PSE4 print problems

[canon shooter]

I just purchased and started working with PSE4. I couldn't get PSE3 to print right at all. So I bought a Huey and calibrated monitor.

Now in PSE4 I noticed I printed the same shot in MSDIS2006, and in PSE4. In PSE4 I printed with optimize for print and almost identical except a pumkin colored shirt in PSE4 looks more yellow.

Also printed a B&W shot and in PSE4 it printed a little lighter. I had set to "NO Color management". Could that casue it print lighter. Same shot printed in MSDIS2006. Just reopened and printed no adjustments.

Any ideas

[tim]

I solved the printing problem by calibrating my monitor and having a professional lab do my prints. They know what they're doing in that area, I don't, so I leave it to the experts.

[canon shooter]

I did calibrate the monitor and it made a very BIG difference. But I guess I just don't understand why MSDIS2006 print the correct colors and PSE4 (which is suppose to have better color management) doesn't.

I think this weekend I will try another call to Adobe to see if I can get any help (support experience before was not goo).

[DavidW]

Colour manage once and once only when printing - if you tell Photoshop to manage colours, you must use the right ICC profile for the printer / driver / inks / paper combination, and disable ICM or other corrections in the printer driver.

If you gave details of what printer you were using, it would help.



David

[canon shooter]

Colour manage once and once only when printing - if you tell Photoshop to manage colours, you must use the right ICC profile for the printer / driver / inks / paper combination, and disable ICM or other corrections in the printer driver.

If you gave details of what printer you were using, it would help.



DavidDavid, thanks for your reply. I am using an HP7960. And I calibrated monitor with a Huey. It says it creates profiles and sets up automatically for you.

[DavidW]

There's no need to set the screen profile anywhere in Photoshop - the screen profile is set in Windows and Photoshop picks it up from there. The thing about the Huey behaving automatically is therefore true.


HP tend not to supply ICC profiles with their inkjets, apart from the very expensive professional models (the same is not true of Color LaserJets - most Color LaserJets do have ICC profiles available). If you don't have a profile for your printer / inks / paper combination, you need to leave it to the driver to manage colour.



David

[canon shooter]

Has anyone had any luck with Adobe helping them set up the profiles.

I tried once with PSE3 (which I never got to work) and they said NOT unless you pay $60, then we will try.

MS very helpful on MSDIS 2006

[DavidW]

I suspect the issue is that you haven't got a printer profile.

Quite what is possible here depends on the printer driver. If there's an option to turn off all colour management options in the driver, you can get a profile made by a bureau to match your printer / ink / paper combination for something like US$20-30 (it will only be valid for that particular combination; if you use different papers you need a profile for each paper). However, if you're trying to work round colour management features in the driver that can't be disabled, the results will probably be very poor.


If your complaint is with anyone, I'd argue that it's with HP for not providing ICC profiles for their media in their printers. Adobe software is typically clear enough in what it's doing when it comes to printing with colour management; it's not Adobe's fault that the printer drivers aren't behaving sensibly.

I have a couple of DeskJets myself, but I won't buy one for photographic use (the only DeskJet I bought recently was a DeskJet 450wbt to use as a portable printer with a laptop). For photographic work, most people prefer Canon or Epson printers - both manufacturers supply profiles for their inks and paper with the printer.


Is MSDIS 2006 colour managed? If yes, then I don't quite understand the results. If not, what you got was serendipity; the lack of colour management in the application happened to conspire to give you more the colours that you wanted.

Judging by the MSDIS 2006 manual (http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/a/b/eabffb07-599d-4df3-9aad-7cb5f432e813/suite-manual_v11.pdf), colour management is supported (see page 101 in the manual, which is page 113 in the PDF), though with very limited controls.

You should be able to get the same results in Photoshop Elements, though quite what the settings are called, I don't know, as I use Photoshop CS2. You want to tell Photoshop to let the printer manage the colors. If you have a choice of rendering intent, try Perceptual first, then Relative Colorimetric.



David

[canon shooter]

I suspect the issue is that you haven't got a printer profile.

Quite what is possible here depends on the printer driver. If there's an option to turn off all colour management options in the driver, you can get a profile made by a bureau to match your printer / ink / paper combination for something like US$20-30 (it will only be valid for that particular combination; if you use different papers you need a profile for each paper). However, if you're trying to work round colour management features in the driver that can't be disabled, the results will probably be very poor.


If your complaint is with anyone, I'd argue that it's with HP for not providing ICC profiles for their media in their printers. Adobe software is typically clear enough in what it's doing when it comes to printing with colour management; it's not Adobe's fault that the printer drivers aren't behaving sensibly.

I have a couple of DeskJets myself, but I won't buy one for photographic use (the only DeskJet I bought recently was a DeskJet 450wbt to use as a portable printer with a laptop). For photographic work, most people prefer Canon or Epson printers - both manufacturers supply profiles for their inks and paper with the printer.


Is MSDIS 2006 colour managed? If yes, then I don't quite understand the results. If not, what you got was serendipity; the lack of colour management in the application happened to conspire to give you more the colours that you wanted.

Judging by the MSDIS 2006 manual (http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/a/b/eabffb07-599d-4df3-9aad-7cb5f432e813/suite-manual_v11.pdf), colour management is supported (see page 101 in the manual, which is page 113 in the PDF), though with very limited controls.

You should be able to get the same results in Photoshop Elements, though quite what the settings are called, I don't know, as I use Photoshop CS2. You want to tell Photoshop to let the printer manage the colors. If you have a choice of rendering intent, try Perceptual first, then Relative Colorimetric.



DavidDavid,

Thanks for your input. I will take a closer look at printer set up. Although I know that it is set for the paper I am using. Does that mean the printer / PSE4 should be set up correctly or is there other fine tuning to do?

After the Huey it is 1000 times closer, just not getting exactly what I see or what I get with MSDIS2006. For ex. I printed the same photo on both and with PSE4 I get a little more of a yellowish cast, and in B&W it was a little lighter. But after comparing the lighter may actually be a closer.

After you look at the two so much your eyes start playing tricks on you!!

Thanks again

[DavidW]

Screen to print matching is never 100%, simply because of the physics involved.

There are a couple of large effects in play. Firstly, the screen and the printer will have different gamuts - some colours that are in gamut on your printer will probably not be in gamut on your monitor, and vice versa. Secondly, colours can look different in an emissive setup (your monitor) versus a reflective setup (your print). Other factors that matter include the colour temperature and spectrum of the illumination used to view the print.

If you had an accurate ICC profile of the printer / paper / ink combination, you could use that to soft proof the results, which is where the monitor displays the nearest possible match to what you'll get if you print (a hard proof). I have and use profiles for both my Canon i865 inkjet and my HP Color LaserJet 3800dtn, and the soft proofs are pretty helpful for both these devices.

I suspect I have a higher end monitor setup than you, too - the calibration system is Monaco OPTIX XR Pro, and the monitor is a Dell 2005FPW, which is a good quality IPS based LCD. However, I don't think that matters that much here. The biggest problem is that without an ICC profile for the printer, you can't soft proof.



David

[canon shooter]

Screen to print matching is never 100%, simply because of the physics involved.

There are a couple of large effects in play. Firstly, the screen and the printer will have different gamuts - some colours that are in gamut on your printer will probably not be in gamut on your monitor, and vice versa. Secondly, colours can look different in an emissive setup (your monitor) versus a reflective setup (your print). Other factors that matter include the colour temperature and spectrum of the illumination used to view the print.

If you had an accurate ICC profile of the printer / paper / ink combination, you could use that to soft proof the results, which is where the monitor displays the nearest possible match to what you'll get if you print (a hard proof). I have and use profiles for both my Canon i865 inkjet and my HP Color LaserJet 3800dtn, and the soft proofs are pretty helpful for both these devices.

I suspect I have a higher end monitor setup than you, too - the calibration system is Monaco OPTIX XR Pro, and the monitor is a Dell 2005FPW, which is a good quality IPS based LCD. However, I don't think that matters that much here. The biggest problem is that without an ICC profile for the printer, you can't soft proof.



DavidDavid,
Sorry to be such a pest. When I pick the printer profile I have picked the one for the paper I am using. So I am assuming I do have ICC profile set up for printer.

Not sure what a soft proof is and how you get that with PSE4 and monitor. Is this just when you do print preview??

[DavidW]

When you say printer profile, do you mean selecting the paper type in the printer driver? If so, that's just a driver setting - there's not necessarily an ICC profile sat under it all.

Soft proofing works pretty much as I said - if the feature exists in Elements, check the help file for "soft proof".



David