Print Space--Intent

[Steven M. Anthony]

In PS CS, when you "print with preview," you can choose different Print Space Intents. The PS CS manual says you can do this, but doesn't describe what the various Intents mean or when you would want to use one over another. Can anyone help me here?

Thanks!

[MTalley]

I ran across an excellent description of each intent on the internet somewhere. From what I gathered from it, though, using Perceptual intent was pretty much the best all around choice for printing on your own printer at home. That's what I've been using with excellent results. I think it also recommended turning "Black Point Compensation" on.

[MTalley]

Ah, here it is:

Click Here (http://photography.about.com/library/weekly/aa033103c.htm)

Warning: this link is on About.com, which is heavily laden with annoying popups. However, the article is pretty informative.

[J Rabin]

Steven.
You will need to do some "color management" study. First, are you using a color managed workflow setup? HOW an image's "out of gamut colors" are mapped when converting from one Color Space to another is the job of the rendering intents. If you're not using a color managed workflow, fretting over it is a waste of time. It's difficult to predict the outcome of conversion and pointless to worry about the two intents unless you have some assurance what you see is accurate.

1. Of the four methods PS provides, only Peceptual and Relative Colorometric are useful in photography. The other two are useful for things like business graphics, etc.
2. Make sure you know what your paper manufacturer recommends and use that. If you send work for CYMK printing, with it's narrower color output range, then Rendering Intents are really important.
3. PS defaults to Relative Colorometric with Black Point Compensation.
4. Use the Adobe (ACE) conversion engine and leave Dithering on to avoid banding problems.
5. For 80-90% of my work, I use Perceptual with BlackPoint on, except when it results in a desaturation, when the paper demands Relative Colorometric, or when printing some high key images. Perceptual is particularly good on images shot with flash or outdoor high contrast that have some darker shadow areas.
6. You will find passionate recommendations in favor of either Relative Intent or Perceptual. Interestingly, many UK and AUS users prefer Perceptual. Many US prefer Relative. I take the approach of letting the image tones direct the method, but as noted 80%+ it's Perceptual for my kind of photos. Yours may vary.
7. There are plenty of web tutorials. Check CreativePro.com and others.

Hope this tiny bit helps. Jack

[Steven M. Anthony]

Thanks to both of you. Very helpful information--at least in terms of knowing what it all refers to! I generally use Perceptual and have been happy with the results. But I always wondered what it all meant.

Thanks again!

[slin100]

According to Real World Color Management, the characteristic difference between Perceptual and Relative Colormetric intents is that Perceptual compresses the source gamut to fit into the target gamut (i.e. it scales all colors to preserve the relative color relationships), whereas Relative Colormetric leaves in-gamut colors untouched and clips out-of-gamut colors to the closest in-gamut hue. It's ironic that Perceptual maintains relative color relationships and Relative Colormetric does not.

With Perceptual, you lose absolute color accuracy because all colors are scaled, even those in gamut of both source and target color spaces.

In the end, neither Perceptual nor Relative Colormetric are absolutely better. Which intent to use depends on the image. In fact the advice of most experts is to try both when converting an image and pick the more pleasing conversion.

[Steven M. Anthony]

So when Epson says their new ink for the R2400 (and larger) printer has a wider color gamut, it means that whether you go Perceptual or Relative Colormetric, there should be less clipping (vs. a printer with a narrower gamut ink set).