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Bie35883017cv5v
Participant
December 14, 2025
Answered

Printer dialogue "print profiles" has way too many profiles shown

  • December 14, 2025
  • 3 replies
  • 330 views

I have Epson SC-P800 photoprinter and learned with great care how to print with correct colors.  The trick for me is to buy Ilford photopaper, they provide ICC profiles for each paper and printer.  

 

When I print from photoshop, I load - for example - Ilford Smooth glossy paper and select the accomodating printer profile "IGPSGP12_EPSC800_EPGn.icc" -> naming convention of this file is from Ilford themself: paper range, paper type andprinter: IGPSGP stands for: (IG) Ilford Gallery, (PSGP)=Pro Smooth Glossy Paper and EPSC800 = Epson SC800

 

But, when in printer profile, when I open the color profile dialogue, About 100 profiles, unused ones and screen profiles (not needed for printing) are shown.  I really, just want to have a list with all the Ilford photo papers that I use on my printer.  I would be buy 4 different Ilford papers, install 4 print profiles and only see these 4 print profiles when I'm going to print.  It would be very appreciated if there is a preference settings to 'only show custom installed print profiles in print dialogue".  

 

This can't be hard either: in Mac OS on my computer there is only the one profile that I installed in the /Colorsync/Profile list.  The profiles in this folder are the only one I would like to be shown in the printer dialogue when I'm going to print...  

    Correct answer Conrad_C
    quote

    The question is whether there is anything in these printer profiles that makes filtering possible. I don't know.

    By @D Fosse

     

    The one filtering tip that works is the cross-platform shortcut for type-ahead in menus.

     

    For example, on my computer Photoshop shows a very long list of profiles in the Print dialog box. The profiles I need for printing are just the ones for my Epson photo printer. So when I open that profile menu, I will often just start typing the first two or three characters in the profile name. Typing “ep” scrolls the menu straight to the Epson profiles and selects the first profile starting with those two characters. If I’m printing on Hahnemühle Fine Art photo paper, I’ll type “hf” and if it’s a Moab paper I’ll type “mo”.

     

    After it selects the first profile name matching the characters I typed, I can use the up arrow/down arrow keys (or the mouse) to select the profile I actually want out of that group of profile names with a common beginning. Pressing the Enter/Return key commits the profile selection. 

     

    Using this technique, any profile can be selected in two or three seconds, regardless of the length of the profile menu.

     

    But that is just a workaround. Adobe does need to organize and simplify that menu. For example, there is no conceivable reason why the Arri and Canon Cinema profiles need to be in there, those are only input profiles for pro cinema video cameras. Those profiles may be present on the computer when video editing software has been installed, but they have absolutely no role in normal printing. 

    3 replies

    Conrad_C
    Community Expert
    Conrad_CCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
    Community Expert
    December 22, 2025
    quote

    The question is whether there is anything in these printer profiles that makes filtering possible. I don't know.

    By @D Fosse

     

    The one filtering tip that works is the cross-platform shortcut for type-ahead in menus.

     

    For example, on my computer Photoshop shows a very long list of profiles in the Print dialog box. The profiles I need for printing are just the ones for my Epson photo printer. So when I open that profile menu, I will often just start typing the first two or three characters in the profile name. Typing “ep” scrolls the menu straight to the Epson profiles and selects the first profile starting with those two characters. If I’m printing on Hahnemühle Fine Art photo paper, I’ll type “hf” and if it’s a Moab paper I’ll type “mo”.

     

    After it selects the first profile name matching the characters I typed, I can use the up arrow/down arrow keys (or the mouse) to select the profile I actually want out of that group of profile names with a common beginning. Pressing the Enter/Return key commits the profile selection. 

     

    Using this technique, any profile can be selected in two or three seconds, regardless of the length of the profile menu.

     

    But that is just a workaround. Adobe does need to organize and simplify that menu. For example, there is no conceivable reason why the Arri and Canon Cinema profiles need to be in there, those are only input profiles for pro cinema video cameras. Those profiles may be present on the computer when video editing software has been installed, but they have absolutely no role in normal printing. 

    Stephen Marsh
    Community Expert
    Stephen MarshCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    December 14, 2025

    @Bie35883017cv5v 

     

    I think that you will just need to perform manual housekeeping and only install the profiles that you wish to see. I would move the unwanted profiles to another folder in your User account, rather than deleting them, just in case.

     

    Finder Go menu > Go to folder:

     

    ~/Library/ColorSync/Profiles

     

    Or

     

    /Library/ColorSync/Profiles

     

    There are at least two other folders for Adobe installed profiles.

     

    General info on installing ICC colour profiles:

     

    https://www.colourmanagement.net/advice/where-are-my-icc-profiles

     

    https://www.breathingcolor.com/pages/how-to-install-icc-profiles

    https://www.hahnemuehle.com/en/digital-fineart/icc-profile/installing-profiles.html

    https://www.xrite.com/service-support/icc_profile_locations_on_mac_and_pc_operating_systems

    Good luck!

    B
    Bie35883017cv5vAuthor
    Participant
    December 21, 2025

    Thank you for the reply.  I can work with this, I'm actually reaching out to adobe engineers to improve this.  I'm not going to start erasing icc profiles or clean up: all ICC profiles might have it's use, it's just that not every single .icc profile on my computer needs to be shown in the print dialogue.  

     

    It's like fonts: you can have 150 font's installed, of which 5 you use frequently.  When you go to font list in adobe, the top shows you most or recent used fonts and you can sort on 'sans serif' 'serif' fonts and whatsoever.  So the font list can be large, but at least it's manageble because adobe automatically sorts this. (or possibly the iOS system)

     

    About color profiles, I'm no expert, but from usage I seem to understand that icc profiles for me mainly come in 3 categories:

    1) Screen calibration profiles

    Having owned spyder 3 screen calibrator and now Asus PA24US with self calibration, on every calibration session a .icc file named to my screen and date is made.  this is used by the software that comes with spyder or asus and corrects the colors of the screen after wear of the screen to still show correct colors.  These .icc files also show up in the print profile: they shouldn't!

     

    2) creative profiles and color profiles embedded to images

    Since I installed dxO Nik software, which has all these creative filters, it also installed numerous Icc files from AGfa, fujifilm, ... I presume they are needed for dxO NIK collection to work the filter magic, and possible to embed it with a file if you want to store the file with color profile embedded which isn't sRGB or adobeRGB.  Also, when opening files, you always need to have the matching color profile to be able to open the correct file.  Such .icc profiles don't need to be shown in the printer dialogue!

     

    3) Print calibration color profiles.

    And finally, when I purchase illford photo paper, and download the matching color profile with my printer, that is the color profile which I select when printing something to a certain paper to my photo printer.  Those are - in my opinion - the only ones that need to be shown in the print dialogue.

     

    So ultimatly, this post is not a request for help or advice, but a callout to adobe engineers to consider to sort icc profiles in 1) screen calibration 2) post production / image color profile 3) printer profiles 4) ... possibly others and make it overviewable.  Possibly work with favorite selection of profiles so that only your favorites come up in 'proofing' list of print dialogue list?  Anyhow, I'm sure that the management of icc profiles can be improved...

    Conrad_C
    Community Expert
    Conrad_CCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    December 22, 2025

    The funny thing is that Adobe does organize the profile menu…in other places. For example, in Edit > Convert to Profile, the Destination Space profile menu is organized into sections with dividing lines. From the top you have sections like profiles representing working color spaces, custom color spaces, CMYK profiles, gray profiles, RGB profiles, and more. But for some strange reason, in the Print dialog box we only get one big list of profiles in alphabetical order only. 

     

    These profiles are pulled from several different system-level and user-level folders throughout the computer, including private locations not visible to the user such as a subfolder in a printer driver package. You can see this in Apple ColorSync Utility when the profile list is set to Location view.

    quote

    consider to sort icc profiles in 1) screen calibration 2) post production / image color profile 3) printer profiles 4) ...

    By @Bie35883017cv5v

     

    The actual categories are more like:

    Input profiles (to represent the color spaces of photo/video cameras, scanners, etc.) 

    Display profiles (the result of running screen calibration, or standard working spaces such as sRGB)

    Output profiles (such as RGB and CMYK printer profiles)

    Device-link profiles (for specialized color conversions) 

    Abstract profiles (can represent a look, such as sepia, instead of a standard color space) 

    …and more. This list came from Apple ColorSync Utility when sorting the profile list by Class. 

     

    For the Print dialog box, output profiles should be listed first. For the rest, which don’t really apply to printing, it doesn’t matter as much how they’re organized; it might be good to simply have an option that suppresses them from the list. No one will need Rec.2020 Gamma 2.4, Canon Cinema CLog 2, or P3 DCI PQ profiles for printing, even though Photoshop offers them in the Print dialog box. 

     

    I think the idea of Favorite profiles is a good one. Adobe has certainly implemented Favorites to simplify a very long Font menu, for example. 

      D Fosse
      Community Expert
      D FosseCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      December 14, 2025

      Agreed. It can take a while to hunt down the right profile.

       

      The question is whether there is anything in these printer profiles that makes filtering possible. I don't know.

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