ICC profiles are just letters and numbers in Photoshop print dialogue

[jane ma1951]

I'm printing from an iMac to a Canon Pro-1 printer using the Photoshop print dialogue. The problem is that although there are a number of Canon ICC profiles available, they just show as letters and numbers, eg CANON LBP 5300/ 5360/5400 (Photo) or CANON iPR C1/CIPlus (Photo). How am I supposed to know what paper they refer to? I contacted Canon customer support but the only solution they have is to use their own photo printing App, which does show all the correct profiles but gives me other problems eg spooling errors so that the end of the photo doesn't print properly.

[JohanElzenga]

MacOS comes with a utility called ColorSync Utility. It's in the Utilities folder inside your Applications folder. You can use it to examine color profiles. Maybe that allows you to see more info so you can make a list yourself that describes what each profile is.

[jane ma1951]

Thanks, I tried the ColorSync Utility but it doesn't clarify the matter.

[Test Screen Name]

The numbers aren't random, they seem to be actual printer models. Well, CANON LBP 5300 comes up for sale in Google anyway. So they aren't papers, they are models - perhaps just one per printer. 

[jane ma1951]

Aah, that makes some sense thanks. So apparently I don't have Canon ICC profiles for different papers, except via the Canon Print Studio Pro Plugin - and those seem to be stored somewhere different from the folder that the Photoshop print driver accesses. All very odd.

[TheDigitalDog]

Are you on OS X 11.2 or 11.3? There's a bug not showing some profiles under those operating systems. You see them in the plug-in but not Photoshop, that's the issue.

[jane ma1951]

I'm on OS X 11.6. I wonder if the bug is still a problem there?

[jane ma1951]

I'vve just ipgraded my OS to Monterey, but sadly the probem still exists.

[Test Screen Name]

Perhaps the problem is not what you think it is. Maybe these profiles actually do not exist. I can imagine that Canon ship a single standard profile, and that their printing apps does colour adjustments as required. They might not use a profile at all; printer makers are free to make apps that do colour conversions in any way they choose, based on proprietary (secret) knowledge of exactly how their printers work.

You might have to make your own profiles for different print conditions, to use in other apps like Photoshop.

[TheDigitalDog]

The issue could be the profiles themselves. Keep in mind that profiles have two names: the external name you see in the finder and an internal name that is used by applications. They should be in sync but may not be. If you can locate one of the profiles, zip and upload to something like Dropbox, I can look at the internal structure and see what the internal name is.

[jane ma1951 · Accepted solution]

Many thanks, I've solved the problem! I found the profiles sitting in a different subfolder under the Library folder. I have now copied them over and they appear correctly!