Photoshop vs. printer manages colors

[mhattonmd]

Hi all- thanks in advance for much needed help

In short, when I choose photoshop manages colors prints look terrible, but if I choose printr manages colors things look great.

Heres what I have and my workflow

Windows 7/64
All drivers and software are up to date.
Photos taken with 5D Mark iii in Raw
Developed in Camera Raw
Tweaked in CS6
Color space is 1998 RGB
Saved as jpeg

Using a Lenovo Desktop- Ideacenter B520
Printer is Epson R3000

Monitor and printer are calibrated with Colormunki Photo.

In photoshop I softproof using the profile created with colormunki and the image looks excellent.

When I print, I choose "photoshop manages colors", and in the printer setting I make sure color management is turned off. The prints look very dull and washed out. I make sure the correct printer profile is chosen (the one created with colormunki for the specific paper I use)

Bust, if using the same image, I choose "Printer manages colors", and then in the printer color management choose "Adobe 1998", the brints look wonderful.
What am I doing the is causing Photoshop manages colors to look worse than printer manages colors, when in both cases the image looks great on the monitor?

 

[subscuck]

What color space is your camera set to? I use Adobe RGB all the way thru the process (capture, editing and printing). It sounds like there may be a broken link somewhere in the chain, but I'm not a color space guru. Also, I would recommend saving as TIFF files rather than jpeg. TIFF is lossless, jpeg isn't.

 

[Graystar]

Don't know if you've seen this PDF from Epson, but it might help...

http://files.support.epson.com/pdf/r2880_/r2880_mc.pdf

 

[rexbobcat]

I would not let PS manage the colors. Its profile is probably different than your printer's, an it does some weird things.

 

[hyperdash]

I am curious to use AdobeRGB color space it has a lotpf great features for printing and publications from what i read but as i have observed it seems that its very tedious to manipulate correctly. All equipments camera, monitor and printer should be calibrated. In terms of representing bigger range of colors, Adobe RGB is surely capable of it but i can see a problem here that it cannot be displayed and supported by all devices. *my software went nuts after i used this http://www.inkjetsuperstore.com/ink-cartridges/lexmark-printer-ink-cartridge yesterday..

 

[Garbz]

mhattonmd it sounds like you're doing things right, but let's eliminate the obvious, what is your "Rendering Intent"?

What color space is your camera set to?

Irrelevant. The camera colour space should transfer to the working colour space, then the working colour space should be either sent to the printer driver via ICM or in the case of Photoshop Managing the colours be converted to the correct printer colour space before data is sent to the printer. You should be able to pick any colourspace you want and providing it's not smaller than the colour space you're printing to there should be no visible difference.

I would not let PS manage the colors. Its profile is probably different than your printer's, an it does some weird things.

That's the point. When you calibrate your printer against a known set of inks and paper you need to override the very VERY basic colour management most printer drivers are capable of. Ideal results are really only achieved if you take complete control over the process. "Photoshop manages colour" gives you that control, "Printer manages colour leaves you at the whim of a printer driver which is only setup to use certain Epson inks, on certain Epson paper and will otherwise not provide the correct results.

I am curious to use AdobeRGB color space it has a lotpf great features for printing and publications from what i read but as i have observed it seems that its very tedious to manipulate correctly. All equipments camera, monitor and printer should be calibrated. In terms of representing bigger range of colors, Adobe RGB is surely capable of it but i can see a problem here that it cannot be displyaed and supported by all devices.

It's called colour management. It's a headache. This is why I recommend people who *don't* do their own printing to just forget about it all and use sRGB. There's a lot of effort involved in achieving a slight gain, but in a very rare set of circumstances that slight gain can make one hell of an awesome result.

 

[spacefuzz]

I would not let PS manage the colors. Its profile is probably different than your printer's, an it does some weird things.

That's the point. When you calibrate your printer against a known set of inks and paper you need to override the very VERY basic colour management most printer drivers are capable of. Ideal results are really only achieved if you take complete control over the process. "Photoshop manages colour" gives you that control, "Printer manages colour leaves you at the whim of a printer driver which is only setup to use certain Epson inks, on certain Epson paper and will otherwise not provide the correct results.

I also let me printer manage the colors or it gives me similar results. Call me crazy, but I bought my high end Canon printer to get good looking prints....so I use Canon inks and Canon papers and the printer knows how to interpret the AdobeRGB image and translate it to the paper best because thats what it was designed to do. Why do you want photoshop to get in the way?

 

[Garbz]

I also let me printer manage the colors or it gives me similar results. Call me crazy, but I bought my high end Canon printer to get good looking prints....so I use Canon inks and Canon papers and the printer knows how to interpret the AdobeRGB image and translate it to the paper best because thats what it was designed to do. Why do you want photoshop to get in the way?

You don't want photoshop to get in the way. You want your CALIBRATOR to get in the way. That's the whole point of calibration. Printers when used in a very standard set of vendor supplied ways don't drift much at all, however there are a whole world of different inks and papers out there. Want to use Kodak paper rather than Canon? You'll need to calibrate. Want to use a bulk ink loading system? You'll need to calibrate. It's a case of good enough vs perfect. Do you calibrate your camera? I do. I shoot a colour target and create ACR profiles for all my cameras. No more difference in colour and tone between models. Many people don't and rely on what just looks good, or rely on the vendor to factory set it to the way they thinks looks pleasing to the eye.

It's been a while since I calibrated a printer but at the time there was no way at all to get my Canon printer to use a calibrated profile for a specific print other than to disable colour management and use Photoshop to convert the image instead before it gets sent to the printer. Additionally what rendering intent is your printer using for out of gamut colours? I'm pretty certain you won't find that option in your printer driver. This is quite critical for different use cases. Got a wider gamut in your image and you want a pleasing photo? Then use an intent that compresses the gamut to fit inside your print without clipping channels. What to print a business card with a specific colour? Use an intent which will select the nearest printable colour in the gamut for all out of gamut tones and leave the rest alone.

You're getting good looking prints, then don't change a thing, because ultimately that's what's important. But know there are many other user cases out there which is why even the first version of Lightroom came with features to allow it to take control of printer colour management.

 

[mhattonmd]

Thank to all so far.
I am printing perceptual for rendering intent. Is that best? Do I need to click on match colors?
Out of curiosity I redid some using SRGB all the way through and results were similar---printer managing colors looks better than photoshop manages colors.

 

[Garbz]

Printing from Photoshop This explains a lot of the print settings. The difference between the working profiles shouldn't matter in the printing stage. The way I see it at the moment you have 3 possible problems:

1. Photoshop colour management settings aren't right.
2. The printer is still trying to apply colour management despite getting corrected data from photoshop already.
3. The colour profile you're using is actually wrong.

We can rule out the 3rd one quite easily. Epson should have ICC profiles either on their website or as part of the printer driver package. I would go and find the colour profile that the driver is trying to use, and then attempt to use that profile with photoshop managing colour. If it works then there's something wrong with the profile you created. If it doesn't work then the problem is either 1 or 2.