PAPER PROFILE AND PRINTING

saraths7804510  wrote If my doubt is absurd please tell me how to correctly assign paper profile. Whether paper profile should be applied on image or on printer only or on both AND  what is the significane of  color management in lightroom.

Color management is very significant in Lightroom. Fortunately, Lightroom automates color management more than most other applications, because you don't have to think about profiles as you import or edit. Only when exporting and printing.

For printing, you can either:

• Choose a printer profile in Lightroom, and turn off color management in the printer driver settings
• Choose "Managed by Printer" in Lightroom, and apply color management in the printer driver settings.

But do not choose a printer profile in Lightroom and also manage color in the printer driver settings, because that would be a double correction and it will print incorrectly. All of this is also true for Photoshop.

In Lightroom you can't change the profile used for editing, but that's OK because Lightroom handles that properly. What you can do is use the Soft Proofing and Proof Copy features to apply a printer profile to the on-screen preview of the image to simulate how the print will look, and edit within that simulation. If you master this, you can save time and money by needing fewer test prints.

saraths7804510  wrote     1)  In order to get a photo good print should i necessarily apply the same default paper profile of my printer  on to image which i want to print out. That is, consider if my printers default paper profile is X, then should i assign/convert my image into profie X  in photoshop ??

Converting to the printer profile while editing is not recommended or necessary. Leave the photo in its original profile, and only apply the printer profile when printing or through soft proofing. The reason is in the next explanation.

saraths7804510  wrote     2)  Even though i take printout in glossy photo paper and printers default profile is also glossy one, what if i apply plain paper profile on image and later print it out ?

If you use Convert to Profile to convert an image to a glossy paper profile, you permanently alter and restrict that image to the colors of that profile and throw out the rest of the colors, so the image might not print properly on matte papers or different glossy papers. You only need to apply the printer profile when printing (or soft-proofing). If you do it this way, the printer profile will only affect the print and won't alter the original image. You want to the image to keep all of its original colors, and use the printer profile only to affect the output to different papers and printers. This is why you don't need to convert the image profile in Photoshop or Lightroom.

Color management is tricky and confusing; it takes some time to study and understand all of the variables and interactions. Getting a very close match between the display and the print can get complicated. But if you calibrate your display and use profiles properly, you can get pretty good results as a beginner.

There is no need to convert to, or assign a printing profile to an image.

This is done by Lightroom (or Photoshop) as long as you have chosen the correct profile under Color management in the Print Job panel.

2)  Even though i take printout in glossy photo paper and printers default profile is also glossy one, what if i apply plain paper profile on image and later print it out ?

Since you are not applying any printer profiles to images, this is not a problem.

Just choose the correct profile when printing.

3) In lightroom print section, in profile section what profile should i give?                                    a) profile applied on to image                                    b) default profile of printer

Choose the profile for the paper you are printing on.

I assume that your printer came with a set of profiles, and they were probably installed when you installed the printer.

what is the significane of  color management in lightroom.

The basis of color management is the monitor profile, which Lightroom uses to display images correctly.

If the monitor profile is not accurately describing your monitor, you will not see correct colors on screen, and this will also affect prints.

Monitor manufacturerer's profiles are very often low quality, or even defective, so many people use hardware calibrators to calibrate and profile their monitors, which creates a new and accurate monitor profile.

Having an accurate monitor profile also makes it more likely that other people will see your work correctly on their monitors, although there is no guarantee for that.

[ moved from Adobe Creative Cloud to Lightroom Classic CC]