Color Management & Printing: 2022 newly saved PSD file vs 2018 PSD file print differently

IMO, you are doing the right thing by removing the "convert to Lab" step - Lab is a BIG colurspace, so the granularity of datapoints is effectively reduced.

Bottom line, you could convert a file with a nice smooth colour gradation from AdobeRGB (1998) into Lab and then convert back and it would potentially lose the smoothness. (working in 16 bit would help but I cant think of a good reason to go to Lab unless you have some special Lab only colour edit move you like to use) 

I hope this helps
neil barstow, colourmanagement net :: adobe forum volunteer
google me "neil barstow colourmanagement" for lots of free articles on colour management
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Hey all, thanks for the responses.  About a year ago, I had a custom profile created for a couple of my preferred papers. I also have some actions that convert master files to flattened print files.  The old action (from a printing class I took with Charles Cramer) converted files to LAB (I can't even tell you techincally why but it worked for me in my workflow).  The new action does not.  Between the actions and the profiles across files created at different times, I completely confused myself as to what worked with what.  After blowing through about 20 test prints, I figured it out.  Bottom line.  User error.

BTW, I'd also been printing (Epson 9900) with 16 Bit selected which was an additional fly in the ointment.

You can't really print from Lab; a conversion to RGB, something you may not be controlling is happening. This has nothing to do with bit depth; 8-bits of good data is all you need, very few print drivers can even deal with high bit data (again, they will convert this to 8-bits per color). 

You should always test output using good color reference images designed for that task. The color reference images RGB values are such 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.gballard.net/photoshop/pdi_download/

http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html#TestPrint

http://www.digitaldog.net/files/2014PrinterTestFileFlat.tif.zip

"Then the idea occurred to me to just copy the layer inside the 2022 file into the 2018 file and print from that."

so you added the 2022 layer to the 2018 file [in the current Photoshop version] and saved then printed and ity was OK? That would seem to rule out an issue when files are saved.

You should be making a copy then flattening to print, printed appearance sometimes fails when printing layered files.

"my process coverts them to LAB for printing" 

please tell more and explain why?

I hope this helps
neil barstow, colourmanagement net :: adobe forum volunteer
google me "neil barstow colourmanagement" for lots of free articles on colour management
[please only use the blue reply button at the top of the page, this maintains the original thread title and chronological order of posts]

Do both Images have the same embedded profile?