calibrated and profiled your monitor?
No, but that's probably going to be one of next projects. My monitor (and tablet) is actually a small 10" lcd on a HP Touchsmart notebook
Any suggestions as to a low cost solution?
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:17:25 -0600
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: I Don't Understand Color Management
My basic understanding of CM is Source and Destination.
Take a picture, for example. The photographer captures the image in RAW and converts this to an RGB image.
The image is passed on to the designer. If the photographer did their job properly, the image is already tagged with a profile. You can tell this in Photoshop. Beside RGB, there will be *, #, or nothing.
is very, very bad. This means the image is untagged. Nobody knows what it should look like.
means the image is tagged with a profile different from your RGB working space. This is fine.
Nothing means the image is tagged with a profile that matches your RGB working space in Color Settings.
At any rate, the RGB image is usually referred to as a source image. It can be repurposed to a variety of destination color spaces.
The next task is proofing the destination. This can be done on the monitor, if it is properly calibrated and profiled. You can also print a proof (that can get a little more complicated, if you have questions please ask).
For example, you want to know what the image will look like when the commercial printer runs it on his press. Best case scenario is you obtain a CMYK profile from the printer. This is your Proof Color (i.e. Photoshop View: Proof Colors).
Usually it is best to leave source RGB as source RGB. You can place the RGB image in InDesign, and let InDesign convert to CMYK on output. In other words, there is no reason to convert to CMYK in Photoshop (you should however utilize View: Proof Colors)
When you convert in Photoshop you damage the image and there is no going back. This means saving a copy. But by avoiding conversions to CMYK in Photoshop, no need to save copies.
Also by leaving images source RGB, they can be converted to whatever destination you like when you output from InDesign. You could output for a Sheetfed press printing on cover weight coated stock, you could output for a Web press printing on newsprint, or you could even output sRGB for web design. Having source color saves a lot of time, and you're not chasing a bunch of different Photoshop conversions.
Also note: if you make color adjustments in Photoshop, try to use adjustment layers as these are non-destructive.
A few questions:
1. Are you doing photography?
2. When you print to the Epson - are you trying to proof for a commercial print job, or are you just printing for yourself?
3. Are you supplying files to a commercial printer?
4. Have you calibrated and profiled your monitor?
>

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  • Need help with color managment addon

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  • Color Management Confusion-Photoshop and monitors

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    I am not surprised you are confused about colour management because its a confusing subject. Luckily you own a Mac so you can get to grips with what the problems that colour management solves using the "colorSync Utility" and you will find this in Applications >> Utilities >> colorSync Utility. If you own a windows computer then I am sorry but you will be out of luck here and you should know better when you buy your next computer!! I am not sure why Apple gave us this application but it is really useful and all will help you understand Color Management.
    1. Launch Applications >> Utilities >> ColorSync Utility.
    2. You will see a list of "Installed ColorSync Profiles". Choose Adobe RGB 1998 which I hope you have chosen in you camera preferences.
    3.You will see a 3D representation of the Adobe 1998 Colour space. This represents all the colors this colour space will hold.
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    inside the Adobe 1998 profile. This means that you monitor cannot show you all the colors that are missing.
    7. Now choose a printer profile say, if you use them a profile for an Epson paper or any printer profile you have and you will see another profile in the Adobe 1998 box which shows you the only colors that your printer can print. If you like choose your monitor profile then hold for comparison then the printer profile and it will clearly show the mis match between you monitor and printer.
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    So this is the problem, all devises can reproduce only a certain range of colors. The adobe 1998 profile does not show all the colors our eyes can see " choose Generic Lab" profile, then "hold for comparison" then Adobe 1998 and you will see Adobe 1998 is a small profile but is a good average of our collective colour vision.
    So how to solve all these missing colour problems. Well if you think of each devise, including you camera as speaking a different language from you monitor and printer then it is easy to understand that you need some sort of translator so that they all know exactly what colour is being talked bout pixel by pixel in an image. This is held in the ICC profile, but an ICC profile has o do more than this.
    Say you camera can produce a specific red we will call for demo purposes "001" and your monitor cannot produce it, how do you solve this? Well it is very easy to fool our eyes. Our eyes work by comparison so if the profile maps red "001 to the nearest red that the monitor can show and then proportionally remaps all other reds to fit within the reds the monitor can show us then we actually think we are seeing a full range of reds. The problem comes if we use the wrong profile for this. The red 001 could be re mapped anywhere and could be outside what the monitor can show. Say that happens but the printer can reproduce that red 001. We would see an image on the monitor with not many reds and when we printed it we would be shocked to find reds on the print. Worst, we would see an image on the monitor without reds and would correct for this and end up with a print with heavy reds and would not be able to work out why.
    So to solve this we should:
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    2. Make sure you have the correct monitor ICC profile selected in "System Preferences" >> Displays.
    3. In photoshop we should make sure that the " Edit >> colour settings " are set to Adobe 1998 for RGB.
    4. If you are going to print you own photo in Photoshop go to "View >> Proof Setup >> Custom" and a box will
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    are using an outside printing house, they will supply you with their ICC profile to download so just follow the same procedure and
    choose their ICC profile and and do you colour correction.
    If you have a cheap monitor you will still not get a 100% result but you will get closer. You really need a monitor that you can  calibrate
    regularly because generic ICC profiles are just that. They are made from the results of many monitors and so are 90% or worse accurate.
    If you want to see a flag ship monitor at work go to http://www.eizo.com/global/support/db/products/software/CG223W#tab02 and go
    to the bottom of the page and download the Eizo Coloredge CG223W monitor profile, instal it on your mac then open then ope
    Launch Applications >> Utilities >> ColorSync Utility choose Adobe 1998 the hold and compare it with the  Eizo Coloredge CG223W
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    The weak link still is printing. The colors you see in RGB on a back lit RGB screen are very hard to reproduce by CYMK inks on paper. Here you really should have a profile made for your printer and chosen paper. If you don't want the expense of buying a calibrator and doing it yourself, there are on line services that will do this for you.
    One final point you must remember. If you are using soft proofing in Photoshop ( "View >> Proof Setup >> Custom" as explained above), when you print you MUST choose in "Colour Handling" "Photoshop Manages Colour" and in the next step when the printing box appears
    you will see a drop down box with "Layout" in it. Click on this and choose "Colour Management and choose "Off No Colour Management". If you do not do this Photoshop will manage the colour then the printer will do it again and the print will be a disaster.
    This is a starting point really. Colour management is difficult but just try to remember that you need a translator between each step in the process to make it work so you have to make sure the correct profiles are being used by you camera, the program you use for opening the Raw photo files (Please don't use jpegs straight from the camera, but thats another subject), the correct monitor profile and output profile. If you don't check these it is like chinese whispers and your picture will be printed in Double Dutch!!.
    Hope that helps. I am on location In Italy for a couple of months so will be unlikely to be able to reply to any questions for a while. Will try to check back and see how you are getting on. Drop me a line at [email protected] if you have any questions. Good luck.
    Paul Williams

  • Printer color management disappeared after installing CS4

    I just installed cs4 and my printer color management has vanished.  In acrobat in the print window..  Under copies and pages...  I am missing- print settings, printer color management, paper configuration, roll paper option, and expansion...... This has happened in all of my programs.  How do I get it back??

    You should try to familiarize yourself with the concepts of color management.
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  • Problem: Color Management/Save for Web on Wide Gamut Monitor

    Hi,
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    function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}
    ch_bla wrote:
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    - Edit under ProPhoto RGB, 16 bit raw files
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    Is this the preferred way?
    It's a reasonable and correct way to do it, assuming you want to embed a profile in the images.
    Since at least in some browsers and cases the colors selected within the HTML elements must match image colors, one can sometimes make a case for not embedding any profile at all, but that's really looking backwards.  Browsers are moving forward toward not only managing colors in images but also in the HTML elements themselves.  If you want your images accurately portrayed in as many places as possible you're doing the right thing looking forward.
    Personally I embed the sRGB profile in my web images, as you are doing.  And I check things primarily with IE and Safari.
    Unlike you, I prefer to edit using the sRGB color space, but that's just personal preference.  I find it more convenient to use File - Save As instead of File - Save For Web & Devices, and I get caught by gotchas less often this way.  Your preference ensures you don't lose any colors at the extremes of the gamut while editing and it could easily be argued that that's better, depending on what image products you produce.
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  • Color management problems - help please!

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    Mark

    Mark,
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  • Color Management Does Not Work in AE

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    Mylenium

  • Export Color Management

    I'm using Lightroom 1.1 350273 on OSX.
    This has probably been addressed before, but my searching is not yielding results.
    The object is to export jpgs from Lightroom for use on a website.
    It is the old story - exported photos look washed out in Firefox.
    Photos look great in color managed browser (Safari).
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    I have compared photos on various websites and some of them look the same in both Firefox and Safari.
    Check this one in both browsers for yourself: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tenoot/536936968/in/pool-cotc/
    -Jeff

    Agree with Jao, on my MBP LCD, the image looks just about the same in Firefox & Safari.
    I have profiled my monitor(s) using i1 colorimeter.
    I am willing to bet that the image looks different to you on your Mac because you are using the 'canned' monitor profile that came with your computer/display, which is usually completely wrong. I had the same problem before... the 'canned' profile caused color-managed (CM) applications to over-saturate warm colors so that when I looked at the same image in Firefox (nonCM), the image looked washed out.
    After proper calibration, results are more similar between CM & nonCM applications, though LET ME STRESS here that getting the same colors between CM & nonCM apps is NOT the point of color management! But that's a long story that I will spare you of :)
    If none of this is making sense, I recently discovered what seems to be an incredible book on truly understanding color management:
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    Hope this helps,
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  • Need help understanding profiles and color management

    I made the big leap from inexpensive inkjets to:
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    2 Spyder3Studio
    I have a Mac Pro Quad, Aperture, PS3, etc.
    I have a steep learning curve ahead, here's what I've done:
    1 Read a lot of books, watched tutorials, etc.
    2 Calibrated the monitor
    3 Calibrated the printer several times and created .icc profiles
    What I've found:
    1 The sample print produced by Spyder3Print, using the profile I created with color management turned off in the print dialog, looks very good.
    2 When I get into Aperture, and apply the .icc profile I created in the proofing profile with onscreen proofing, the onscreen image does not change appreciably compared with the no proof setting. It gets slightly darker
    3 When I select File>Print image, select the profile I created, turn off color management and look a the resulting preview image it looks much lighter and washed out than the onscreen image with onscreen proofing turned on.
    4 When I print the image, it looks the same as was shown in the print preview...light and washed out, which is much different than what is shown in edit mode.
    5 When I open PS3 with onscreen soft-proofing, the onscreen image is light and washed out...just like displayed in PS3 preview. If I re-edit the image to look OK onscreen, and print with the profile and color management turned off, the printed image looks OK.
    So, why am I confused?
    1 In the back of my simplistic and naive mind, I anticipated that in creating a custom printer profile I would only need to edit a photo once, so it looks good on the calibrated screen, and then a custom printer profile will handle the work to print a good looking photo. Different profiles do different translations for different printers/papers. However, judging by the PS work, it appears I need to re-edit a photo for each printer/paper I encounter...just doesn't seem right.
    2 In Aperture, I'm confused by the onscreen proofing does not present the same image as what I see in the print preview. I'm selecting the same .icc profile in both locations.
    I tried visiting with Spyder support, but am not able to explain myself well enough to help them understand what I'm doing wrong.
    Any help is greatly appreciated.

    Calibrated the printer several times and created .icc profiles
    You have understand that maintaining the colour is done by morphing the colourants, and you have understood that matching the digital graphic display (which is emissive) to the print from the digital graphic printer (which is reflective) presupposes a studio lighting situation that simulates the conditions presupposed in the mathematical illuminant model for media independent matching. Basically, for a display-to-print match you need to calibrate and characterise the display to something like 5000-55000 kelvin. There are all sorts of arguments surrounding this, and you will find your way through them in time, but you now have the gist of the thing.
    So far so good, but what of the problem posed by the digital graphic printer? If you are a professional photographer, you are dependent on your printer for contract proofing. Your prints you can pass to clients and to printers, but your display you cannot. So this is critical.
    The ICC Specification was published at DRUPA Druck und Papier in Düsseldorf in May 1995 and ColorSync 2 Golden Master is on the WWDC CD for May 1995. Between 1995 and 2000 die reine Lehre said to render your colour patch chart in the raw condition of the colour device.
    The problem with this is that in a separation the reflectance of the paper (which is how you get to see the colours of the colourants laid down on top of the paper) and the amount of colourant (solid and combinations of tints) gives you the gamut.
    By this argument, you would want to render the colour patch chart with the most colourant, but what if the most colourant produces artifacts? A safer solution is to have primary ink limiting as part of the calibration process prior to rendering of the colour patch chart.
    You can see the progression e.g. in the BEST RIP which since 2002 has been owned by EFI Electronics for Imaging. BEST started by allowing access to the raw colour device, with pooling problems and whatnot, but then introduced a primary ink limiting and linearisation.
    The next thing you need to know is what colour test chart to send to the colour device, depending on whether the colour device is considered an RGB device or a CMYK device. By convention, if the device is not driven by a PostScript RIP it is considered an RGB device.
    The colour patch chart is not tagged, meaning that it is deviceColor and neither CIEBased colour or ICCBased colour. You need to keep your colour patch chart deviceColor or you will have a colour characterisation of a colour managed conversion. Which is not what you want.
    If the operating system is colour managed through and through, how do you render a colour test chart without automatically assigning a source ICC profile for the colourant model (Generic RGB Profile for three component, Generic CMYK Profile for four component)?
    The convention is that no colour conversion occurs if the source ICC device profile and the destination ICC device profile are identical. So if you are targetting your inkjet in RGB mode, you open an RGB colourant patch chart, set the source ICC profile for the working space to the same as the destination ICC profile for the device, and render as deviceColor.
    You then leave the rendered colourant test chart to dry for one hour. If you measure a colourant test chart every ten minutes through the first hour, you may find that the soluble inkjet inks in drying change colour. If you wait, you avoid this cause of error in your characterisation.
    As you will mainly want to work with loose photographs, and not with photographs placed in pages, when you produce a contract proof using Absolute Colorimetric rendering from the ICC profile for the printing condition to the ICC profile for your studio printer, here's a tip.
    Your eyes, the eyes of your client, and the eyes of the prepress production manager will see the white white of the surrounding unprinted margins of the paper, and will judge the printed area of the paper relative to that.
    If, therefore, your untrimmed contract proof and the contract proof from Adobe InDesign or QuarkPress, or a EFI or other proofing RIP, are placed side by side in the viewing box your untrimmed contract proof will work as the visual reference for the media white.
    The measured reference for the media white is in the ICC profile for the printing condition, to be precise in the WTPT White Point tag that you can see by doubleclicking the ICC profile in the Apple ColorSync Utility. This is the lightness and tint laid down on proof prints.
    You, your client and your chosen printer will get on well if you remember to set up your studio lighting, and trim the blank borders of your proof prints. (Another tip: set your Finder to neutral gray and avoid a clutter of white windows, icons and so forth in the Finder when viewing.)
    So far, so good. This leaves the nittygritty of specific ICC profiling packages and specific ICC-enabled applications. As for Aperture, do not apply a gamma correction to your colourant patch chart, or to colour managed printing.
    As for Adobe applications, which you say you will be comparing with, you should probably be aware that Adobe InDesign CS3 has problems. When targetting an RGB printing device, the prints are not correctly colour managed, but basically bypass colour management.
    There's been a discussion on the Apple ColorSync Users List and on Adobe's fora, see the two threads below.
    Hope this helps,
    Henrik Holmegaard
    technical writer
    References:
    http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?14@@.59b52c9b/0
    http://lists.apple.com/archives/colorsync-users/2007/Nov/msg00143.html

  • Why use "Don't Color Manage This Document"?

    Hello,
    I work on photos, mostly black and white, that will be either digitally or offset printed. I have been told that I should not assign any color profile to these photos in PhotoShop. I should instead choose the option in Assign Profile to "Don't Color Manage This Document."
    I think the reason is that we do not want the RIP to interpret any color profile that may be in the RIP and apply it to the photos. But I really don't know why I should use this opiton.
    Can anyone educate me on this question?
    Thanks,
    Tom

    Tom,
    You've left a few potentially important details out of your scenario, but I will give you my thoughts. Are your B&W images 4/C CMYK, grayscale, or RGB? It can make a difference.
    When editing images for my own fine art printing, I always tag it with a profile. In fact, I do this whether my image is grayscale, CMYK or RGB. Of course, I am doing the printing myself, so I have full control over the project. I use a Canon 6100 and custom RGB profiles (which I build myself), so most of my B&W or toned monochrome prints are RGB. Without a source profile, Photoshop will have to assume or assign a profile in order to make the final conversion.
    I have used B&W RIPs before, such as QTR, and they don't speak ICC. They simply take the raw umbers in the file and output them to the printer, passing them through specific inking recipes (which they tend to call profiles, but this is very confusing to users, because they can be confused with ICC profiles, which they definitely are NOT). In this case, the RIP simply ignores any embedded ICC profile and just outputs the numbers.
    More traditional RIPs (Poster print, Studio Print, ColorBurst, etc) can properly interpret incoming CMYK data with an ICC profile and make whatever conversions are necessary to give you an accurate print. Of course, accuracy depends on having accurate profiles for monitor, printer, paper, ink, etc.
    So, if we are talking photos destined for fine art printing on an inkjet, I normally would tag my files with an ICC profile.
    I recently designed a job for a client using InDesign. It included a lot of photographs, illustrations, and native components created using Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. The problem was that the customer had not selected a commercial printer, so I had no idea where the job would be printed, on what type of press, ink limits, paper stock, etc. What to do? I chose a middle of the road profile (IDEAlliance SWOP2006_Coated3v2) which has an ink limit of 300 and assumes a #3 coated sheet. I left this profile active in InDesign. I edited my files in Photoshop and Illustrator and tagged all images with the same profile, and placed them into InDesign. So, all components had the same "generic" CMYK profile based on a middle of the road industry standard (I use the term standard loosely). Having all components tagged enabled me to generate an accurate, high quality color proof on my inkjet (assuming the final press will adhere the the above SWOP standard).
    Before submitting the file, I converted it to PDF/X1-a using Acrobat Pro. This strips all profiles from the file, but names the intended color profile in the PDF file. So, I was supplying an untagged file, but if they wanted to, they could see what the intended profile was. I stripped the profile because I did NOT want the unknown commercial printer to convert my carefully generated files. One concern was that all items on the black plate (black text, lines, vector art, etc) might somehow be converted through Lab to a new CMYK profile, thus giving me CMYK separation of my blacks, potential registration problems, etc. To cover my butt, I supplied my color proofs with the file and told the client the final job should look very close to my proofs if the printer did his job right. It also gave the printer a guide print to help them get it right. So, to me, that is the major reason to supply an untagged file.
    Sorry for the long diatribe.
    Lou

  • Convert Colors RGB to CMYK something i don't understand.

    Hello!
    I'm still "fighting" with maximum TotalInk. There is the problem. Indesign have background and overlaying image with effect - Multiply. So it's extremely hard to avoid not exceed maximum ink. Indesign don't provide normal way to do it and i start to torture Acrobat for that. First step was create Postcript file then distille it to RGB and then convert by Acrobat X Pro (Print Production/Convert Colors).
    Theoreticly everything worked out fine. Black text stayed black (which is miracle) and images went to RGB and back to CMYK. BUT...and i don't understand why - Convert to Profile with Perceptual didn't converted it same way as Photoshop. It still got some points which exceed TotalInk (i used profile with maximum 300). AND image has drastic loss of quality! What did i do wrong? I tried to make Preflight new fix which do same thing and it worked - no exceeds of limit but still BAD quality! What did i miss?
    Thanks.
    P.S. If something isn't understandable please ask, i'll try to make my point more clear (english isn't my first language).

    The 'create album' button is identical to File>New From Selection>Album (Command-L).
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    Personally I think Aperture should throw up a dialog box to keep things consistent, but I can see the reasoning behind it. And as long as we've got menu items and keyboard shortcuts for both, I don't really care.
    Ian

  • Why was there over ten thousand file in my "All My Files" on my new MBP. I'm very new at using ICloud. I don't understand syncing vs time vs time vs syncing! I simply have not idea how to manage my file now.

    Why is there over ten thousand file in my "All My Files" on my new MBP. I'm very new at using ICloud. I don't understand syncing vs time vs time vs syncing! I simply have not idea how to manage my files now. I read short comments & how to's in the support sections, but nothing I've read so far explains"best practices" or turning iCloud off to get a grip on managing files. I have 250gb fast storage on the MBP itself, and 200gb in the ICloud, one would thing that's enough. The files seem too be multiplying like rabbits. IPhoto's Faces has created hundereds of "somethings" not sure what. I am sure I am very frustrated! Please comment with kindness.

    gf raines wrote:
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    If you download a song from the iTunes cloud storage (which is not iCloud) it goes into the iTunes music folder (generally to a subfolder therein)
    If you download a document from the iCloud drive it will go wherever you chose to put it.
    If you download a photo from the iCloud Photo library it will also go wherever you choose to put it.*
    If you move something you have not copied it, if you want to keep a copy on the iCloud drive and in a local folder, you would copy, not move it.
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    The iCloud drive appears as a folder in Finder, you use it just like any other, copy/paste, save, delete etc.
    You can turn the iCloud drive off whenever you like, download the content to a local drive first.
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  • I don't understand why recently with the new "pages" my computer stops responding. When I go to fix some grammar all of a sudden the little colored circle begins to appear and won't go away I restart my computer.

    I don't understand why recently with the new "pages" my computer stops responding. When I go to fix some grammar all of a sudden the little colored circle begins to appear and won't go away I restart my computer.

    If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
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    Step 1
    Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
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    If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don’t post many repetitions of the same message.
    When posting a log extract, be selective. In most cases, a few dozen lines are more than enough.
    Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
    Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.
    Step 2
    Still in Console, look under System Diagnostic Reports for crash or panic logs, and post the entire contents of the most recent one, if any. In the interest of privacy, I suggest you edit out the “Anonymous UUID,” a long string of letters, numbers, and dashes in the header of the report, if present (it may not be.) Please don’t post any other kind of report — it will be very long and not helpful.

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