The 50 Greatest Photo Ops

Stylus Pro 3800, Image courtesy of Epson America

Update: I’ve added supplementary steps (1a and 2a) for those who need to print grayscale targets.

With the introduction of Leopard (OS 10.5) in late 2007, Apple made significant “enhancements” to the printing pipeline that, to this day are still wreaking havoc on color managed workflows. One particular problem, and there are a few, involves the printing of profiling targets for those who wish to create custom ICC profiles. To properly print a profiling target requires sending raw, unconverted data to the printer. This produces poor color initially, but is a necessary first step to ultimately producing the most accurate color possible when printing your images. Whether or not you experience a problem in Leopard depends on your printer model, driver version, and the app you’re using to print the target in the first place.

Here’s what I discovered when setting up a new 3800 (a fantastic little printer, by the way) in my studio yesterday with the following: OS 10.5.5, an Epson 3800 with printer driver v6.11, Photoshop versions CS3 and CS4, and i1Match v 3.6.2.

For at least 10 years now, we’ve been able to properly print profiling targets through Photoshop by selecting No Color Management in the Photoshop print dialog and setting the Epson printer driver to Off (No Color Management). In my configuration mentioned above, this still works in Photoshop CS3. So far, so good. Following the same procedure in Photoshop CS4, however does not give identical results. For that, you have to use a workaround that bypasses Apple’s Colorsync (the main culprit it would seem in this whole mess), preventing it from converting the color data on its way to the printer.

Printing the target in CS4
Step 1: Open the profiling target and verify that it is an untagged RGB file with no colorspace embedded. Go to Edit>Assign profile and select Generic RGB.

Step 1a: If you’re printing a grayscale profiling target (untagged Grayscale file), go to Edit>Assign profile and select Generic Gray.

Step 2: Go to File>Print and in Photoshop’s Color Management options set Color Handling to Photoshop Manages Color. Then set the printer profile to Generic RGB.

Step 2a: If you’re printing a grayscale profiling target, set Color Handling to Photoshop Manages Color. Then set the printer profile to Generic Gray.

Note: Steps 1 and 2 are a short-term workaround and violate everything you’ve ever been taught about proper color management. Conceptually, what we’re doing is asking Photoshop to make a null transform, or trick the OS into thinking Photoshop has converted the color data (which it hasn’t) to prevent the OS (specifically ColorSync) from doing an unwanted conversion.

Step 3: Hit Print. In the Epson driver dialog, go to the Printer Settings pulldown, make the appropriate media type and resolution settings, and set Color Mode to Off (No color management).

Following these three steps give me output that matches what I get in a normal CS3 workflow. Now some users prefer to bypass Photoshop and print profiling targets through their profiling app. The most popular of these is X-Rite’s i1Match. To get identical results to the CS3 and CS4 workflows mentioned above you must do the following.

Printing the target in i1Match
Step 1: In i1Match hit the Print Chart button.

Step 2: In the Epson driver dialog, select Color Matching in the pulldown menu. ColorSync is selected by default. Select EPSON Color Controls instead.

Step 3: In the Printer Settings pulldown, make the appropriate media type and resolution settings, and set Color Mode to Off (No color management).

Again, what we’re doing here is bypassing ColorSync so it does not make an unwanted conversion to the color data. But we don’t want the Epson driver doing a conversion either, which is why you must set the Color Mode to Off (No color management). Step 2  was not necessary prior to Leopard.

After wasting a day and lots of ink and paper in trying out various solutions, to whom do I direct my wrath? From what I’ve gathered, with Leopard Apple has discontinued support for No Color Management printing from apps. They are trying very hard to prevent non-converted color data from going to printers. And Apple has required new print driver technology for Leopard (CUPS vs. the previous Tioga spec). It seems that not all Leopard-compatible drivers from Epson and other companies are adhering 100% to this new spec. Adobe, with CS4 has chosen to go along with Apple’s printer pipeline changes under the assumption that Leopard-compatible drivers are fully compliant with the new spec, even with the knowledge that its millions of users have untold configurations of both legacy and newer print drivers.

I blame them all. When something that has worked for over a decade is broken, there’s no excuse for Apple, Adobe and Epson to not have worked this out among themselves, especially some 14 months after the Leopard rollout. And this is just one issue. I know Canon users have had their own problems with double conversions happening when making prints. One reason I’m glad I have an HP Z3100 in the studio is that the printer profiling is handled directly by the printer’s hardware and software. Hopefully this is the future for printers from Canon and Epson.