Printer Color Management is not passing CMYK data to printer correctly

[robn63303181]

With the latest version of Acrobat Pro DC on Windows 10 64 bit CMYK data is no longer being sent to the printer untouched.

The latest version of Reader still behaves correctly with "Let Printer Determine Color" selected.

[Abambo]

You have in the "Advanced" tab of the printer dialog 3 possibilities for colour handling:

Acrobat Colour Management - let's Acrobat handle the colour management.

Same as Source - is a colour pass through

Printer Colour Management - let's the printer handle the colour management

I suppose you need to select "No Colour Management", if you want colours not to be modified on one or the other side.

[robn63303181]

This would be a change in behavior from all previous versions of Acrobat since these Color Management settings for print were added.

The latest version of Photoshop also has this new behavior by the way.

[robn63303181]

Just checked the "Same As Source" setting and it is also changing CMYK values before sending to the print driver.

Untagged RGB colors pass unchanged with either setting.

[Abambo]

How did you check the change of colours?

[Dov Isaacs]

Exactly what type of printer do you have? PostScript, PCL, other?

To be very clear, how the color management works differs between PostScript and non-PostScript devices. On Windows, CMYK data is only sent to the printer for PostScript printers. All other printer types go through the Windows driver system as RGB.

For PostScript printers, conversion is made from the PDF colors to PostScript Color Management when using the Printer Color Management option. Adobe does not recommend ever using this option since it relies on 1990s-era PostScript color management which preceded the ICC color management of Acrobat and PDF 1.3. If you use the Same as Source (No Color Management) option, DeviceCMYK or DeviceRGB is sent to the PostScript printer, but will also may cause major color artifacts if your original PDF had any transparency within it that had to be flattened.

Adobe most strongly recommends you use the default, Acrobat Color Management, for printing.

Also note that internally, there is no difference between the printing of Reader and Acrobat and that there have been no changes in recent years in terms of how Acrobat prints with regards to these three options in either of the Reader or Acrobat products.

          - Dov

[robn63303181]

I'm having problem with PS Dov and I see different results from current Pro and Reader SW on 64 bit Windows 10.

I created a file which has the primaries in device RGB and device CMYK with no ICC profiles.

If I print to file in PS, and then convert back to PDF in settings in Distiller that do no color conversions I can see that the CMYK values have in fact been converted to RGB via Pitstop Pro. In essence the latest version of Pro is acting like it's printing to a PCL printer even when printing to a PS printer. This is new behavior since the most previous versions of Acrobat and Photoshop. I can provide these files if that would be helpful.

The default setting of Acrobat Color Management has produced problematic results ever since it was introduced, which is why we tell all of our customers to use the Printer Color Management option.