NO, Lightroom does not replace Adobe Color Printer Utility (Windows)

[NAwlins_Contrarian]

[EDIT]

I was very wrong, and I'm here to say that, egg all over my face, and apologize for posting misinformation. See the message below.

[ORIGINAL MESSAGE]

This issue has come up before, but there seemed to be some doubt, and now I think I can answer the question. As most of you know, Adobe Color Printer Utility (ACPU) is a small, free program designed to print images without any color management (on Windows, after turning off color management in the printer driver), so that printer profile targets can be printed for the creation of new ICC printer profiles. You can download ACPU for free (https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/no-color-management-option-missing.html). However, I have satisfied myself that Adobe Lightroom is equally capable of performing that function, at least on Windows machines. That issue had been in doubt--see, e.g., the discussion starting at https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/61159873.

To test the point, I used Andrew Rodney's gamut test file, which he makes available for download at http://www.digitaldog.net/tips/. The file is a 16-bit TIFF in ProPhoto RGB, and below is what it looks like when properly color-managed. That's a small JPEG in sRGB--but you get the general idea. I deliberately chose a file in ProPhoto RGB so that it would look odd if the software or hardware assumed sRGB.

The test prints were made on my Epson R280, with color management turned off (Page Setup... -> Properties... -> Advanced -> Color Management -> ICM, with "Off (No Color Adjustment)" checkbox checked). Both were printed on Epson Ultra Premium Luster paper with Epson ink. For both I correctly set the media type in the driver.

First I printed the file with ACPU. As expected, the colors were quite shifted from what you see below. For example, the approaching-turquoise material under the fish looked dark bluish-purplish, and the lime-green areas printed medium-dark green.

Second I printed the file again with Lightroom 6.14. As before, I set the printer driver for color management turned off, and in Lightroom's Color Management panel, for Profile I selected from the menu Managed by Printer. I also turned off Print Sharpening and Print Adjustment.

The colors of the two prints are as identical as my eyes are capable of detecting, at least under incandescent (halogen) lighting in my house. To be clear, the prints are not identical, because they're scaled slightly differently.

So if you don't have and/or don't want to get and/or use ACPU, or are having an issue printing a profiling target at the desired size / scale, then it appears to me that at least for Windows users, printing the profiling target with Lightroom instead of ACPU, using the procedure outline above, is a functional alternative.

[Simon J.A. Simpson]

To truly test this hypothesis you would need to take a print profiling target file, without any kind of profile attached (therefore, not colour managed), and print it both from Lightroom and ACPU and then measure the patches to compare the results.

I am not convinced that there would not be some kind of colour management from Lightroom, but those more knowledgeable than I might care to comment.

Your proposed method would definitely not work under the later versions of the Mac OSX operating system.

[Rhossydd]

But why bother with Lightroom at all for printing profiling targets ?

ACPU is simple, reliable and as close to foolproof as it's possible to get.
LR is more complicated and likely to be more error prone even if you can set it up to print directly. I'd want to see some credible measurements to prove nothing is being done to the file in the process rather trust someone's vision.

[Simon J.A. Simpson]

But why bother with Lightroom at all for printing profiling targets ?

ACPU is simple, reliable and as close to foolproof as it's possible to get.
LR is more complicated and likely to be more error prone even if you can set it up to print directly. I'd want to see some credible measurements to prove nothing is being done to the file in the process rather trust someone's vision.

Good point.

[Mark D Segal]

The universal advice from every profiling service I've seen on the Internet is to use the Adobe Color Print Utility, and specifically DO NOT use Photoshop or Lightroom for printing the profiling targets. This is because we know that ACPU bypasses or neutralizes all colour management, allowing the printer's native response to the target file numbers to be recorded and used in the profile making application. There is more to non-management of the colour management chain than letting the printer manage colour. Furthermore, you shouldn't use Andrew's gamut test image as a scientific basis for measuring the accuracy of the profiles you are making. It is not meant for that. It is meant for evaluating, by visual perception, issues of gamut and gamut clipping. You cannot determine the accuracy of a printer profile's performance from that target.

[Rhossydd]

and specifically DO NOT use Photoshop or Lightroom for printing the profiling targets.

Not really. The earlier versions of Photoshop CS4 and before are quite suitable for printing targets with. You might be surprised at quite how many people are still using these versions. We(www.colourprofiles.com) still have regular customers using PS CS2, 3 & 4

[Mark D Segal]

I was just reporting what they say on their websites. They don't want to bother themselves or their customers differentiating versions of Photoshop when ACPU is so easy to download and use. But you have a point - there are no doubt a fair number of people still using those older versions. But question to you:  will today's OS versions play nicely in respect of no colour management with those older versions of PS? (I don't know because I keep up-to-date minus the time lapse for bug removal.)

[Rhossydd]

will today's OS versions play nicely in respect of no colour management with those older versions of PS?

Well, with Macs don't bother trying, just use ACPU whatever. Windows seems to have far better legacy support and we've seen no issues with recent OSs. Again you might be surprised at many Windows users don't bother religiously upgrading to every new version.

[Mark D Segal]

For Windows - no - absolutely not surprised. I can't tell you how many medical offices I've walked into in this city where they are still using XP - unbelievable but true. They don't have a clue what kind of security risks they are incurring, but they are scared of upgrading because of the cost and perceived management issues.

[Farmer]

For Windows - no - absolutely not surprised. I can't tell you how many medical offices I've walked into in this city where they are still using XP - unbelievable but true. They don't have a clue what kind of security risks they are incurring, but they are scared of upgrading because of the cost and perceived management issues.

One of the main reasons for the medical sector is that they're running 32bit XP and using WoW (Windows on Windows - native emulation) to run some 16bit apps.  The reason for staying with those old apps is familiarity and cost.  64bit Windows can support 32bit apps through WoW natively, but not 16bit.

As for the main topic of this thread.  If Lr could do exactly what ACPU does, I would expect Adobe to say so.  As has been mentioned, short of doing patches and measuring them, you can't really tell, and I also agree - why bother when ACPU is created specifically for the task?

[Doug Gray]

Big thanks to NC for bringing this up.

The approach almost certainly works in Lightroom but I find trying to simply print targets in Lightroom tedious.

This is an interesting observation by the OP and suggests the same would work in Photoshop.  I've long used Photoshop on Windows to print profile targets by using the null transform trick. This involves assigning an arbitrary printer profile to the target then printing using Photoshop manages color and selecting the same, arbitrary printer profile. The device driver is set to disable color management. This has always worked and it what I've used for years subsequent to PS CS5 dropping the explicit feature. And I have tested it extensively, most recently with an iSiS, against ACPU.

However, the OP's comment made me re-think it. Perhaps if I just load a target image in Photoshop and assign any working space and then just print using Printer Manages Color but disabling color management in the driver I would get the same results. The theory is that Photoshop just sends the RGB values w/o changing them at all and the driver just prints those RGB values unmanaged. BTW, the widespread belief Photoshop changes the RGB values it sends to the driver to sRGB is false.

So I ran a test target in two ways. Assigning the target to sRGB and assigning the target to ProPhoto. I then printed them with color management disabled.

These, and ACPU prints produce the exact same prints except for ACPU's scaling problem. The printed patch variations are exactly what one gets just printing the same image multiple times, about .2dE average.  That's a lot simpler than assigning a printer profile then selecting the same profile to force a null transform.

Of course this only works on Windows but it sure is simple!  And no stupid warning which the null transform technique I had used flashes.

[NAwlins_Contrarian]

Given the comments and controversy, I found an actual printer profiling target, which I'd previously downloaded from Profiles by Rick (http://profilesbyrick.com/downloads/) and used to get him to make me a couple of profiles. Then I printed that target in both with ACPU and with Lightroom (6.14) set to Color Management -> Profile -> Managed by Printer and (under Page Setup) Properties -> Advanced -> Color Management -> ICM -> Off (No Color Adjustment). However, in both cases I did set the correct media type (Epson Ultra Premium Luster). This was exactly the same procedure I used for printing Andrew Rodney's gamut test target, which he makes available as a 16-bit TIFF in ProPhoto RGB.

To my surprise and dismay, the actual profile target did not print remotely 'correctly' (or at least, not remotely the same) from Lightroom.

Especially given my prior experience with the gamut test, I was pretty surprised.

Lesson for me: I need to be more careful and comprehensive when testing. I should have dug out and imported into Lightroom an actual profiling target, instead of just going with the gamut test file that was already there. The low-hanging fruit proved to be not at all ripe. My mistake.

Please accept my apology for posting misinformation.

[Mark D Segal]

We all learn by trial, error and discussion on forums like this! Not to worry.

[Doug Gray]

Given the comments and controversy, I found an actual printer profiling target, which I'd previously downloaded from Profiles by Rick (http://profilesbyrick.com/downloads/) and used to get him to make me a couple of profiles. Then I printed that target in both with ACPU and with Lightroom (6.14) set to Color Management -> Profile -> Managed by Printer and (under Page Setup) Properties -> Advanced -> Color Management -> ICM -> Off (No Color Adjustment). However, in both cases I did set the correct media type (Epson Ultra Premium Luster). This was exactly the same procedure I used for printing Andrew Rodney's gamut test target, which he makes available as a 16-bit TIFF in ProPhoto RGB.

To my surprise and dismay, the actual profile target did not print remotely 'correctly' (or at least, not remotely the same) from Lightroom.

Especially given my prior experience with the gamut test, I was pretty surprised.

Lesson for me: I need to be more careful and comprehensive when testing. I should have dug out and imported into Lightroom an actual profiling target, instead of just going with the gamut test file that was already there. The low-hanging fruit proved to be not at all ripe. My mistake.

Please accept my apology for posting misinformation.

Yeah, nothing beats measuring.

Lightroom, on both Windows and Macs, uses a different process. LR converts to a modified ProPhoto RGB. I have not experimented with the process you described. However, it did cause me to look at Photoshop and review the roundabout way I print profile targets as described a few posts ago. And Photoshop does reproduce targets as accurately as ACPU using printer manages color while actually disabling color management in the driver. And it doesn't matter what you tag the target image with just so long as you either assign or leave alone. Just so long as you don't select convert profile.

So your error with LR helped save some annoying steps I use in Photoshop.