Color Management & Printer Profile

"Daniel De Marco" wrote in message

Hi all,

I’ve done a lot of searching on google and found some great tutorials on color management and how to use printer profiles. Unfortunately all the materials I found stated that to print I should do (in photoshop) print with preview and then select in the printer profile dropdown the profile for my printer. I don’t have a printer, but I use an online printing service and I downloaded from their website the color profile.

I tried the following: I’ve converted my image from Adobe RGB to the color profile downloaded from the web (Image > Mode > Convert To Profile) using the Adobe (ACE) engine and the Perceptual intent. At this point my image has brightened a bit and I used curves to darken a bit. Then I saved the image in jpg with embedded the color profile and I sent it to the printing service. The resulting print has come back today and is darker than the ones I see on my monitor.
Can someone explain how to proceed in my situation?

Sounds to me like either their profile is off, or your monitor is off. Are you using an LCD, or a CRT?

—–= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =—– http://www.newsfeeds.com – The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! —–== Over 100,000 Newsgroups – 19 Different Servers! =—–

You say the image brightens when you convert to their profile, so you darken it, and the resulting prints are darker…

Why don’t you try sending the files without any post-conversion manipulations (the curves you mention) & see what happens? Or don’t bother to embed their profile at all, & embed your Adobe RGB or whatever your working space is instead? -BK

"Daniel De Marco" wrote in message

Hi all,

I’ve done a lot of searching on google and found some great tutorials on color management and how to use printer profiles. Unfortunately all the materials I found stated that to print I should do (in photoshop) print with preview and then select in the printer profile dropdown the profile for my printer. I don’t have a printer, but I use an online printing service and I downloaded from their website the color profile.

I tried the following: I’ve converted my image from Adobe RGB to the color profile downloaded from the web (Image > Mode > Convert To Profile) using the Adobe (ACE) engine and the Perceptual intent. At this point my image has brightened a bit and I used curves to darken a bit. Then I saved the image in jpg with embedded the color profile and I sent it to the printing service. The resulting print has come back today and is darker than the ones I see on my monitor.
Can someone explain how to proceed in my situation? Should I convert to Profile and leave the image as is after the conversion?
Thanks in advance,
Daniel.

PS: my monitor is calibrated with a Spyder and Adobe Gamma is not loaded at startup.

From: Daniel De Marco

I don’t have a printer, but I use an online
printing service and I downloaded from their website the color profile.

I tried the following: I’ve converted my image from Adobe RGB to the color profile downloaded from the web (Image > Mode > Convert To Profile) using the Adobe (ACE) engine and the Perceptual intent.

What I’d try is first converting from AdobeRGB to sRGB since this is closer to what the online printer services use as their gamut, and make all my adjustments there, then convert to the printer profile once you’re done with the edits, and not make any additional edits to this converted file. Not sure if this will work or not (I’ve never used one of these printing services) but converting to sRGB before making jpegs for the web gives me much better web colors.

PS: my monitor is calibrated with a Spyder and Adobe Gamma is not loaded at startup.

Sounds like you’re doing everything right. It’s possible the printer profile they gave you is wrong.

Bill

On Wed, 29 Oct 2003 09:05:22 -0800, "Flycaster" wrote:

Sounds to me like either their profile is off, or your monitor is off. Are you using an LCD, or a CRT?

It’a LaCie photon20vision LCD. And it is calibrated with a Spyder.

Daniel.

On 29 Oct 2003 17:47:26 GMT, "Barry Kelsall"
wrote:

Why don’t you try sending the files without any post-conversion manipulations (the curves you mention) & see what happens?

This will be my next try. I was just wondering which was the correct procedure to adopt.

Thanks,
Daniel.

On 29 Oct 2003 18:05:25 GMT, (Bill Hilton)
wrote:

What I’d try is first converting from AdobeRGB to sRGB since this is closer to what the online printer services use as their gamut, and make all my adjustments there, then convert to the printer profile once you’re done with the edits, and not make any additional edits to this converted file. Not sure if this will work or not (I’ve never used one of these printing services) but converting to sRGB before making jpegs for the web gives me much better web colors.

I will try some prints with sRGB instead of their color profile.

Thanks,
Daniel.

"Daniel De Marco" wrote in message

On Wed, 29 Oct 2003 09:05:22 -0800, "Flycaster" wrote:

Sounds to me like either their profile is off, or your monitor is off.

Are

you using an LCD, or a CRT?

It’a LaCie photon20vision LCD. And it is calibrated with a Spyder.

OK, you’ll still have some small contrast matching issues, but with an LCD of that quality it should be pretty much a push. One thing you can do is run Adobe Gamma (don’t overwrite, or save it) just to the gamma setting point and check to see how close it looks to your eyes. If it is way off, you know there’s a problem with monitor calibration. There are also a few web-sites where you can check too, such as:
http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1B.html

One of the other posters suggested an issue with colorspace (ie, sRGB), but since the printer has provided you with a custom profile for his device, that ain’t it. sRGB is a working colorspace, not a device profile. (Now, if they were using a Fuji Frontier, sRGB would make sense since that is what most of those printers expect – but then they wouldn’t send you a custom profile.) Capisce?

If you are up on profiles, I assume you use them for your home printing? If so, what is your color and contrast matching like when you soft-proof using *your* printer profile?

—–= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =—– http://www.newsfeeds.com – The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! —–== Over 100,000 Newsgroups – 19 Different Servers! =—–

On Thu, 30 Oct 2003 08:40:24 -0800, "Flycaster" wrote:

OK, you’ll still have some small contrast matching issues, but with an LCD of that quality it should be pretty much a push. One thing you can do is run Adobe Gamma (don’t overwrite, or save it) just to the gamma setting point and check to see how close it looks to your eyes. If it is way off, you know there’s a problem with monitor calibration. There are also a few web-sites where you can check too, such as:
http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1B.html

I checked the website and it seems to me that the gamma is something around 2.2 that is what I should expect having done the calibration to
2.2.

If you are up on profiles, I assume you use them for your home printing? If so, what is your color and contrast matching like when you soft-proof using *your* printer profile?

I don’t have a local color printer.

Thanks for the suggestions,
Daniel.

"Daniel De Marco" wrote in message
[snip]

I don’t have a local color printer.

OK, contact the printer, explain your setup and your problem, and see what they have to say. If they know what they are doing, they *should* be able to troubleshoot the matching error with little or no problem. Just out of curiosity, how bad is the mismatch? Just "slightly darker", are the colors off, or what? Also, post a link to their site, or to their profile, so I can take a look at it.

—–= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =—– http://www.newsfeeds.com – The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! —–== Over 100,000 Newsgroups – 19 Different Servers! =—–