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Author Topic: Trick Photoshop to Print Argyll Device Linked Profiles?  (Read 2806 times)

Brad P

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Trick Photoshop to Print Argyll Device Linked Profiles?
« on: January 15, 2018, 12:21:43 am »

Following Doug Gray's thoughts here, I'm trying to find a way to print a device link image without color management in Photoshop using Photoshop color management.*

Basically I've taken a device link image properly created in Argyll and loaded it up in Photoshop.  I've selected Convert to Profile Advanced with the Destination Space as the same ICC printer profile used to create the device linked image.  For conversion options, I selected the Adobe (ACE) engine, and for intent, Relative Colorimetric with black point compensation and dithering.  I suspect it doesn't matter whether I chose Absolute or Relative, black point, or dithering, but maybe.

In the print menu, I've selected Photoshop Manages Colors and the same printer profile (used to create the device linked image, which is also the printer/paper profile).  Using the Gamut Warning checkboxes in the print pop up dialogue, I'm steered away from selecting Absolute Colorimetric toward either RelCol, Sat or Perceptual.  I've chosen RelCol since that appears to retain the most colors.  At this step, I imagine using Saturation or Perceptual will actually do some unwanted math on the file.  That informed my selection in the paragraph above.

Any comments would be appreciated.  Thanks

* As background, I'm working with a max souped up Early 2009 Mac Pro that can only update to Yosemite 10.11.6.  Printing to a Z3200ps.  Tried Adobe Printer Utility (doesn't work with my setup), ColorSync (same result) and Preview (same).  Found Doug's link and by all appearances, this version of that workflow seems to work.  There may be some inner workings of Adobe's ACE engine I should worry about, but it appears not or not much from a large print today.  I've monkeyed around with Photoshop's gamut warnings and thought about the different rendering intents along the way, but this appears for now to be the right way.
« Last Edit: January 15, 2018, 01:24:15 am by Brad Paulson »
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Doug Gray

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Re: Trick Photoshop to Print Argyll Device Linked Profiles?
« Reply #1 on: January 16, 2018, 01:04:07 pm »

Following Doug Gray's thoughts here, I'm trying to find a way to print a device link image without color management in Photoshop using Photoshop color management.*

Basically I've taken a device link image properly created in Argyll and loaded it up in Photoshop.  I've selected Convert to Profile Advanced with the Destination Space as the same ICC printer profile used to create the device linked image.  For conversion options, I selected the Adobe (ACE) engine, and for intent, Relative Colorimetric with black point compensation and dithering.  I suspect it doesn't matter whether I chose Absolute or Relative, black point, or dithering, but maybe.

In the print menu, I've selected Photoshop Manages Colors and the same printer profile (used to create the device linked image, which is also the printer/paper profile).  Using the Gamut Warning checkboxes in the print pop up dialogue, I'm steered away from selecting Absolute Colorimetric toward either RelCol, Sat or Perceptual.  I've chosen RelCol since that appears to retain the most colors.  At this step, I imagine using Saturation or Perceptual will actually do some unwanted math on the file.  That informed my selection in the paragraph above.

Any comments would be appreciated.  Thanks

* As background, I'm working with a max souped up Early 2009 Mac Pro that can only update to Yosemite 10.11.6.  Printing to a Z3200ps.  Tried Adobe Printer Utility (doesn't work with my setup), ColorSync (same result) and Preview (same).  Found Doug's link and by all appearances, this version of that workflow seems to work.  There may be some inner workings of Adobe's ACE engine I should worry about, but it appears not or not much from a large print today.  I've monkeyed around with Photoshop's gamut warnings and thought about the different rendering intents along the way, but this appears for now to be the right way.

I'm running Win 10 x64, Photoshop CC.

While Photoshop can use device link profiles for converting from one device to another this is typically used for making high quality Rel Col mappings or remapping gamut in Perceptual. It's great for both of those but then you are in device space. Now what? If the goal is to print it w/o color management (it's already been done) Photoshop strongly discourages bypassing color management via null transforms and the only other way to work with device space RGB according to Photoshop is to first convert back to PCS (LAB). So device link profiles can be used in conversion but the results can't be printed directly. Just nutty.

However, on Windows the null transform has always worked flawlessly but apparently not on Macs. So I don't see device link profiles as a viable way to effect a null transform on Macs.
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digitaldog

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Re: Trick Photoshop to Print Argyll Device Linked Profiles?
« Reply #2 on: January 16, 2018, 01:34:40 pm »

Tried Adobe Printer Utility (doesn't work with my setup), ColorSync (same result) and Preview (same). 
In what way doesn't it work? For a nominal fee, there's also QTR-Print-Tool which will also print without color management. The new Qimage for Mac is said to do the same (don't know yet, just got a demo). It will run for two weeks in demo mode.
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Brad P

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Re: Trick Photoshop to Print Argyll Device Linked Profiles?
« Reply #3 on: January 16, 2018, 02:27:55 pm »

In what way doesn't it work? For a nominal fee, there's also QTR-Print-Tool which will also print without color management. The new Qimage for Mac is said to do the same (don't know yet, just got a demo). It will run for two weeks in demo mode.

No idea after banging my head against my keyboard for months.  The only thing I can come up with is it has something to do with my particular setup (Z3200ps, old but souped up computer).  I've been through this with Chromix when I tried to work with them unsuccessfully to print their RGB profile a few months ago.  They've had had similar insoluble problems with people trying to print targets with similar setups.  I suspect it has at least something to do with the print driver pipeline.  Some have mentioned installing a 5 year old version of the Z3200ps print driver offers success, but I've been reluctant to try that yet. 

I've been waiting for Qimage's mac version and will try that out too.  But I believe they're using the same Z3200ps print driver at the end of their workflow.  I see on their new Mac Support page "Qimage One tags the image data as sRGB after it has performed any needed color profile conversion and instructs the printer to print sRGB. You should not be concerned about seeing sRGB as the selected color profile in the printer setup dialog", so I imagine that any color conversions will need to be done beforehand and run through LittleCMS (apparently their engine) instead of ACE, if I understand how that will all work reading it over.

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Doug Gray

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Re: Trick Photoshop to Print Argyll Device Linked Profiles?
« Reply #4 on: January 16, 2018, 05:46:50 pm »

No idea after banging my head against my keyboard for months.  The only thing I can come up with is it has something to do with my particular setup (Z3200ps, old but souped up computer).  I've been through this with Chromix when I tried to work with them unsuccessfully to print their RGB profile a few months ago.  They've had had similar insoluble problems with people trying to print targets with similar setups.  I suspect it has at least something to do with the print driver pipeline.  Some have mentioned installing a 5 year old version of the Z3200ps print driver offers success, but I've been reluctant to try that yet. 

I've been waiting for Qimage's mac version and will try that out too.  But I believe they're using the same Z3200ps print driver at the end of their workflow.  I see on their new Mac Support page "Qimage One tags the image data as sRGB after it has performed any needed color profile conversion and instructs the printer to print sRGB. You should not be concerned about seeing sRGB as the selected color profile in the printer setup dialog", so I imagine that any color conversions will need to be done beforehand and run through LittleCMS (apparently their engine) instead of ACE, if I understand how that will all work reading it over.

Weird. They claim it works though. LittleCMS is a good engine.
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GWGill

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Re: Trick Photoshop to Print Argyll Device Linked Profiles?
« Reply #5 on: January 16, 2018, 06:48:42 pm »

I see on their new Mac Support page "Qimage One tags the image data as sRGB after it has performed any needed color profile conversion and instructs the printer to print sRGB. You should not be concerned about seeing sRGB as the selected color profile in the printer setup dialog", so I imagine that any color conversions will need to be done beforehand and run through LittleCMS (apparently their engine) instead of ACE, if I understand how that will all work reading it over.
Hopefully no use of lcms is needed - from your description they may be using the "null transform" trick. i.e. assign the printer profile as sRGB, then tag the file sRGB, so that the driver decides that no color management is needed.

But I'm puzzled - if you are using a device link, how did you print the test chart out, that was used to create the destination device profile ? Because whatever print workflow that was, is the one you should use to print the file after running it through the device link.
« Last Edit: January 21, 2021, 12:05:22 am by GWGill »
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Brad P

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Re: Trick Photoshop to Print Argyll Device Linked Profiles?
« Reply #6 on: January 16, 2018, 07:51:24 pm »

But I'm puzzled - if you are using a device link, how did you print the test chart out, that was used to create the destination device profile ? Because whatever print workflow that was, is the one you should use to print the file after running it through the device link.

A good question. There is a workaround to feed patch profiles through the Z3200’s colorimeter developed here..  The embedded programming in the driver allows non color managed printing of patches (but nothing else like images, I poked at it a bit).
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GWGill

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Re: Trick Photoshop to Print Argyll Device Linked Profiles?
« Reply #7 on: January 16, 2018, 09:19:46 pm »

A good question. There is a workaround to feed patch profiles through the Z3200’s colorimeter developed here..  The embedded programming in the driver allows non color managed printing of patches (but nothing else like images, I poked at it a bit).
Hmm. Useful if you want to create device profiles to plug into the print driver, but I'm not sure such a workaround is useful then if you want to use a device link workflow. i.e. you need to establish a non-color managed workflow for images, and then you can use it to print test charts as well as files where the color management has been done outside the print driver. [ Of course it's not really non-color managed when we are talking about RGB - the printer or driver is having to do an RGB to ink separation/conversion somewhere, but at least an RGB space that encompasses the native gamut of the printer. ]
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Brad P

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Re: Trick Photoshop to Print Argyll Device Linked Profiles?
« Reply #8 on: January 16, 2018, 09:44:41 pm »

Thanks Graeme.  I know its not the real deal since it is running the image through the ACE color engine, which I imagine is doing something or at least could be.  However my thinking on this is any conversion in colorspaces is very marginal at this point assuming I've produced a correct device linked image (which I'm confident I have).  When I look at the histogram statistics in Photoshop before and after the conversion, I see no changes and there are absolutely no visible changes to my going eyes on my Adobe RGB screen before and after the conversion.  Further, the gamut warnings (inaccurate I know by one or two dEs) in the Photoshop print menu aren't firing at all and they do quite a bit on images not run through the device link process.  So until find another way to actually print with my system (or buy a new one), I'm imagining this process would be extremely close to the same result if not practically indistinguishable.  The blacks are blacker and the colors much better . . .

Anyway, on to Qimage and the other one Andrew mentioned to see if that provides me a workflow to test that out.  But quite interested in your thoughts
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GWGill

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Re: Trick Photoshop to Print Argyll Device Linked Profiles?
« Reply #9 on: January 16, 2018, 10:55:36 pm »

So until find another way to actually print with my system (or buy a new one), I'm imagining this process would be extremely close to the same result if not practically indistinguishable.
If the problem is that it's not possible to disengage the color management, I'm surprised that you can't get a null transform workflow going.
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Brad P

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Re: Trick Photoshop to Print Argyll Device Linked Profiles?
« Reply #10 on: January 18, 2018, 01:55:03 am »

Just to close this post out, the null transform workflow described here, specifically in my case as that workflow is implemented behind the scenes by the just released Qimage One for Mac available here, solved all my print with no color management headaches in case anyone else is having the same problems with their particular setup.  Much easier and better than the method I initially was working on although that was I'm sure pretty darn close.

Thanks for the steers everyone.
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