Colour profile problems – help needed

"John" wrote in message

This is driving me crazy.

Windows XP, PS CS2, Epson C66 printer

I have a monitor profile I am sure I made a long time ago using Adobe Gamma. It may have come with the monitor driver though. I am not sure. That works fine and what I see on the screen matches reality quite closely. I judge this both on shots straight from the camera and from scanned pictures.

It I set PS to use another profile say Adobe RGB everything becomes very vivid and basically dreadful. Over saturated and has a green cast on the screen.

If I save the picture from the monitor profile set up, usually as a psd file, I can then print it from AcDsee with colour management turned off and again get a close match between the print and the screen. Turning the colour management on does not seem to have much effect provided I set the options to be the same for the monitor and printer either Adobe RGB or sRGB

If I try to print directly from Photoshop with it set to the monitor profile and the screen looking OK I the print is washed out and now has a magenta cast. – The opposite effect of what I see on the screen when using Adobe RGB.

I guess I am missing something basic – Any thoughts ??

John

Yes, you are missing something.

If you have Ps installed you can still use Adobe Gamma to recalibrate & profile your Monitor. This needs to be redone fairly often, a profile from a few years ago won’t be accurate now.

I am assuming you are using a CRT, Adobe Gamma is not recommended for most Flat Panel Monitors.

This will give you a Monitor Profile which should give you accurate Colour on screen, once you ensure that Ps is using it. That is all it does, and is all it is meant to do – clue "Monitor" profile.

What you need to make accurate Colour Prints is a Printer / Paper Profile. This will ensure your Printer is producing accurate colour on that particular Paper, when you use Ps to Print.

Adobe RGB, sRGB, Pro Photo RGB, etc, are Working Space Profiles which Ps uses in the background to do its number crunching. They control the width of the colour range – Gamut.

Have a look at www.ayrphoto.co.uk > Notices and Info > How to print for accurate Colour. This will give you a workflow and some instructions on Colour Management.

Or if your printer is an Epson, go to http://tech.epson.au for specific workflows with specific Epson Printers, editions of Ps and Operating Sytems. You will also be able to download Printer/Paper Profiles for Epson Printers and Papers. If you are not also using Epson Ink, these will be useless.

Roy G

"John" wrote in message

This is driving me crazy.

Windows XP, PS CS2, Epson C66 printer

I have a monitor profile I am sure I made a long time ago using Adobe Gamma. It may have come with the monitor driver though. I am not sure. That works fine and what I see on the screen matches reality quite closely. I judge this both on shots straight from the camera and from scanned pictures.

This probably means your monitor is reasonably well set up. It is possible, though, that your images have a systematic color cast that is reversed by your monitor profile. To check against this, create an artificial gradient in Photoshop, from black to white, and make sure it has no color banding.

It I set PS to use another profile say Adobe RGB everything becomes very vivid and basically dreadful. Over saturated and has a green cast on the screen.

PS has a number of settings that involve profiles. If you are using your monitor profile as your working space, that’s a mistake in that your images are tied to your personal system, and in most cases they will look funny on other systems.

If I save the picture from the monitor profile set up, usually as a psd file, I can then print it from AcDsee with colour management turned off and again get a close match between the print and the screen. Turning the colour management on does not seem to have much effect provided I set the options to be the same for the monitor and printer either Adobe RGB or sRGB

This sounds like you are setting Adobe RGB as your printer space too – also not a standard way of doing things.

If I try to print directly from Photoshop with it set to the monitor profile and the screen looking OK I the print is washed out and now has a magenta cast. – The opposite effect of what I see on the screen when using Adobe RGB.

I guess I am missing something basic – Any thoughts ??

Run Adobe Gamma again to refresh your monitor profile. Use Adobe RGB or sRGB as your working space, and use the following article as a basis setting up your printer color management:
http://www.computer-darkroom.com/ps9_print/ps9_print_1.htm —
Mike Russell
www.curvemeister.com/forum/

Thanks to Mike and Roy for those links I will certainly study them

I do use a flat panel monitor so perhaps the profile came with that. As I tried to explain but probably not too well the screen profile works OK and I am happy with that. It may not be perfect but as what I do is only for me and the family I can live with any very slight differences there may be.

What frustrates me is that I can get good prints from AcDsee that closely match what I see on the screen but not directly from Photoshop. It seems that PS is sending different info to the printer that is not sent by AcDsee using the same image file. I would just like to be able to turn that off.

Oh well off to the web to see what I can find.

John

"John" wrote in message

Thanks to Mike and Roy for those links I will certainly study them
I do use a flat panel monitor so perhaps the profile came with that. As I tried to explain but probably not too well the screen profile works OK and I am happy with that. It may not be perfect but as what I do is only for me and the family I can live with any very slight differences there may be.

Fine – there is no need to deal with this further.

What frustrates me is that I can get good prints from AcDsee that closely match what I see on the screen but not directly from Photoshop. It seems that PS is sending different info to the printer that is not sent by AcDsee using the same image file. I would just like to be able to turn that off.

Let’s back off and simplify. You can probably get the same result as ACDSee if you print your images with "No Color Management", selected in the Print Preview dialog. I recommend that you also turn off color management completely in Photoshop by typing ctrl-shift-K and selecting "Color Management Off".

Once you have this working, you may choose to use color management at some point in the future. This is recommended as a general practice, particularly if you are exchanging images with other people. —
Mike Russell
www.curvemeister.com/forum/