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Color matching issue with Print and Computer Screen - Photoshop

New Here ,
Sep 25, 2019 Sep 25, 2019

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I print from Photoshop to a Canon Pro-100 printer and whilst there has always been a small amount of variance between the colours shown on my screen and those that appear on the prints just a few days ago I had a major matching problem.

The red was showing as a russet brown and other colours in similar deteriation of actual colour. I have been on to Canon and they say there could have been a problem with an update.

Now my screen is in sRGB but photoshop does not have that option on it's print profiles. I printed all the options and decided that the best one wasl PAL/SCEM.

But is this correct - what would anyone recommend to match with a sRGB image etc, How do you do calibration between your screen and printer?

Thanks

Dorothy

 

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Adobe
Adobe Employee ,
Sep 25, 2019 Sep 25, 2019

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Hi Dorothy,

As you're seeing a difference in color, you may have a look at this article and see if it provides helpful information: https://helpx.adobe.com/in/photoshop/using/printing-color-management-photoshop1.html

Also, you should try changing the screen color profile to sRGB IEC61966-2.1 for both Windows & macOS: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/how-do-i-change-my-monitor-profile-to-check-whether-its-corrupted/

 

Regards,
Sahil

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Community Expert ,
Sep 26, 2019 Sep 26, 2019

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Hi Dorothy
You have picked this up incorrectly, unfortunately you are not alone, many do 🙂

Colour management is fairly simple to operate. The monitor profile has to describe your monitor and the printer profile has to describe your printer, ink and paper combination. Picking profiles at random is a recipe for colour issues.
The best way to get a profile that describes your particular monitor is to use a hardware calibration device. For printer profiles, they can be produced, given the right equipment, but most paper manufacturers have downloadable profiles that work well.

The explanation below may help your understanding:

 

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.

  1. 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.

 

I hope that helps

 

Dave

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New Here ,
Oct 03, 2019 Oct 03, 2019

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Thank you Dave - I understand the concept and was trying to ensure the eSRGB on my monitor was matching with the printer, however it seems for whatever reason the colour profiles were not all showing and I had neither the eSRGB or the photopaper options. I reinstalled the profile and they are all now appearing. Not 100% perfect but at least I am getting as good as I was before. So yes between you and a previous reply I managed to 'sort the problem' which as you say was not actually a problem, just lack of knowledge on my behalf. Thanks Dorothy

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Community Expert ,
Oct 03, 2019 Oct 03, 2019

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Just for clarity, based on your last reply, are you using e-SRGB as your monitor profile ? e-sRGB is an extended gamut colour space. It is not a monitor profile and should not be used as such. The monitor profile has to describe your monitor for colour management to work correctly.

 

Dave

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Community Expert ,
Oct 03, 2019 Oct 03, 2019

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e-sRGB is a horrible beast that should be avoided at all costs. It is a very early, very crude and primitive attempt at a wide gamut profile, by now completely obsolete. It gets the wide gamut by clipping the black point beyond recognition, and probably the white point as well.

 

In short, it will butcher your files. Don't use it.

 

Read Dave's post again, carefully. A monitor profile has to describe the monitor's actual and current behavior. In the same way, the print profile has to be the one corresponding to the actual paper / ink / printer used. You don't "experiment" with profiles - you use the correct one.

 

The document profile and the monitor profile and the printer profile - they are all describing their own repsective color spaces. A profile is a description of a color space, a map if you will. They are not supposed to "match", they emphatically should not be the same. They just need to be correct for the color space they correspond to.

 

You really need to stop what you're doing and go back to start. As Dave says, this isn't difficult. Most of it works out of the box if you just let it.

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