Getting Accurate Colors from InDesign

[mattpat]

Apologies if this has been asked many times before, but I'm stuck trying to get accurate colors out of an InDesign document on a Canon imagePROGRAF Pro-4000.

I have a document with a number of embedded images—the document's RGB profile is set to Adobe RGB, and each image has its own embedded profile correctly configured. When I go to print, in the InDesign Color Management section, I choose "Let InDesign Manage Colors" (the only available option), and select the profile for my paper. Then, in the Printer dialog settings, under Color Matching, I select ColorSync, and "Automatic", which correctly chooses the corresponding color profile for my paper (the only other option being Canon Color Matching, which seems to produce no better results). The media type is configured as expected, and I have tried with the "Preserve Color Numbers" checkbox both checked and unchecked.

In all cases, my turquoises are far greener and warmer than they should be, which I've read could be a sign of double-profiling. The same image printed from Preview with ColorSync color matching looks perfect. What am I doing wrong? Is there something I'm not disabling hard enough?

[Ludwig Nobel]

Why do you convert to a profile? No need for that. Indesign will handle the colors for you when you print. I have printed documents with 3 or 4 different source color spaces from Indesign a never converted to a profile.
For color matching in the printer driver, choose "None". If you choose a profile here, you have double profiling, which is what you suspected.

Ludwig

[mattpat]

Why do you convert to a profile? No need for that. Indesign will handle the colors for you when you print. I have printed documents with 3 or 4 different source color spaces from Indesign a never converted to a profile.
For color matching in the printer driver, choose "None". If you choose a profile here, you have double profiling, which is what you suspected.

Ludwig

I should clarify, I set Adobe RGB as the document's color space, but am not having it do conversions—I opened the "Convert to Profile" dialog to show what the document's color space was set to, but I didn't click OK.

Unfortunately, I can't find anywhere in any of the driver settings to choose "None" for color matching. The only two options are ColorSync and Canon Color Matching (this panel is correctly disabled by apps like Photoshop and Lightroom, but for some reason, InDesign leaves it enabled). If I choose ColorSync, I have to pick an ICC profile; if I choose Canon Color Matching, there's nowhere in Canon's corresponding Color Options pane to force "None," which seems to have been an option on older driver versions.

For tonight, I was able to work around this problem by exporting a print-ready PDF with no color space conversion, and printing it using Preview with ColorSync for profiling. There must be some way to do it from InDesign though, right?

[Ludwig Nobel]

I am on Windows, so my printer driver dialog boxes look different from yours. I think however there must be some way to disable color management in the driver on a Mac too, since without that possibility, you will always have double profiling. At least it is so on Windows.
Perhaps you can look it up in the printer manual, search for "printing with icc profiles".

Ludwig

[Simon J.A. Simpson]

I have a much older version of Mac InDesign (CS4) although the dialogue boxes look very similar and, on checking, are giving similar results.

Over the years I have tried to print from InDesign using colour management but been completely unsuccessful.  I am not convinced that the InDesign pipeline sufficiently disables colour management, but I put this down to my older version of InDesign.  Perhaps the problem still exists.

My (somewhat tedious) workaround is to export from InDesign to a PDF in the same colour space as the working one (I use ProPhoto RGB throughout), then open the PDF in Photoshop and print it colour managed from there.  I save the file in PSD format for future use.

Just one small point to note is that if you have any text from InDesign it's best to ensure it is exported and imported at the very least at 600dpi or else you will see jaggies; and don't allow Photoshop to anti-alias on import.

It might be worth having a conversation with Adobe Technical Support to see if there is something that we are missing, but I suspect it all comes down to the problems with disabling colour management in Mac OSX and the technicians at the first level TS might not be sufficiently aware of this issue.

[picman]

The No Color Correction shows up in the print dialog under Quality & Media only when you have selected Canon Color Matching.


At least on my Mac on both CS6 and CC.

[Simon J.A. Simpson]

The No Color Correction shows up in the print dialog under Quality & Media only when you have selected Canon Color Matching.


At least on my Mac on both CS6 and CC.

What version of OSX have you ?  On El Capitan there is no option for turning colour management off so I can’t see any option to select “No Color Correction” in the printer driver dialogue.  Neither can I see this option in the InDesign CS4 printing dialogue.

[picman]

El Capitan and the latest Canon driver downloaded from their site.

[Simon J.A. Simpson]

Have you got a screen shot showing the option of no color correction ?

[picman]

Screen shot attached

[Simon J.A. Simpson]

Ah, I see.  You have obviously got an additional option in the printer driver for the 4000 Pro.

[mattpat]

I would never have thought to look under rendering intent for that. Excellent find, thank you!

To your point though, Simon, yes, InDesign is not doing everything it should be in this situation. If they used the same API as Lightroom and Photoshop, they could inform the driver that it should disable color management (I believe it was added in 10.6 or 10.7). The PDF workaround is quite effective.

[TonyW]

You may now have the answer, not choosing ColorSync.  But just in case when looking for LF printer info I came across this article about issues with the 4000 double profiling with Mac OS X Sierra, may be of interest?
https://www.martinbaileyphotography.com/2017/05/15/how-to-avoid-color-issues-on-imageprograf-pro-printers-podcast-573/

[Nora_nor]

When I send files to an offset print shop, I save the whole file as a pdf, with all the right choices (the print shop will usually have that on their website)
It is then that the In Design document is finished getting processed...
If you try to print from inside InDesign the last conversions are not done yet

[JeanMichel]

I use InDesign all the time, designing books and manuals. I never print from it. I get my proofs from the printing shop that will print the publication.

To accurately print from InDesign you really need a Postcript printer. A Postscript add-on program may be available for your printer.

If you print on a bitmap printer, InDesign will print the Postcript and the OS and print driver will render the file. See this Adobe help page:https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/printing-documents.html

Easiest way to print an InDesign file with your in-house printer is to export to a PDF "High Quality Print".

It used to be that printing in cmyk was the the only choice when printing in offset, still is, but now also we have digital 'presses' (Indigo and such) and those will take RGB files. Most houses will specify sRGB. If you are lucky, some houses, such as Toronto's Pikto, can provide ICC profiles for the papers they use. Pikto even offers print a one page sample for checking.