How to manage consistent colours using Adobe

Photoshop

RELATES TO:
 Colour Management.
 Adobe Photoshop.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
 The monitor is your window to colour
 Inkjet printers are RGB devices
 Adobe Photoshop colour setup
 Opening an image in Adobe Photoshop
 Adobe Photoshop Printing

EXPLANATION:
When was the first time you heard about 'colour management'? When your print did not match the
image displayed on the monitor and you had to spend time, money and ink to tweak the colour
settings of the printer driver or the monitor display in order to get an acceptable print? We have
created this workflow guide to provide you with the correct application and profile settings in order to
print consistent and predictable colour.

You will learn how to set up colour management in Adobe Photoshop and then print with an Epson
driver. Windows XP is used to demonstrate the workflow; however Mac OS X 10.4 and higher will be
similar. The Epson Stylus Pro 7800 printer is used as an example in these steps, but the workflow is
similar for other Epson printers.

The monitor is your window to colour

 A well-calibrated and profiled monitor is essential for any colour
work that should be predictable and consistent throughout the
workflow. You cannot colour correct on screen nor expect any
match between the screen and the print if the monitor is neither
calibrated nor profiled.

Today you can find affordable and good quality instrument solutions with
a colorimeter or spectrophotometer. We recommend that you purchase one of these solutions.
Do not try to perform a visual calibration and profiling as your eye is not precise and reliable
enough. The application of an instrument-based solution does both calibration and profiling.

Calibration ensures that your monitor works in an optimal, stable and repeatable
state. Profiling describes the present colour reproduction capabilities of your monitor. As displays
change over time, monitor profiling should be repeated on a regular basis - at least once a month.

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Inkjet printers are RGB devices

In general inkjet printers are RGB devices; even if they use cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink
for printing. Therefore it is correct to send an image file that is in a RGB colour space to your Epson
inkjet printer driver. The printer driver will follow your driver settings to convert the image data
from RGB to CMYK values and will calculate how much ink, of the available inks, is needed to
reproduce any CMYK value.

Note:
 The printer driver will follow your settings for the Paper Type and Quality
settings you select. Therefore it is important that the paper selected in the
printer driver matches the paper actually being used.

Generally Resin-Coated or Resin-based photo paper can have more ink on

its surface than plain paper before ink may appear to blur or bleed.

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Adobe Photoshop colour setup

Note:

Before you open any image to print it is essential to correctly set up your
application's colour management. Start by opening Adobe Photoshop.

a. From the menu bar, select Edit and then Color Settings.

b. This will bring up the Color Settings dialogue window. Then click on More Options:
c. Now you have to select an RGB Working Space.
 A good RGB working space isn't too big and can cover most reproducible colours of your
monitor and printer. Generally, a good choice is Adobe RGB (1998). We don't change the
other working spaces as they are not important for the type of workflow we discuss in this
article.

Next you should set the Color Management Policies to 'Preserve Embedded Profiles', and
then activate all the options under Profile Mismatches and Missing Profiles (tick the option
boxes). This ensures you will display the opened images colour correct and avoid any
unnecessary conversion steps.

Under Conversation Options, leave the default 'Engine' setting. For photographic prints you
can either use Perceptual or Relative Colorimetric as the rendering 'Intent'.

Leave Black Point Compensation selected as this ensures that you don't get blurred or
washed out shadows after a colour space conversion. Select Use Dither as this ensures
that posterization does not occur in gradients.

Now that you have set up Adobe Photoshop's colour settings, you can open the image you want
to print.

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Opening an image in Adobe Photoshop

If you see the following message regarding 'Embedded Profile Mismatch' when opening an
image, select Use the embedded profile (instead of the working space) option and click OK:
This message indicates that your image has a profile embedded that is different from your selected
RGB working space. However with a colour managed workflow you will display the image colour
correctly and you avoid an additional conversion step. Each conversion will always result in some
loss of image quality.

Sometimes you may open images that are untagged. This means the images don't have an
embedded profile. In this case you have to assign an RGB working space. If you don't know its
original RGB working space you have to guess and to assign any RGB working space.

You could start this process by selecting your default Adobe RGB working space and click OK.
When your image appears on screen, evaluate the colour balance and saturation, the contrast and
tonal differentiation from bright to dark colours.
If you think the overall image look can be improved, select Edit, then Assign profile and try sRGB
or any other RGB colour space profile. With the activated Preview check box you see each change
immediately.

Finally take the one that has in your opinion the best colour saturation and tonal differentiation
from bright to dark colours. So which RGB colour space profile would you assign in the case of the
image below:

sRGB ProPhoto RGB A

 Too dull and low in contrast. Too saturated, reddish skin. Good tonal different

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Adobe Photoshop Printing

The key to a consistent and predictable colour print is to apply the right printer profile and Media
Type settings. The following workflow can be applied to printing colour images and can also be
applied to printing greyscale, black and white, or sepia images.

However, if you wish to print in B&W or sepia and have an Epson UltraChrome K3 printer we
recommend viewing the following article to take advantage of the specific technology: A guide to
achieving professional quality B&W prints with an Ultrachrome K3 printer

a. Open File then Page Setup.

b. Select the correct Paper Size and Paper Source for your printer.

c. Select Portrait or Landscape as the Orientation of your image. Click OK.

d. Open Adobe Photoshop's print dialog from File and then Print with preview (all versions up
to CS2) or Print (CS3, CS4, and CS5).

e. Make sure your printer is selected before making your print settings.

 Photoshop CS3 and higher: Make sure your printer is displayed in the Printer: menu. You
can change this using the drop-down menu if necessary.

 All Photoshop versions up to and including CS2: Click on Page Setup, then click on
the Printer button. Select your printer from the pull-down menu, and then click OK.

All Photoshop versions up to and including CS2:

f. You return to the print with preview window.
 For Photoshop versions up to and including CS2, click on More Options to access the
advanced settings and then choose Color Management from the pull-down menu. The
following additional options appear.

g. Make the following selections under 'Color Management':

 Select Document under 'Print'. If you followed our suggestions, the 'Profile' is set as your
current working space, 'Adobe RGB (1998)'.

 Set 'Color Handling' to Let Photoshop Determine Colors or Photoshop Manages

Colors (depending on your Photoshop version).

 Set 'Printer Profile' to the proper ICC profile. This profile is for your printer and the paper
type you will use for the printer. Epson ICC profiles are listed for Epson media types only.

 For the 'Rendering Intent' choose Perceptual or Relative Colorimetric. Both are
suitable settings for photographic images. If your image contains very saturated colours, the
perceptual rendering intent may work better as it reduces the colour saturation so the
 colours will fit within the printer's colour gamut.

 Tick the Black Point Compensation check box. Doing this will ensure that the shadow
detail in the image is preserved by using the full dynamic range of the output device. We
recommend you leave this on as otherwise you can end up with totally blocked or washed
out shadows.

Figure 4. Adobe Photoshop version CS3 and CS4

h. Open the printer driver. The workflow at this step differs slightly between Photoshop
versions.

 All Photoshop versions up to CS4: Click the Print button. Make sure your printer is still
selected. For Windows, click Properties or Preferences. For Mac OS X, click Print
Settings.

 CS5: Make sure your printer is still selected in the pull-down menu and click the Print
Settings button. For Mac OS X, select Print Settings from the pull-down menu.
 Note:

For version CS5 the workflow is slightly different. Page Setup has changed
to Print Settings. You must access Print Settingsbefore you click
the Print button or Print Once; otherwise, the print proceeds without you having
the option to make your changes to the driver settings.

i.The Epson printer driver dialog opens.

Note for Windows users:

 The Main tab opens by default.

 Open the Advanced section of the driver.

  In some drivers, you can access this under 'Mode',
select Custom and click the Advanced button.

 In some drivers, you will not see these options. Instead, you should
click on 'Advanced' found in the bottom-right corner of the 'Main'
tab. Other drivers may have a dedicated 'Advanced' tab which you
should click on (located beside 'Main').

j.
k. Next, select your print settings.
 Select the Paper Type you are going to use from the pull-down menu.

 Select the Print Quality. For photographic images you should generally choose a high
quality or something between 720, 1440, and 2880 dpi.
 Note:

In some printer drivers, the print quality is not represented by 'dpi'.

'Photo' represents 720 dpi, 'Best Photo' is 2880 dpi, and 'Photo RPM' is
5760x1440 optimised dpi.


 Turn off the High Speed setting. In some Windows drivers, you should turn off the Edge
Smoothing, and Finest Detail settings if available.

 Turn off printer colour management in the driver. If you forget about this, the printer driver
will apply additional correction to the image and produce inaccurate colours.
 Mac OS X: Select Color Management from the pull-down menu, then select No Color
Adjustment.

 Windows: Under 'Printer Color Management', select Off (No Color Adjustment).

Note for Windows users:

Depending on which printer you have the Off (No Color Adjustment)
setting can be in different location. In some printer drivers, you will first
have to select 'ICM' and then 'Off (No Color Adjustment).


l.
m. Click OK and proceed to print. For CS5, click Print in the print preview window.

If you wish to display a preview of the print layout before printing, you can activate the Print
Preview setting in the printer driver. However the Print Preview displays a 'layout only'
representation of the image. This is only useful to visualize the position of the image on the
selected paper size. Don't use this for judging on colour matching.
If you have a well-calibrated and profiled monitor and you follow these set up recommendations
you should get a printout that matches the image display of your screen quite well.

However we recommend further reading from books and the Internet as colour management is a
complex subject.