Is this how Photoshop Elements works?

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
December 6, 2017
1 reply
667 views

Having used Photoshop Elements 11 for quite some time, I thought I could get a better understanding of the process by setting it against the standard Colour Management model:

Image file -> colour profile A -> Working Colour Space -> colour profile B -> printer.

The outcome has surprised me, and so I would be grateful if others would say whether my understanding is correct:

1. Colour Profile A links the image file to the Working Space. This is a constant relationship, the Profile is built-in and needs no adjustments.

2. Colour Profile B is set by the selection of the paper.

3. The saturation, etc adjustments made in PSE 11 are directly onto the image. Thereafter, other adjustments are made through the PSE 11 Print menus ( eg Advanced Settings(click to launch Printer Preferences) and Colour Controls (uses matching and enhancements provided by the printer driver) operate on the printer driver, except for ICM which uses the Colour Profiles in Windows.

4. Whereas the adjustments made in PSE 11 can be viewed on the screen, those made in the Print screens (eg Colour Model - Colour Controls - Brightness) are viewed on the small thumbnails and changes do not appear in the image displayed in the Print Preview screen.

The adjustment ranges for these controls are substantial, -25 to +25, and so, on the face of it, are very significant. So I wonder whether they render fine adjustments made in PSE 11 superfluous?

The printer driver is, perhaps, more important than the Colour Profiles.

This topic has been closed for replies.

MichelBParis

Community Expert

In your menu "Edit >> Preferences", you have got an option "Color settings". That brings a dialog with a link to a tutorial about color management in Elements:

Set up color management

Does this help ?

A

AbeldacreAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thank you for responding. I am reasonably comfortable with the settings available in PSE 11. What surprised me in relating PSE adjustments to the Colour Management model is the number of adjustments available through the PSE menus which operate through the printer driver where the effects can only be seen on the thumbnail pictures. It seems that the precision of PSE 11 may be upstaged by these, it seems, rough and ready adjustments. And, it seems, these do not appear in the PSE screen showing the picture that one is about to print. At this stage, I wondered whether I had got this right!

A

AbeldacreAuthor

Participating Frequently

Abeldacre wrote
Thank you again.
Yes, the printer options are central.
I loaded and edited an image in PSE 11. I then went to Colour management>Colour Controls>Photo Enhance. I selected Sepia and the change showed in the thumbnail. Then back to the PE 11 Print Screen and the image was unchanged - no Sepia.( I assumed that this is what would be printed, I did not actually print the photo).
Again, I used the Brightness control in Colour Controls; the result showed in the thumbnail but I did not find it in the PSE 11 Print Screen.
I did not actually print the photo from the PSE !! screen. Even if those two changes had been printed, it seems to be a fact that the picture on the PSE 11 Print Screen does not show those changes. So the PSE 11 Print Screen, the last seen before printing, does not represent what is going to happen.
Whatever happens at the printing stage, whereas the changes made within PSE 11 are clearly seen on the large screen, the printer driver changes on the thumbnails cannot be as clearly seen - hence my reference to "rough and ready".
I was surprised by this behaviour and thought I might have made a mistake! Have I?

No, simply when you go to Colour management > Colour Controls etc, the changes you are applying are only known to your printer driver and can't be 'seen' by Elements and displayed on the thumbnail provided by the driver. That's as if you sent the output to another editing software...

Colour management is coherent if:

- You edit with a colour profile like sRGB or aRGB

- you have a calibrated screen which displayq the colours to the best your display can do

- you send the file to the printer driver with the embedded profile either by choosing:

-- printer manages colours. The printer driver knows how to translate the embedded profile to the printing profile depending on the paper type.

-- Elements manages colours (advanced). You have to disable the colour management of the printer and to select a paper profile and a 'rendition' option.

Thank you - once again.

I hadn’t realised that Elements could not “see” (good expression) the driver adjustments. I have read several manuals on the successive PSEs and I don’t recall ever seeing this fact mentioned. So I proceeded on the basis that the PSE pre-printing screen includes all the adjustments I had made and what I saw was what I would get! Somewhat dumb!

I do use most of your colour management recommendations, but I shall explore the differences. Do the RGB profiles have advantages over, say, Adobe Vivid? I thought these profiles referred only to the output to screen or printer.

Referring to the Colour Model - am I right in assuming that the Paper Colour profile is Colour Profile B? This means it operates in parallel with the printer driver. It now seems to me that it is more likely to be in Colour Profile A and the printer driver constituting Colour Profile B.

I have heard of ‘soft editing’ and I suspect I would have to graduate to Photoshop to get it?

I’ve read the Colour Management papers referred to in connection with PSE and other papers found on the internet. But I have not found a paper which gives a reasonably detailed description of the nature of profiles and how they work together. Can you recommend anything?

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