Adobe cc 2019 v HP Photosmart 5520 colour matching

[AndrewPaulCooper]

Hi Guys,

Which settings do I change to get what I see on the screen printed?

I have a Mac desktop and there does not seem to be any colour setting for the printer (that I have found yet).

Photoshop has an abundance of settings, but none seem to fit the 5520 printers.

Prints are printing with good colour match, but much darker than the screen - the attached picture shows a hand-held print to the right of its screen counterpart.

I am sure this is user (i.e. me!) error, but I have hunted the web and forums and not found a solution yet.

[davescm]

To get a good screen to print match requires colour management of the screen and the printer.

Three steps to heaven :

1st you adjust the white of the screen to match the paper (normally screens are set too bright)

2nd you profile the screen with a calibration and profiling device such as the i1 dsiplay or similar. This will store a profile describing exactly how your screen displays colours, in the operating system. Photoshop will use that profile.

3rd You use a printer profile that fits your exact printer/paper and ink combination and at the same time set the printer settings so that they match exactly the way they were set when the profile was made (the paper/printer manufacturer who supplies the profile should be able to advise on this.

Dave

[D Fosse · Accepted solution]

If your prints are too dark, your screen is too bright. It's that simple.

You need to calibrate your monitor so that monitor white is a visual match to paper white, both in brightness and color. How you do that depends on what calibrator you're using. High-end monitors with dedicated calibration software have direct communication between them, so you set the white (and black) point targets in the software.

With third-party calibrators you don't want tto much adjustment in the 8-bit video card pipeline. So it's better to set it using the monitor's OSD menu.

Either way, it's a purely visual process. You want a visual match (given your ambient light, print viewing light and general environment). It's often recommended to start at 120 cd/m² and D65, that usually gives a rough match in most "normal" situations.

Once you have this basic match, it's time to look at color management and print profiles.

EDIT: Dave beat me to it, as usual, but you get the picture.

[AndrewPaulCooper]

Thanks both for your help; Isn’t it easy when you know how?

In case others are also struggling this is what I did;

On your Mac, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Displays, then click Colour then Click Calibrate.

 The display calibrator assistant walks you through adjusting your display, then creates a calibrated colour profile. (It does say this is not necessary so you could use the default [iMac Calibrated] profile)

 Next time you are in Photoshop, click Print then, under [Colour management] [Printer profile] select the file you created in the line above.

 Magic happens and the prints are spot on.

 The only downside I can see is the printer profile has to be set for each print - it does not seem to be ’sticky’ between prints or between sessions. I do now have prints that are vibrant and match what I see on the screen.  Yay!

 Regards Paul

[davescm]

Hi Andrew

I've unmarked your answer as correct as it could mislead other people, and made sure D.Fosse's answer is highlighted as the correct answer. Your action may have got your colours closer but is not the correct way to colour manage.

The monitor profile and printer profile are two separate things.

What you did is not profiling. Whilst you can use a generic profile for the monitor - it can only be close to describing your monitor. To produce an accurate profile requires a hardware device which reads colours off the screen. So the profiling software sends a set of known colours to the screen and reads what actual colour is produced. That is used to build a profile describing your actual screen.

The printer profile describes the printer. It is produced in a similar way but with different hardware (a spectrophotometer). A monitor profile should never be used as a printer profile. The printer profile has to describe the behaviour of your printer using a particular paper and ink set. That will be very different to the behaviour of a monitor. Some folk use the equipment to produce their own printer profiles ( I do here) some use the profiles from the paper/printer manufacturer which are often quite accurate. You should never substitute a monitor profile for a printer profile.

This may help :

Colour Management simple explanation

Digital images are made up of numbers. In RGB mode, each pixel has a number representing Red, a number representing Green and a Number representing Blue. The problem comes in that different devices can be sent those same numbers but will show different colours. To see a demonstration of this, walk into your local T.V. shop and look at the different coloured pictures – all from the same material.

To ensure the output device is showing the correct colours then a colour management system needs to know two things.

1. What colours do the numbers in the document represent? 
This is the job of the document profile which describes the exact colour to be shown when Red=255 and what colour of white is meant when Red=255, Green = 255 and Blue =255. It also describes how the intermediate values move from 0 through to 255 – known as the tone response curve (or sometimes “gamma”).
Examples of colour spaces are (Adobe RGB1998, sRGB IEC61966-2.1)
With the information from the document profile, the colour management system knows what colour is actually represented by the pixel values in the document.

2. What colour will be displayed on the printer/monitor if it is sent certain pixel values?
   This is the job of the monitor/printer & paper profile. It should describe exactly what colours the device is capable of showing and, how the device will respond when sent certain values.
   So with a monitor profile that is built to represent the specific monitor (or a printer profile built to represent the specific printer, ink and paper combination) then the colour management system can predict exactly what colours will be shown if it sends specific pixel values to that device.
   
   So armed with those two profiles, the colour management system will convert the numbers in the document to the numbers that must be sent to the device in order that the correct colours are displayed.
   
   

So what can go wrong :

1. The colours look different in Photoshop, which is colour managed, to the colours in a different application which is not colour managed.
   This is not actually fault, but it is a commonly raised issue. It is the colour managed version which is correct – the none colour managed application is just sending the document RGB numbers to the output device regardless without any conversion regardless of what they represent in the document and the way they will be displayed on the output device.
   
   
2. The colour settings are changed in Photoshop without understanding what they are for.
   This results in the wrong profiles being used and therefore the wrong conversions and the wrong colours.
   If Photoshop is set to Preserve embedded profiles – it will use the colour profile within the document.
   
   
3. The profile for the output device is incorrect.
   The profile should represent the behaviour of the device exactly. If the wrong profile is used it will not. Equally if the settings on the device are changed in comparison to those settings when the profile was made, then the profile can no longer describe the behaviour of the device. Two examples would be using a printer profile designed for one paper, with a different paper. A second example would be using a monitor profile but changing the colour/contrast etc settings on the monitor.
   The monitor profile is set in the operating system (in Windows 10 that is under Settings>System>Display >Advanced) which leads to a potential further issue. Operating system updates can sometimes load a different monitor profile, or a broken profile, which no longer represents the actual monitor.

Colour management is simple to use provided the document profile is correct, always save or export with an embedded profile, and the monitor/printer profile is correct. All the math is done in the background.

Dave

[AndrewPaulCooper]

Phew!  Thanks, Dave, a lot of useful content in that response.

Not being a professional printer calibrator or a professional monitor calibrator with NO hardware to hand and a clearly limited understanding of the topic is there a "good enough" solution to matching these profiles?

Certainly, pointing Adobe CC at the file the Mac colour calibrator produced (which I thought, clearly wrongly, followed your points 2 & 3)  has created a much more what-you-see-is-what-you-print (on my HP PhotoSmart 5520) than my earlier attempts however I do follow that the screen may not match reality and the printer and/or paper used may not match the screen with the profile I have used.

😞 Not easy is it?

[Conrad_C]

What you did with the Mac display calibrator is not wrong, but it was not a magic bullet. Getting consistent color between display and printer involves multiple variables including:

• Display color profile. It should describe the current state of the display, which may have drifted over time. You created an up-to-date display profile with the macOS calibrator. The profile you made is not as precise as one made with a USB hardware profiler, but if the display was a little off, what you did may have helped.
• Display settings. For most Macs this comes down to setting brightness lower to match paper, as already discussed. Pro displays have more options to worry about.
• Settings in the HP printer driver software, which is what you see when you click Print Settings in the Photoshop print dialog box. First you want to make sure you have the latest version of the HP PhotoSmart 5520 software. Sometimes macOS will download it for you, but it looks like the 5520 does have a downloadable installer for you to run. Then the settings have to be appropriate for the paper you’re printing on.
• Settings in the Print dialog box in Photoshop. These need to be coordinated with the printer driver software. For a consumer/office all-in-one like the HP PhotoSmart 5520, this is as simple as choosing Printer Manages Colors from the Color Handling pop-up menu. But if your Photoshop document is not in sRGB color, this could be more complicated.

Notice that several items above are outside Photoshop. The profiles are generated outside Photoshop and installed in macOS for all applications to use. The printer driver software is supplied by HP and is also installed for all applications to use. Photoshop simply hooks into that.

You may see articles or videos about more complicated setups for print, where a printer profile and other advanced options are chosen in the Print dialog box in Photoshop. Those options are provided for more expensive, specialized pro photo printers, and typically not available for office-type printers such as all-in-ones. Again, while those profiles show up in Photoshop, they come from the printer manufacturer. I only mention this point because earlier you asked why Photoshop doesn’t have settings for the 5520 — it is because Photoshop, like other programs, can only show you the options are made available by the HP printer driver software and macOS. If those are set up right, they’l be available for Photoshop to use.

And no, it’s not easy. But printing a simple sRGB image to a basic/all-in-one printer can actually be pretty easy. The more expensive photo printers have so many more settings to get right.

[davescm]

Hi,

The main issue was the use of your monitor profile as a printer profile.

In the absence of a calibration device the next nearest solution would be to:

1. Turn down the brightness of your screen to match the paper by eye.

2. Use the manufacturers profile for your monitor. Note - this is not set in Photoshop it is set in your operating system.

3. Depending on your printer, either use the paper/printer manufacturer profiles for your printer  or, if those are not available, set Printer Manages Color.

These settings are a compromise and will not be as accurate as a fully profiled monitor and printer. However they may meet your purpose and give a predictable print that you can control which is your aim.

Dave

[NB, colourmanagement]

Hi Andrew,

moved post to the Color Management Board.

neil barstow, colourmanagement.net :: adobe forum volunteer

As to your solution - sorry but although that seems to work for you its not right, the printer has its own ICC profile, the screen ICC profile is only valid for the screen - see DaveCM's explanation of colour management.

I hope this helps

neil barstow, colourmanagement.net :: adobe forum volunteer

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