Colour Management between PSD, ID and Canon Desktop Printer

Question

HiI appreciate that this may have been asked many times. However, I am looking for an absolute 'idtiot's' guide to setting up an ICC Profile for Photoshop CS6 / InDesign CS6 and my Canon Pixma MG5450 printer.I undertand the theory behind colour management / calibration, I'm just no good at it so I am looking for some simple instructions that will give me a printed output that will look reasonably close to the screen version.I am placing images edited in PS CS6 into ID CS6 and then printing the final document on my Canon Pixma MG5450 color printer. These are just meant to be drafts but the colours, when printed, look nothing like the screen versions. I understand why I just don't know what would be the best ICC Profile to use for both PS and ID. I am based in the UK (I don't know if the effects which profile to use) and I am using a Windows 7 PC.I don't really have the wherewithall to calibrate my monitor so I suspect I'm not going to get like for like. But any advice / help will be very much appreciated.ThanksGeorge

NB, colourmanagement · Accepted Answer

Hi GeorgeI'd definitely recommend that you test print from Photoshop first, inDesign print dialogs should be set the same - and it'll print the same.You're right about having no screen calibration ruining your chances of getting a match, "out of the box" / as delivered display screens tend to be set up rather cool (blueish) and bright in appearance, so you'd expect warmer darker prints. There are inexpensive screen cal solutions, you'd be crazy to carry on without screen calibration if you care at all about printed appearance. Good calibration could save you wasting a LOT of ink and paper too.I suggest starting by printing my test-image as it WAS set up on a colour managed system - download here: http://www.colourmanagement.net/downloads/CMnet_Pixl_AdobeRGB_testimage05.zip I hope this helps  if so, please do mark my reply as "helpful" and if you're OK now, please mark it as "correct" below, so others who have similar issues can see the solution thanksneil barstow, colourmanagement

NB, colourmanagement · Answer

Hi GeorgeThere's some info here about ICC profiles and their use which I hope would help with your understanding of them. color management / colormanagement : about icc colour profiles Installing the printer profile On Windows ’95, and later, simply right-click the profile and select the Install Profile contextual menu item. The profile will be placed in the correct location. If this doesn’t work for some reason, please consult the user manual. In order to use an ICC profile on a Mac using you should put your profiles under Library > ColorSync > Profiles if you are system administrator. If not you can put them under User > Library > ColorSync > Profiles. Rendering intents Converting between ICC colour space profiles includes the option to choose between different rendering intents. Rendering intent control the way colour is scaled when converted between colour spaces. Four different intents are offered, however only three are sensible choices for photographic imagery. Using the Perceptual rendering intent, while printing an RGB image, will yield nice looking colour. Perceptual intent attempts to utilise the full gamut of your printer, sometimes by altering the hue a little, especially in saturated areas. The print, therefore, may not be an exact representation of the actual image. The Perceptual intent is a common choice for printing where accurate image representation is less important than nice looking colour on the print, as when printing a portfolio. The relative colorimetric rendering intent is often used when attempting to simulate the output of one device on another. The Relative intent has the ability to move “in gamut” colours to the destination space preserving their appearance. Using Relative, however, can result in the reduction of detail and tonal separation in areas of very saturated “out of gamut” colour. For the majority of images, and certainly for CMYK images, this poses no real problem though. Absolute Colorimetric intent his used almost solely to render proofs, i.e press simulations.To print RGB images which will look nice (but not necessarily be an absolutely correct representation of your image data) we would usually convert from our source space/profile to the printers colour space/profile using the perceptual intent. First click the Document radio button in the Source Space rectangle. In the Print Space section under Profile, select your printer profile, i.e. My printer Profile.icc. Then select the rendering intent you would prefer to use, Perceptual or Relative, under Intent, and check Black Point compensation. Using profiles with PhotoshopWhen printing with printer profiles, it is an absolute requirement that you’ve set your printer driver settings exactly as they were when printing the ICC patches used for building your printer profile. And it’s equally crucial that you print on the same type of paper, and use the same type of ink. These are some mac screenshots I had handy.To print images from Photoshop , the easiest way is to simply choose File > Print, and in the resulting window set it as suggested here. First set color handling to : photoshop manages colour next select the relevant ICC profile. Maybe you downloaded it from Canon?[this example is for an Epson 4900 with Exhibition Fiber paper, so the profile for that paper is selected]: on a mac we click "print" to open print settings. [on windows its part of printer properties. it will look similar to this - as far as options goes]its important here to set the media type correctly and then the other settings such as resolution should be the same as those used when making the profile.If the ICC profile maker has not given you that info then best start by testing the defaults for the media type.I hope this gets you off to a good start,of course the ICC profile needs to be good or it's not going to help to use it.I hope this helps  if so, please do mark my reply as "helpful" and if you're OK now, please mark it as "correct" below, so others who have similar issues can see the solution thanksneil barstow, colourmanagement

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