Printer Profiling

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Mike Farley
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Printer Profiling

Postby Mike Farley » Mon 26 Nov 2012, 21:01

I have just posted quite a lengthy thread about monitor calibration - http://forums.croydoncameraclub.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=127 - but this is only one aspect of colour management in a fully managed print making process. Rather than add to that topic, I thought I would start a new thread for printer profiling.

As with all devices which we use in the imaging process for managing colour, the others being camera and computer monitor, printers do not natively give a rendition which is 100% accurate and it is necessary to apply a correction, known as a printer profile, when printing. The corrections required will vary according both to the inkset which is in use and the type of paper, so it is necessary to use a separate profile for each combination of printer and paper which you use. The good news is that unlike monitor calibration, printer profiling only has to be done once since and there are a number of different ways of obtaining them.

  • If using the printer manufacturer's own paper, the correct profiles are usually incorporated into the printer driver.
  • Paper manufacturers invariably provide generic profiles for the most common printers used in the production of photographs. Given that there is little variation between individual printers, these are often sufficient for most purposes.
  • Bespoke profiles which exactly match printer and paper can be purchased from third parties. Fotospeed and Permajet provide this service free of charge for their own papers. This is the most cost effective method if only a few profiles are required.
  • DIY profiles can be made. Datacolor and X-Rite both offer equipment for doing this, the latter having the ColorMunki Photo for home use and various Eye One devices for professionals and the well heeled. The cost can be recouped if a lot of profiles are required and the systems also provide options to tailor the profiles to suit individual requirements.

Whatever system is used, printer profiles are all created in the same way. A series of colour patches are printed and then, after being allowed to dry fully, are measured by the profiling software to analyse the deviation so that the profile can be created. Normally only a few hundred patches are required to achieve accurate results, but some people will use considerably more on occasion. Low cost measuring devices have to scan the patches manually, but high end devices can do it automatically.

Installing printer profiles is a breeze for Windows. Right clicking on the profile's icon in Windows Explorer brings up an "Install Profile" option, which automatically places the profile in the correct folder when selected. The situation for Apple Macs appears to be more complicated, but I did find this information on the internet. Fortunately, it only has to be done the once.

http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/profile_install.htm

The application from which prints are being made has to support the use of printer profiles. In a backward step, Adobe has dropped this function from the more recent versions of Photoshop Elements, which means that profiles can only be invoked when using the printer manufacturer's paper. It is still present in Photoshop CS and Lightroom, with the latter only supporting printing via profiles in version 4 although it is available in earlier incarnations. There are many other programmes which use printer profiles, but I have no personal experience of them.

In Photoshop CS, there is a drop down option in the print dialogue with the options "Printer Manages Colours" and "Photoshop Manages Colours". If selecting the former (or Photoshop Elements), the paper has to be selected in the printer driver's dialogue. For the latter (or Lightroom 4), the correct printer profile has to be selected from another drop down box which shows all the profiles installed on the computer. If the incorrect profile is selected, it is very unlikely that the colours will be correct and a reprint will be required.

If the preview option is selected in the printer driver, the colours will not look right because they have been adjusted by the printer profile. In essence, the preview is only good for checking that the print will be made at the correct size and is properly positioned on the paper. It does give a very good indication of how much variance there is between the colours the printer is expecting to print and what actually gets printed.

There is one other use for printer profiles in Photoshop CS and Lightroom since version 4 and that is soft proofing. This provides a preview on the computer's monitor of how an image will look when it is printed and is useful for making corrections before the expense of committing it to paper.

To conclude, there is little to be gained from using printer profiles in isolation and the monitor also has to be calibrated in order to get prints which match what is seen on the screen. There are some limitations to this, for a variety of reasons.

  • Most people use low end monitors which are limited to the sRGB colour space and cannot show the full range of colours which will be in the final print. Monitors which show most of the colours available in the wider Adobe RGB colour space are available, but are significantly more expensive. That said, they have also dropped massively in price since their introduction a few years ago.
  • Images on screen are lit from behind, whereas prints are viewed by reflected light. This difference in illumination will effect how the colours are seen.
  • Computer monitors create colours by mixing dots which comprise of Red, Green and Blue (RGB). Inkjet colours are created from Cyan (blue/green), Magenta (purplish red), Yellow and blacK (CMYK - K is used for black since B represents blue). Some printers also include red and green inks, but the range of colours in a print will still be different.
  • The range of contrast in a print is lower than on a computer monitor.

Despite these differences, it is still possible to obtain prints which very closely represent the computer display provided the correct colour management steps have been followed throughout the process.
Regards

Mike Farley
(Visit my website and blog - www.mikefarley.net)
Mike Farley
Posts: 7316
Joined: Tue 11 Sep 2012, 16:38
Contact:

Re: Printer Profiling

Postby Mike Farley » Mon 26 Nov 2012, 21:02

To complement this thread, I have created another on monitor calibration.

http://forums.croydoncameraclub.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=127
Regards

Mike Farley
(Visit my website and blog - www.mikefarley.net)
Mike Farley
Posts: 7316
Joined: Tue 11 Sep 2012, 16:38
Contact:

Re: Printer Profiling

Postby Mike Farley » Mon 26 Nov 2012, 21:32

Whilst I have not seen this particular video tutorial from Luminous Landscape about colour management, others in the series have been very informative and easy to comprehend. Even better, at present it is on 25% discount and will only cost around £8-50 at current exchange rates.

http://store.luminous-landscape.com/zencart/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2&products_id=283

See also this post:

http://forums.croydoncameraclub.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=129#p612

Also posted on the Monitor Calibration thread.
Regards

Mike Farley
(Visit my website and blog - www.mikefarley.net)
Mike Farley
Posts: 7316
Joined: Tue 11 Sep 2012, 16:38
Contact:

Re: Printer Profiling

Postby Mike Farley » Tue 27 Nov 2012, 09:38

Links to the Fotospeed and Permajet printer profling services. Both companies will also create profiles for brands of paper other than their own, but charge a fee for this service.

http://www.fotospeed.com/customprofiling.asp

http://www.permajet.com/Products/PermaJet-Custom-ICC-Profile-Services

Note that when printing out the target patches, all colour management both by the printing application and printer driver utility MUST be turned off. Otherwise unwanted colour corrections will be applied, which will render the resulting profile useless.
Regards

Mike Farley
(Visit my website and blog - www.mikefarley.net)
Mike Farley
Posts: 7316
Joined: Tue 11 Sep 2012, 16:38
Contact:

Re: Printer Profiling

Postby Mike Farley » Tue 01 Jan 2013, 13:10

As a follow up, I am currently printing my entries for the club's forthcoming exhibition, using Canson Infinity Baryta Photographique paper and a generic profile downloaded from the Canson website. Previously I have used the canned profiles for my printer which have been supplied by Epson and Permajet and all have been of high quality. The Canson one was not good at all, in particular the oranges and yellows were way off, but none of the colours were close to what I was seeing on the screen. Using a Colormunki I made my own profile and am now getting accurate results.

Interestingly, the Print function in Photoshop CS6 has an option to show out of gamut colours and when I used Canson's own profile it flagged a warning for the orange and yellow parts of my images. These disappeared when I used the profile I created for myself.

The lesson to be learned here is that while some manufacturers produce good profiles for their papers, this is not universal. The Canson Baryta Photographique paper is one of the best around, but Canson is failing to show it off to its best by providing such a poor quality profile.

I'll scan the two prints later on and will post the results so that everyone can see the difference between them.
Regards

Mike Farley
(Visit my website and blog - www.mikefarley.net)
Mike Farley
Posts: 7316
Joined: Tue 11 Sep 2012, 16:38
Contact:

Re: Printer Profiling

Postby Mike Farley » Tue 01 Jan 2013, 19:25

The promised scans of the two prints made earlier today. I cannot say that the images are especially representative of the actual colours of either print, but there is sufficient of a distinction to see the effect of using the two different profiles. In particular the orange colour of the bad print came out much more yellow than is shown here. Whilst some people might prefer the colour rendering of the incorrect print, it is the accuracy of the prints which is at question.
Attachments
Bad Print.jpg
Print made with Canson generic profile
Bad Print.jpg (165.08 KiB) Viewed 4727 times
Good Print.jpg
Print made with bespoke profile
Good Print.jpg (146.91 KiB) Viewed 4727 times
Regards

Mike Farley
(Visit my website and blog - www.mikefarley.net)

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