Color spaces, printing, and PS Elements 3

[Hellashot]

Color spaces, mainly camera settings, have been discussed here a lot. I was printing 4x6's of RAW images taken in Adobe RGB and noticed faces washed out and a little lack of detail. I thought my $99 Canon i560 printer wasn't good enough for what I wanted to see.

Then I noticed an unchecked "more options" box on the print screen in PS Elements 3. Checking this box gave options to many different color spaces to print from, including 4 or 5 for my i560 (different drivers). I then printed with the color space for my printer driver (using relative colormetric, I'll explain later) and the print turned out very similar to my screen.

Here's the kicker. The default color space for printing was sRGB. I also printed in Adobe RGB and both sRGB and Adobe RGB printed very similar - washed out. Does this put a kink in anyone's idea of color spaces?

Also in the more print options, there were 4 choices for color "intent". Relative, Absolute, saturation, and another I can't recall. Absolute cranked colors up, saturation blew saturation too far up, but relative seemed to print the most accurate.

Has anyone else dealt with these options in PS Elements 3 or similar print options?

[ejwebb]

I have PSE 3 and am aware of the options you discuss - although I don't know what they all mean! However, to clarify, when you take a RAW image it has no color profile - the profile is determined upon covnersion by the RAW image converter - either the ACR converter in PSE 3 or an external converter like DPP. With the ACR in PSE 3, the color profile is determined based on the color space selected when you open the file into the editor. See color preferences - "no color management" ignores profiles, "limited color management" uses sRGB and "full color management" uses Adobe RGB. If you want Adobe RGB you have to be working in Adobe RGB when you convert the file, same for sRGB.

I have received the following advice (and follow it) regarding print preferences in PSE 3:

- working color space (uses sRGB or Adobe RGB depending on the preference described above)
- printer color management (allows the printer to manage colors for printing rather than PSE 3)
- relative colormetric

Not sure exactly how it all works together but this does gets my prints closest to my monitor. Now, if Santa comes through with that Spyder...I guess I'll just have to go and profile my printer and papers, and get a new monitor, it never ends..........