Pink/magenta colour accentuated in prints when using soft proofing in Lightroom

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
November 26, 2022
4 replies
3774 views

I recently printed a fine art photography portfolio on German etching matt paper. The prints exactly matched the soft proofing images in Lightroom. Happy days. My Adobe account expired and I created a new Adobe Lightroom account. I printed the same images again but now the colours do not match the previous prints.

There is a heightened pink / magenta saturation in the warm areas of the prints. I've read that this is common when double colour management is occuring. I am however sure that Lightroom is controlling the colour management. Hopefully I'm making a school boy error and there is an obvious solution. Can anyone help. I'd be very grateful.( I'm using an Epson Photo stylus r2880 printer.) Thanks.

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Sean McCormack

Community Expert

If Lightroom Classic in managing colour, you need to choose a profile for the paper you're using in the dialog. It needs to match the one selected in the Epson settings, and the Epson needs to be set to No Color Management.

Definitely try @TheDigitalDog's reference image as it's a known and as recommended, start from scratch.

Sean McCormack. Author of 'Essential Development 3'. Magazine Writer. Former Official Fuji X-Photographer.

G

GabaldoniAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thanks for getting back to me.

Yes I have chosen the same profile in Lightroom and in the printer dialogue box.

(Please also see my reply to the digital dog above.)
If you have any ideas they'd be greatly received.

TheDigitalDog

Inspiring

You should always test output using good color reference images designed for that task. The color reference images RGB values are such that they are set for output and are editing and display agnostic. Test the output this way and examine for the same color issues so we know it's not your image-specific issues causing the problems:
http://www.digitaldog.net/files/2014PrinterTestFileFlat.tif.zip

Start from scratch, reconfigure ever option in LR Print module AND driver, make a new user template and test again.

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management/pluralsight"

G

GabaldoniAuthor

Participating Frequently

Hi, and thanks for the test page.

I printed your reference image in Lightroom using the same paper profile. All colours look pretty good except the neutral stone wall bottom left which had a pinky warm feel. This is similar to my issue in my new portfolio prints. (I have not yet printed with the print driver as I have never done this before.) However, I exported an image as a TIFF and printed using photoshop and soft proofing with the same paper profile and once again the pink tinge in the neutral area was present.

Even though the colour settings is OFF (No colour adjustment.) and greyed out in the print settings panel I wonder if I am somehow guilty of double colour management. Is there a process I can follow to ensure this is turned off?

Thanks again for you help.

TheDigitalDog

Inspiring

When everything is set up correctly, Photoshop and Lightroom Classic will print identically. I just tested this again since there's a new (Mac) OS I updated, and new versions of both Adobe products. All is fine. So again, this really looks like some setting in LRs Print Module that isn't matching PS or ideal. Also, when using an Epson printer and its native driver, never use a Preset in that driver within LR. Always set it to "Preset: None" as all the presets you could make (and use in PS) are stored in the template, and not selecting "None" can result in incorrect output.

IF PS/LR match but you have a non-neutral appearing natural, this is due to the profile used (not ideal) or some change in printer behavior since the profile was made. Profiles do as the name implies: they profile device behavior. If as an example, the paper manufacturer didn't produce the identical paper from batch to batch, if you used a 3rd party ink that did the same, then the original profile isn't correct.

Very unlike you got double color management for a number of reasons (one being, it would look awful everywhere, and 2nd, it's nearly impossible to do these days on Mac with Adobe products).

Forget Soft Proofing for now, that's a vastly different color management path to look into. Let's worry about the output first.

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management/pluralsight"