Color Issues when Printing Using ICC Profiles vs Printer Manages

[patjoja]

Sorry for the lengthy post.  Here's the backstory...

I've been printing successfully for several years now on my Canon Pro V1 and IPF6450.  All my equipment (two monitors and both printers) has been calibrated with a Colormunki Photo device.  I also have the paper manufacturers ICC profiles available.  Last year I almost exclusively used the ICC profiles to print on my two printers with good monitor to print color rendition.  I started out printing mostly in Photoshop and then migrated to Lightroom due to its easier to use printing module.  The papers I use the majority of the time are Canson Baryta and Platine, and also Red River Baryta and Palo Duro Softgloss Rag.  I use Perceptual color control for out of profile colors.

This year, after updating my Lightroom CC and Photoshop software, I started seeing color issues, mostly in the magenta and red tones.  My purples are coming out blue!  If I plot with the paper companies  ICC profiles or my own profiles I get the same negative results.  I can see the color issues before actually printing in the Preview panel that comes up and when actually plotting, the print comes out with the same color variance as the preview window.  I have been unable to figure out what the heck is going on.

Now, going one step further...I generally never print with the printer managing the color, but being at ropes end I decided to give it a try. Low and behold...using Canon's printer profile with the paper toggled to Photo quality and 'Canon Semi-gloss' paper, both the preview panel and then the print closely matched the colors on the monitor.

I need help understanding this.  Is it related to the color space (Adobe RGB) or something else?  Did Adobe change their default color space?  Needless to say, I'm going to have to print with the Printer managing color until I can understand what's going on and fix it.

Thanks for any help.

Patrick

[Simon J.A. Simpson]

It might be that your original profiles are in someway now incompatible with the upgraded Lightroom and Photoshop.  Have you tried making some new profiles ?  But be sure to have the latest ColorMunki software as there have been a lot of changes recently.

Can you say which operating system you are using ?

[patjoja]

Colormunki profiles have been updated since upgrading, that's not the issue.  Colormunki is using the latest revision.  OS is Windows 7.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Patrick

[Farmer]

Since you're seeing the issue in Print Preview it's being rendered that way, which means there's something up with your printing workflow (the printer is fine since it works using the driver to manage colour).  You're confident that the profiles are good (have you gone back to vendors' profiles instead of custom, just to be sure?).

I'd recommend screen shotting every single step, every single setting, and posting it.  You will either spot the problem during the process of compiling the info, or someone here will spot something for you.

[Mark D Segal]

Phil,

My mind was wandering in the same direction on this one; except that he said he did test using both supplier canned profiles and his own custom profiles and obtained the same mismatches. My thinking is that in the process of doing the LR/PS upgrades, some setting affecting ICC-based colour management got whacked. The latest versions of both applications and the colour spaces etc. are all fine - that's not where the problem is.

[Ethan Hansen]

Purples turning blue are a sign of image colors being pushed around by a profile. This is the opposite behavior of normal; usually a saturated image blue turns purple with a poorly constructed profile as it is scaled into the printer's color space. This sounds as though there is either a profile being assigned incorrectly (Note that typically profile assignments do not occur in color managed workflows; conversions do.) I agree with Mark. The problem likely is not in the profiles.

Farmer's suggestion is a good starting point. Dive into the printer properties to see if the driver is set to perform color corrections or use a specific profile. Windows can override Photoshop's settings.

[patjoja]

Thanks guys!  I will post screen shots of my settings when I get a chance to create them.  I agree that the problem is likely not in the profiles themselves.  I do wonder about the comments about Windows overriding Photoshop settings.  Does anyone know what's going on there?

 From Mark: "My thinking is that in the process of doing the LR/PS upgrades, some setting affecting ICC-based colour management got whacked."  What setting could that be? 

I did not understand this statement from Ethan "Note that typically profile assignments do not occur in color managed workflows; conversions do."  Could you elaborate? Thanks.

The fact that I can print somewhat accurately with "printer manages color" rather than using a profile might be a clue, but I'm not sure what it's trying to tell me.

Thanks gents!

Patrick

[Mark D Segal]

Thanks guys!  I will post screen shots of my settings when I get a chance to create them.  I agree that the problem is likely not in the profiles themselves.  I do wonder about the comments about Windows overriding Photoshop settings.  Does anyone know what's going on there?

 From Mark: "My thinking is that in the process of doing the LR/PS upgrades, some setting affecting ICC-based colour management got whacked."  What setting could that be? 

I did not understand this statement from Ethan "Note that typically profile assignments do not occur in color managed workflows; conversions do."  Could you elaborate? Thanks.

The fact that I can print somewhat accurately with "printer manages color" rather than using a profile might be a clue, but I'm not sure what it's trying to tell me.

Thanks gents!

Patrick

Patrick, sorry I can't be more helpful, but there are a number of things planted in different places that could go wrong, so best you do as Phil recommended: go through all the settings, post them, and you/we may then spot the problem, if indeed it is a settings issue.

If you can print reasonably accurately with Printer Manages Color, what it means is that the printer and the canned profiles it is using can produce reasonably accurate output, therefore the problem resides with the colour management workflow/settings outside of the printer and the profiles. It was good you tested that.

[Mark D Segal]

Though I'm not familiar with the Canon printers you are using, another thought came to mind that may be worth checking for relevance: that is, the consistency between the settings in the driver made from your computer versus the printer settings made on the printer. For the Pro series printers (the new models) the Media Type should be the same in the two places to assure correct printing.