Color space - help required!!!

Even after reading numerous sites and posts on this forum, I am still unable to resolve the color space issue I am seeing and any advice would be appreciated greatly.
In a nutshell, the issue is that I cannot get Adobe RGB files to print as I am seeing them on screen. Working in photoshop with the Adobe RGB Colorspace I have loaded the PhotoDisc color test guide Jpeg (the one with babies and color charts) that has the Adobe profile embedded. If I print with preview, the print screen that appears (canon ip4000 preview window) looks desaturated compared to the photoshop image. The print that comes out of hte ip4000 looks exactly the same as the desaturated preview image but is therfore not what was seen in photoshop. Interestingly, going to the assign profile dialogue box in photoshop (with preview on) and clicking sRGB shows a dramatic change in the opened image,desaturating it and making it look like the print preview and final print. It is almost as though the Adobe RGB profile is never getting to the printer driver and RGB is is what is being output. I have calibrated the monitor several times (with gamma rather than hardware, with the Adobe RGB icc file as a starting point) and am fairly happy that it is close to what it should be. I have followed various set ups, including the ones in the ICC Profiles Guide PDF from canon; trying both the 'let printer determine profile' and 'let photoshop determine profile'.
I Guess I could alter the monitor setup so as to show what I am seeing in the final print, but obviously after image manipulation, if these are sent to a lab and printed, the printed colors would be wrong (more saturated I guess). If it transpires that it is likely to be monitor setup then I suppose a hardware profiler is the way to go.
Thanks in advance.

This is because Adobe RGB is designed for litho printing and not for photographic or 'home' printing. It is just a wider gamut than any inkjet etc. printer can reproduce. Virtually all labs' machines run either SRGB or a very similar variation (pro labs will usually have any custom profile available for download) and most decent home printers have their own colour profile (which, again, is close to SRGB). So the answer is, unless you are preparing files for printing in a magazine or brochure don't bother with Adobe RGB.

Hm.

Would not quite agree here.

Kind of tied up right now.
More to come.

My take. Litho uses cmyk, so adobe rgb is not correct for litho.

If your original file was shot in argb, then there is some advantage is editing it in photoshop in that colour space. Many printers use their own custom profiles (even desktop models), that are able to utilise the larger gamut that argb has.

Graham

Try using sRgb, tell us if it works.

Why have you started out calibrating your monitor with the Adobe RGB profile? I suspect the R, G and B values in the profile are some considerable way off your monitor's phosphors. Try starting with the manufacturer's profile for the monitor if there is one, otherwise the sRGB profile.


I've just checked the manufacturer's profile for my monitor (Dell 2005FPW) against the sRGB profile, and the rXYZ, gXYZ and bXYZ values are pretty similar between the two. I can't easily tell you the measured rXYZ, gXYZ, bXYZ values for my monitor using my hardware calibration setup, as I create table based profiles that don't contain these tags.

What I can tell you is that these values in the Adobe RGB profiles are way different from both the manufacturer's profile and the sRGB profile - especially the gXYZ and to an extent the bXYZ (this is expected, as the Adobe RGB gamut is larger particularly in the green area). There are few monitors that have the full Adobe RGB gamut, but you've effectively told your colour management system that your monitor has that full gamut by starting from the Adobe RGB profile when 'calibrating'.


Hardware calibration is always the best idea. Without accurate monitor calibration, colour management is not likely to be that helpful.

If you have to use software calibration, calibrate your monitor starting from either the manufacturer's profile if there is one, otherwise the sRGB profile. Do the results make more sense now?

David

You got the boffins here now Chris. If they don`t sort you out nobody will !

In my opinion, you should look into soft proofing. When you properly configure View->Proof Setup for you destination printer and you do a Ctrl-Y to switch between "normal" view and "Proof Color", you will probably see the same phenomenon of the dull image. (no guaratee on that).

If you do see such a change, then you need to edit your RGB mode image while observing it in "Proof Color" and while keeping a duplicate of that same image as it's supposed to look alongside. Once your edits are completed, you will have compensated the the original for your printer profile.

For additional information on this procedure, please see
Tutorial on Soft Proofing and Printing Under Color Management:
http://www.zaffora.com …gUnderColorMana​gement.htm
or the downloadable PDF version from:
http://www.zaffora.com …gUnderColorMana​gement.pdf

Many thanks for the advice so far. I will perform more testing/investigation based on these suggestions later today, when I get a chance, and report back.
Incidentally, I switched to using AdobeRGB as a startpoint for profiling the monitor in Gamma following a suggestion I found on the web. However, on reflection, using the monitor profile would indeed seem to be a better place to start.

I've had a play around now and things are much better. I've included some details below in case it is of any use to anyone else trying to conquer this beast of a subjuct:
Printing an sRGB Image - same problem
Re-Ran the Gamma calibration using the monitor base profile as a start point and realised that the profile (and drivers) for the monitor were default plug an play ones- DOH!) - aquired these and re-ran Gamma - much better. Note: Do not use AdobeRGB icc file as start point for monitor calibration it is bad!
Bob, thanks for the link to the proofing PDF - very interesting. Had a quick play and unfortunately ended up with a muddy/dull print. However, the principle seems spot on an I will re-test after re calibrating again with fresh eyes!
I think with a small amount of time now I should be able to get it so that the only difference is the luminosity of the monitor which the printer obviously cannot reproduce. I think I might send off a test image to a couple of labs and compare them to my outputs once I am happy with my setup.
Finally, I am not convinced that LCD's are as good at seeing nuances of color/brighness etc. as CRT ones (although admitedly it is not an expensive monitor); looking at the sample of the clifton suspension bridge from Adrian in the Dull print post, my monitor displays it as looking o.k for printing (although monitor comparisons is for another day)
Incidentally, during the tests I found no difference between letting photoshop determine printing colors and the printer determining the colors (both methods are as detailed inthe canon ICC profiling pdf).
Thanks again for all the useful suggestions

That sounds reasonable. The problem that everyone cautions about is the case where Photoshop thinks it is supposed to do everything, but internal to the printer driver the Color Management feature is turned on, and it thinks it's supposed to do everything - then you definitely get a bad print.

Yep LCDs vary massively. Pay more and they get better as usual with most things in life. Something may be amiss if you're getting the same result letting PS determine colour or using printer colour management. For printing I now always use a specific ICC profile for my printer & paper combination, assigning in PS and switching off printer CM. When you are letting PS decide colours, what output colour profile are you using?

If it's any help my total colour workflow is as follows:-

1. Software calibrated monitor ICC profile
2. Images assigned with custom camera ICC colour profile when opening in PS
3. Set PS to open images using embedded colour space rather than default
4. Print from PS using custom printer/paper ICC profile as output
5. All printer colour management switched off

Seems to work quite well, but prints are usually a little darker than they appear on screen. As you would expect. I sometimes compensate a little for this as required.

I think some people get very confused between generic standard colour spaces like SRGB or ARGB and hardware specific colour profiles for cameras, monitors, printers etc. The most common mistake is to try and use a generic colour space as a hardware profile eg using SRGB as a monitor profile or worse still as a printer profile!

In both cases I am setting the printer profile as the appropriate canon one, in this case, photo paper pro (PR1). Where PS is doing the assigning, I setup the printer/paper profile there and turn off the ICM on the printer driver. Where PS lets the pinter do the assigning, I specify the printer profile in the printer and turn on ICM. Presumably, if either PS OR the print driver are set to use the same ICC for outputting to printer, the results should be the same; it would only be where there is a conflict (which would be v. easy to do!!!) that differences would occur.
Thanks for the sample workflow. I am still not fully decided on exactly what setup to use, but following various examples and info. I have seen etc. I am leaning towards the following (which is fairly similar to your own):
1. Shoot in Raw (giving the option to convert to whatever and retain a digital 'negative')
2. Software calibrated monitor (depending on how strong the urge for a hardware calibrating gadget gets )
3. Convert Raw to Adobe RGB for PS (I will experiment with PhotoPro / Camera embedded profiles in the future)
4. Print from PS using paper/ printer ICC, turning all printer management off in the driver.

I agree that there is much confusion around this subject, I'm sure it could have been implemented in a more user friendly way (although exactly how, I am not sure).

Chris,

Been in the background on this, letting others help you out.

But 2 things to keep in mind.
1. Once you have converted your RAW file into a workable image you should never and i repeat never be assigning a profile to your images. You only want to convert from one space/profile to another.

2. When printing you either want Photoshop or the print driver to do the conversions, not both. If this happens your vocabulary(of dirty words) will expand to a monstrous proportion.

Some logic assuming you are using PSCS2 for RAW conversion.

Before the RAW file is opened in PS it is completely void of any form of color profile. In the RAW conversion a camera profile is assigned to your image.
This sets in what the RGB color numbers "mean". Meaning, ha ha, these color numbers represent what the camera sees or how it can see the world. From there the RAW converter converts from the camera profile, which has been assigned to the image by the inner workings of the RAW converter, to one of the 4 working spaces/profles; sRGB, ColorMatch, AdobeRGB or ProPhoto.
Ok. So now you adjust the image and are ready to print.
What happens now, or should happen, is that the image is converted by PSCS or a print driver/RIP to the output/printer space and printed to the media.

This make sense?
I can elaborate

Thanks for that UncleDoug. I was starting to think that assigning colourspaces to images in PS was not a good idea so nice to see it in writing. Yes, I think I will leave the printer conversion to Photoshop and switch everything off in the printer driver (saving the correct settings in the printer driver, as the default values in this seem to change depending on the weather).
As a slight asside, I think the interface canon have provided for the driver is fairly pants, unless you want little control and want to set things like vivid etc. and let it do its own thing; I had the quality set to high, which I thought was the highest, for quite a while before realising if you click custom, you can knock this up a notch to fine.

No need to elaborate at this stage, it makes perfect sense (until I hit a brick wall when putting it all in to practice )
I think I am going to have a lot of 'fun' using RAW files, but I guess half the fun is in the journey...