What to do if your printer has no ICC profile?

[Chris2498153166nt]

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.

[JohanElzenga]

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.

[Per Berntsen]

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.

[Lumigraphics]

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

[Conrad_C]

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.

[Chris2498153166nt]

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]

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@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. 

[Conrad_C · Accepted solution]

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@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"?

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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.

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@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!).

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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.

[TheDigitalDog]

Why Printer Manages Color should be avoided IF (again if) possible; see Adobe's engineer Dave Polaschek caveats here (and why, when possible, users want an ICC profile, ideally custom):

https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2015/07/andrew-rodney-on-the-impor...

Looking at the Brother J6930DW inkjet printer driver, I don't see anything that wouldn't allow the use of a profile within Lightroom Classic or Photoshop but printing the target for it again, isn't straightforward. 

[Chris2498153166nt]

Thanks Conrad and Digitaldog.

It sounds like the key here is being able to turn off the colour management within the printer driver. Without being able to do this the printing of test images would be inaccurate for a custom ICC profile and even if I somehow managed a custom ICC profile, the printer would the LR output for the final print.

The reason I started down this track was because when I moved from my Canon MX720 to the Brother printer I've found the Brother prints were nothing like what I was seeing on the screen, hence the monitor calibration journey followed by the ICC profile learning when reading about things.

I've found a way to turn off colour management in the Canon printer driver and there are available ICC profiles for it as well so I might have to hang on to it in the end.

Many thanks for your wise words. This is pretty much the first time I've ever posted anything in a discussion group and it has been very rewarding.

[TheDigitalDog]

On my Epson all in one (one of many Epson's I have and have profiled), this isn't at all an issue. When Photoshop is set to manage color, it's set to do so without "printer color management". This happens on Mac when the "Color Matching" is set to ColorSync and then the resulting dialog shows this:

So at least, in this case, there is no specific "turn off the colour management within the printer driver" setting.

YMMV and having a better look at what your options are under Windows might help. Point is, you may need to be looking at something such as seen above if again, your goal is using the driver, with Application Color Management and ICC profiles.

[Chris2498153166nt]

Unfortunately not so for me. I had a spark of hope looking up turning off the colour management on Brother printers online where they had screenshots of how to do so. Unfortunately, the Brother driver setup for my printer, whether accessed through Lightroom, Photoshop or Windows (all the same) is similar however there is definitely no option to turn off colour management. There has to be some sort of colour management option selected at all times as far as I can tell.

For me if I choose colour management by Photoshop the only dialogue box is to remind me to turn off printer colour management in the print menu which takes me to the driver menu for which there is not an option to do this. Same in Lightroom if I choose an ICC profile (ie not managed by printer).

[TheDigitalDog]

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. 

[Sarah277551378yf7]

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!