CS# Color Management Problem

SB
Posted By
Steve_Bromberg
May 9, 2008
Views
279
Replies
4
Status
Closed
I am using CS3 with Vista and printing with an Epson 1280 printer. I have calibrated my monitor. I downloaded Vista drivers for the 1280. Epson says that the ICC profiles are internal to the driver and thus, not available to PS. I placed the ICC profiles I have been using with PSCS and Windows XP into the same folder in Vista. Epson suggests letting the printer do the color management.

I have tried many combinations for letting the printer manage the process with no luck. The prints are darker than the screen version and colors subdued with reds tending toward orange.

The photo space is proRGB. I have used a gamma of 2.2, color mode set to automatic and have increased saturation and brightness. I have also tried increasing the CMY values.

Can someone point me in the right direction" The Epson stock should have gone up with all the paper and ink I have used.

Thanks for any ideas.
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G
gowanoh
May 9, 2008
I used to have a 1280 but it died. I still mourn its loss. As of that time the Epson driver for the 1280 was not as fully featured as its XP counterpart but I believe it still allowed you to use color managed printing. I also have an R1800 and the XP and Vista drivers are identically featured.
If it is a choice between ditching the printer and ditching Vista ditch Vista and install XP. Vista is slow, has driver problems and it is not clear that the problem of Vista under some common circumstances unloading the calibration settings from the video driver, without telling you, has been solved. I don’t hate Vista, I just can’t understand why Microsoft markets it when users can see the obvious problems compared to XP.
You should be using Adobe RGB or sRGB but it is better if you set your preferences so that all images will be processed in Adobe RGB. You can read all the arguments about color gamut on your own.
Set CS3 when you print so that Photoshop manages colors and select the proper Epson paper profile, which should have installed with the printer driver.
Set up the 1280 driver with the proper paper type, paper orientation and NO color management. Also check the print preview button: as I recall the print preview is not color managed and should be kind of pink, which tells you your settings were likely correct.
If your prints are still off in brightness or contrast then you may not have come to grips with your LCD monitor and will have to either look at your prints under normal light away from the monitor or develop a set of arbitrary changes to the brightness and contrast you apply to an image just before printing. There are other workarounds to this common problem. My experience is that LCD monitors are so bright that no print can match what you think you see on the screen although the print is actually quite adequate.
My experience with Spyder calibrators and a variety of LCDs is that if your LCD panel calibrates (low end ones may not), and you have set the brightness and contrast to their default settings, color fidelity is usually pretty good.
Although at the moment I forget which is which the type of ink (dye or pigment based?) used in the R1800, as opposed to the 1280, tend to give a brighter appearance on glossy paper, again based on my experience with the 1280 and 1800.
SP
Sid_Phillips
May 12, 2008
I’m a little confused: do you have the ICC profiles as separate files? Or are they in one special file that only your Epson driver can access?

If you have separate files, try turning off color management in the driver and printing with the profiles out of Photoshop. If you don’t have separate files, choose the paper/ink combination you use most and have a custom profile built, then use that out of Photoshop and see if it makes a difference.
SB
Steve_Bromberg
May 12, 2008
This was the problem. Epson did not have separate ICC files for the 1280 to be used with Vista. Their profiles were internal to the driver and PS did not have access.

I finally solved the problem by finding the individual ICC files on my old computer and putting them into the correct folder on the Vista machine.

All is now happy.
B
Buko
May 13, 2008
proRGB is a pretty big color space to be printing to a 1280.

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