Colour Management

[Andy_Baz]

I am trying to achieve a consistent and predictable output of images scanned from my Epson GT10000+ scanner, through photoshop and then into InDesign for final prepping and then printing.

My problem is that my colours are not reproducing anywhere near close enough for me to be happy with, and i have now confused and exhausted my ideas on what settings/actions to implement to rectify it.

Specs:

iMac 5kRetina

Adobe CC 2018

Epson 7800

My process to produce a one off 4pp A4 gift card that contains a scanned piece of color critical artwork on the front cover, and plain text on the rear of the card.

Calibration

1) Scanner profiling (Epson GT10000+) using i1Pro 2 and IT8 target to create custom $Scanner Profile.

2) Monitor calibration (iMac 5k Retina) using i1Pro 2.

3) Printer Profiling using i1Pro 2 (approx 4000 patches) to create custom $Printer Profile.

Image Prep

4) Scan original document to as 300dpi Tiff, with scanner color management off as recommended by X-rite for i1Pro 2.

5) Open scanned Tiff in Photoshop, CC (2018), assign $Scanner Profile.

6) Convert to $Printer Profile.

7) Make any minor image adjustments whilst comparing to original hard copy and save file.

Printing directly from InDesign

8) Place TIFF into print ready gift card template in InDesign.

9) File Print

10) InDesign print settings:

- Print composite CMYK

- Let inDesign determine colours: Printer Profile: $Printer Profile

11) Printer Settings:

- Colour Matching: Colorsync: $Printer Profile

12) Click Print

After having done all this my colours print much darker than the original and the scanned version, and im not sure what im getting wrong in the process!

Please help

[Mike Witherell]

For years now, experienced voices have been saying: "Don't print directly from InDesign. It prints too dark." Instead, export to a color-managed PDF, and print from there.

[rob day]

Open scanned Tiff in Photoshop, CC (2018), assign $Scanner Profile.

There are a lot of variables in the Epson print driver (Print>Printer>Printer Features>Feature Sets), so this may or may not help

The usual workflow would be to convert from the scanner profile into your preferred RGB editing space (i.e., AdobeRGB, ProPhotoRGB) where you would handle necessary color corrections in the editing RGB space not the scanner space. Some scanner software will make that conversion for you, or you can do it in PS via Edit>Convert to Profile...

6) Convert to $Printer Profile.

Try placing the edited RGB file with its embedded profile in InDesign and let the conversion to the printer profile happen via the print driver. Epson drivers never print document CMYK values unchanged, so it's better to send RGB values so the final conversion is directly to the printer profile.