Color management with an Epson inkjet

D
Posted By
Doug
May 30, 2004
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312
Replies
3
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Closed
Hi All,

I’m wondering if anyone can point me to a resource to help understand how to get my Epson printer to produce the same colors as I see onscreen, and/or the same color as is produced by my book-on-demand publisher.. After much experimenting and reading instructions, I’m still clueless.

I have an Epson styluscolor 860, with ver.6 of Photoshop. I’m working with a cmyk image, with "US web coated" as the working profile (as per publisher instructions). The Epson seems to want to use the Adobe RGB (1998) color management profile (it continually defaults to that, anyway). This setting does indeed seem to produce more accurate results than any of the other settings, but it’s still fairly far off from either the computer monitor or the printed book.

If I select "printer color management" for the print space, the color is terrible, and using the Epson "setup" screen to fix or modify the color seems to have no effect — at least not in the preview screen.

The only workaround I’ve found is to place an adjustment layer over the image and manually tweak the colors until the printout matches the screen. That seems mighty primitive with all this fancy color management technology supposedly in place…. 🙂

TIA for any thoughts,
Doug
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J
Jim
May 30, 2004
"Doug" wrote in message
Hi All,

I’m wondering if anyone can point me to a resource to help understand how
to
get my Epson printer to produce the same colors as I see onscreen, and/or the same color as is produced by my book-on-demand publisher.. After much experimenting and reading instructions, I’m still clueless.
Have you created a custom profile for your monitor?
I have an Epson styluscolor 860, with ver.6 of Photoshop. I’m working with
a
cmyk image, with "US web coated" as the working profile (as per publisher instructions).
Go off to Ian Lyon’s website.

Don’t use a printer profile for your working space. Instead, use AdobeRGB and as the last step the appropriate printer profile. "US web coated" may be correct for the press, but it isn’t for your Epson. In PS 7, you can perform soft proofing which may help. However, you should realize that the monitors are all RGB devices. Life is much better when you don’t expect PS to invoke so many color gamut changes.

Instead, you should use one of the Epson profiles provided by PS or create your own. I should observe, that never ever should you send a cmyk image to an inkjet printer. The printer drivers expect an RGB image. The extra steps that you invoke by sending the driver a CMYK image almost certainly invoke poor colors.

Jim
D
Doug
May 31, 2004
Hi Jim,

Wow, the more I read, the more confused I get 😉

"Jim" wrote in message
Have you created a custom profile for your monitor?

Yes.

Go off to Ian Lyon’s website.

Very helpful, thanks, but still trying to wrap my mind around it.

Don’t use a printer profile for your working space.

Is "US web coated" considered a printer profile?

Instead, use AdobeRGB

Adobe itself seems to recomend this, but I’m still finding it hard to believe that I should do this whole project in RGB, when the finished product will be printed in CMYK. I was under the impression that the gamuts for the two were quite different, and I’ve been using the gamut warning feature in PS to select colors that can be printed in CMYK.

PS 6 also has soft proofing. Might it not be better to select the Epson profile as the proof space, and then select "proof setup" as the source space? Or select Adobe RGB as the proof space, and use "color control" in the Epson control panel.

Or… Should I "assign" the AdobeRGB profile to the image, rather than "convert" the profile from CMYK. Ian suggests this at some point.

My head is spinning…

Thanks,
Doug
D
Doug
Jun 1, 2004
Update –

I’ve learned that you can’t assign an RGB profile to a CMYK image, so I guess I’m correct in sensing that they are two very different animals.

Further experimenting (on all that expensive paper…) seems to show that anytime Epson gets involved, the color gets seriously messed up. Setting the proof profile as Epson yields a garish oversaturated disaster, both in the print preview and the actual printout. Selecting AdobeRGB either as the print space, or as the proof space (and printing with that profile) yields "pretty good" results. Oddly, even using the profile I made for my monitor as a print space yields pretty accurate results.

Ian mentions custom profiles that can be purchased or custom made – perhaps that’s what I’m needing here. Lacking the cash for that, perhaps my best bet is to create (by trial and error) an adjustment layer in PS which compensates for the printer’s apparent inaccuracy.

Ah well… 🙂

Doug

"Doug" wrote in message
Hi Jim,

Wow, the more I read, the more confused I get 😉

"Jim" wrote in message
Have you created a custom profile for your monitor?

Yes.

Go off to Ian Lyon’s website.

Very helpful, thanks, but still trying to wrap my mind around it.

Don’t use a printer profile for your working space.

Is "US web coated" considered a printer profile?
Instead, use AdobeRGB

Adobe itself seems to recomend this, but I’m still finding it hard to believe that I should do this whole project in RGB, when the finished product will be printed in CMYK. I was under the impression that the
gamuts
for the two were quite different, and I’ve been using the gamut warning feature in PS to select colors that can be printed in CMYK.
PS 6 also has soft proofing. Might it not be better to select the Epson profile as the proof space, and then select "proof setup" as the source space? Or select Adobe RGB as the proof space, and use "color control" in the Epson control panel.

Or… Should I "assign" the AdobeRGB profile to the image, rather than "convert" the profile from CMYK. Ian suggests this at some point.
My head is spinning…

Thanks,
Doug

How to Master Sharpening in Photoshop

Give your photos a professional finish with sharpening in Photoshop. Learn to enhance details, create contrast, and prepare your images for print, web, and social media.

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