Adobe products and Brother printer aren't friends

[tommyeh90129194]

Hello! I recently bought a Brother laser printer for printing my product labels at home. When I print to it from the web, or other programs it looks great. I know it's not a screen calibration issue, because the colors are true from all other sources. It doesn't matter if I save as pdf, print from Brother app, print from InDesign/Illustrator; the colors are always off. Pinks, green, and yellows are the worst. Since I know it's not a printer or screen issue, I am positive it is some setting in Adobe. I've read lots of articles, clicked lots of settings, now I'm just frustrated and nowhere closer to having a good print. I've tried: changing destination, CYMK, keep numbers from source, and a variety of others. Anyone have any advice. I know there has to be a way!

Thank you!:)

[Randy Hagan]

It probably is Adobe. At least part of it. In that the default color settings in Adobe programs are calibrated to get good color reproduction from relatively high-end sheetfed color printing and not tailored for your Brother laser printer. Think of them like super printer drivers tailored to match Adobe print functions with your Brother color laser printer to get the best results.

ICC Profiles are provided by Brother, and vary by model. You can learn more about how to apply ICC profiles for your Adobe color settings here:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop/laser-printer-settings-for-color-photos-using-photoshop/m-p...

After this, I'd check Brother's website to find the appropriate profile for your specific printer and install it. Apply that profile in your Adobe color settings and you should get much better results.

Hope this helps,

Randy

[J E L]

Good points, @Randy Hagan. Sometimes a consumer printer just won't do the job correctly but adjusted PDF and compatible ICC profile settings should be able to get close to what is desired.

[tommyeh90129194]

Thank you so much! I figured there had to be some sort of issue like this. I know not to expect print shop quality from my Brother, but I know it is able to output better color than what I an getting. I will check the above links and give an update. Thank you again!

[J E L]

@tommyeh90129194 It sounds like an incorrect color profile is somehow being applied when you print from an InDesign-generated file or document. The Brother laser is CMYK, right? There is another long thread (link below) that addresses settings in Photoshop that may (or may not!) be helpful. I realize you've already tried so many things. Is the content on the color labels you are printing text or image based? Are there large or dense blocks of color applied to the design? Any screenshots you can share that might give us some more clues? Hopefully, someone will show up here who has a simple answer for you!

Solved: Laser Printer Settings for Color Photos using Phot... - Adobe Support Community - 10473680

[tommyeh90129194]

I will attach screen shots later, thank you for the suggestion. Right now I was just trying 1.5×1.5 blocks to make sure my color palette would come out the way I wanted. My printer is CYMK. After reading an article about assigning profiles, I changed the settings. However, I later read that these printers are straight are actually coded to accept RGB files. I changed the files back, and that helped somewhat. 

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

What system?

[tommyeh90129194]

Windows 10. Sorry I forgot to include that!:) 

[Eugene Tyson]

Without seeing the files or settings for your print/pdfs it's very difficult to know what's going on.

[tommyeh90129194]

Thank you for the suggestion. I teach a couple classes this morning, and then will post screenshots. 

[Test Screen Name]

What is the printer model exactly? You do say that it is CMYK, and that will certainly be true of the ink. But most CMYK printers must be sent RGB data, and so you will get weird results if you try to use CMYK with them.