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What to do if your printer has no ICC profile?

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
July 29, 2022
6 replies
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Hi. I've just bought a SpyderX Pro to calibrate my monitor for printing on my Brother J6930DW inkjet printer however I can't find an ICC profile for the printer. I contacted Brother who, eventually, have informed me that there are no ICC profiles for this printer.

Any suggestions where to go from here if I want to try and print accurately at home?

Using Lightroom latest version on Windows 11 PC. Thanks.

Windows

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Correct answer Conrad_C

@Chris2498153166nt wrote:

From what I understand, even if I sent away test prints to someone who creates custom ICC profiles, this would be unlikely to solve my problem as the Brother printer would still colour manage on top of the profile? This would occur even if an ICC profile was used via Lightroom rather than choosing "managed by printer"?

Right because both Lightroom Classic and the printer driver have to be coordinated; the color conversion has to happen on only one side or the other. If you choose a print profile in Lightroom Classic, it converts the image using that printer profile and sends the job in that color space. If color management is disabled in the printer driver, that’s perfect…the printer driver takes that pre-converted data and sends it on through as is. But if there is no way to disable color management in the printer driver, the printer driver will probably convert those pre-converted colors assuming it was receiving generic sRGB (what other applications would send)…and that would be both an incorrect conversion, and double color management.

@Chris2498153166nt wrote:

If that's the case then I agree, will either have to suck it up or maintain a second photo printer (which I should check for an ICC profile before buying now that I know about ICC profiles!).

A lot of current printers, even the inexpensive ones, actually make decent photo prints on media types built into the printer driver (using Managed by Printer). On those media types, custom profies might not improve photo quality very much, and any improvement would be limited by having just four ink colors (compared to the additional inks a pro photo printer has). Custom profiles help the most when you want to get the most out of another kind of paper that isn’t already listed in the Brother printer driver, like a fine art photo paper. If your goal was to use better photo papers not supported by the printer driver, it would be a challenge to get the most out of those without a custom profile.

At least you’ve profiled your display, that’s a good thing. That will probably make more of a difference when working with a home/office type of printer.

S

Sarah277551378yf7

Participant

I just ordered an ICC profile from a company in the UK and I'm really hoping it works well. I'll let you know!

TheDigitalDog

Inspiring

You can go without using Printer Manages Color. Not ideal and doesn't 'work' with soft proofing, the display profile, etc. It's kind of a black box.

You can buy software to make your own; expensive, probably not worth considering but doable.

You can find an outside service that does remote profiling that can build you a profile from the paper/printer settings you use when printing a special (supplied) target using the Adobe Color Print Utility (free).

None of this has anything really to do with 'accurate' color. That topic is even a bigger rabbit hole to go into but we can go there if you wish.

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management/pluralsight"

Conrad_C

Community Expert

The answer Brother gave you is reasonable, because it’s not common to be able to apply a custom print profile for a home/office printer/multifunction device. It’s possible for pro photo printers, but rarely outside that.

If the manufacturer doesn’t provide ICC profiles for the printer, then the printer driver is probably hard-coded to expect incoming print data to be in the standard color space used by the operating system. In other words, it would expect Lightroom Classic to send print color data the same way as other home/office applications such as Microsoft Word or a web browser. That’s why the Managed by Printer option exists: Managed by Printer sends print color like most general non-photo applications do. The prints will probably look acceptable, within the limits of the printer, and as long as the other print options in the Brother printer driver (such as media type) are set correctly.

The custom profile workflow works only if the printer driver has an option to disable its own color management, letting the application (such as Lightroom Classic) manage color. If the Brother printer driver doesn’t have that option, there’s no way to properly use it with a custom printer profile. That option to disable color management is typically not seen in the printer drivers for home/office multifunction printers. Only in the printer drivers for pro photo printers.

So ultimately, the reason Brother doesn’t make ICC profiles for that printer is that if the Brother printer driver has no option to disable color management, then it has no way to let a custom profile work properly.

The same split in capability between home/office and pro photo printers also happens with Canon, Epson, and other brands. That’s why if you want to apply custom printer profiles, you usually have to have a pro-level photo printer.

C

Chris2498153166ntAuthor

Participant

Fantastically informative replay - thanks Conrad. The reason I'm using an office printer is that work paid for it and photography it obviously just an amatuer side hobby for me. I was hoping to keep office decluttered without too many printers whilst indulging in a bit of hobby "mucking around".

From what I understand, even if I sent away test prints to someone who creates custom ICC profiles, this would be unlikely to solve my problem as the Brother printer would still colour manage on top of the profile? This would occur even if an ICC profile was used via Lightroom rather than choosing "managed by printer"?

If that's the case then I agree, will either have to suck it up or maintain a second photo printer (which I should check for an ICC profile before buying now that I know about ICC profiles!).

TheDigitalDog

Inspiring

@Chris2498153166nt wrote:

From what I understand, even if I sent away test prints to someone who creates custom ICC profiles, this would be unlikely to solve my problem as the Brother printer would still colour manage on top of the profile?

Not at all, not if the targets are printed correctly without color management as they must be.

A printer profile simply profiles (finger prints) device behavior.

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management/pluralsight"

L

Lumigraphics

Legend

You can create your own but its probably not worth it, just buy a photo printer.

Background here: https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c00294111

Per Berntsen

Community Expert

If there are no profiles for the printer, you may not get accurate prints.

You can experiment with different settings in the printer driver, but the options are probably limited, which is to be expected from an all-in-one office printer.

If you want accurate, high quality prints, my advice is to use a dedicated photo printer.

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

If there is no printer icc-profile available, then your best option is to not let Lightroom do the color management. Select the option to let the printer do it. Another option is to get a custom made printer profile. There are companies on the web that offer this.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

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