Rendering intent with "Printer manages color" in OS10.6

[MHMG]

Anyone know how to instruct Colorsync to use a different output rendering intent? I've been trying a "printer manages color" workflow in OS10.6, and it does appear to accurately match  "PSCS5 manages colors" workflow, but the catch is colorsync seems to be converting to destination using Rel Col w/o BPC. Not a good choice for matte papers! I've been googling with no success... all the colorsync rendering info I'm finding relates to the OS Tiger" era when there was a colorsync control panel in the OS system preferences.

My interest in a "printer manages color" workflow on the Mac is motivated by a desire to help amateur photographers who aren't quite ready to pony up for PS, Lightroom, or CS suite.  Apple Pages and Microsoft Word 2011 are not bad "poor man's" RIPs these days as both are competent at dragging and dropping photos onto their pages. The catch seems to be in coaxing decent color managed output from non Adobe apps on the Mac.

Thanks in advance for any ideas on how to change the rendering intent for colorsync workflows.

cheers,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com

[digitaldog]

Seems the rendering intent specified when the profile built, the question I’d have is, IF you alter this tag in the profile, will it be used? ColorThink Pro allows one to open the profile and change the default rendering intent. You have a copy?

[MHMG]

Seems the rendering intent specified when the profile built, the question I’d have is, IF you alter this tag in the profile, will it be used? ColorThink Pro allows one to open the profile and change the default rendering intent. You have a copy?

I built the custom profile being used in my testing with PM5 which I recall defaults to perceptual rendering for printer profiles. Opening in the colorsync utility confirms the profile is tagged for perceptual as the default. But the output is definitely not behaving that way. It's printing exactly like relcol w/o BPC which is pretty useless for matte papers.

Maybe this is part of Apple's masterplan to get us all to buy iPads. Why would anyone want to print a photo from their Mac

[digitaldog]

It's printing exactly like relcol w/o BPC which is pretty useless for matte papers.

So do you know for a fact that ACE is being used (because if not, unlikely you’ll be getting BPC). If you alter the default to RelCol, is it totally different?

[MHMG]

So do you know for a fact that ACE is being used (because if not, unlikely you’ll be getting BPC). If you alter the default to RelCol, is it totally different?

Sorry, I had abreviated Rel Col without BPC as RelCol w/o BPC, I meant that the print is indeed clipping the dark areas in the image due to relative colorimetric conversion with no black point compensation. I could have also added in this post that I see no way in colorsync to specify the CMM, either, but in trying to diagnose my problem I did run PS set to the Apple CMM in order to check whether that was causing the difference between "adobe manages color" and the "printer manages color" output. The difference is so big that I doubted it could be due to choice of CMM, and printing from PS with relCol rather than perceptual rendering made the match between the two printing pathways, so that seems to be the underlying issue.  I just can't figure out how to wrench control of the rendering intent option away from the "printer manages color" colorsync workflow.

[digitaldog]

I could have also added in this post that I see no way in colorsync to specify the CMM, either, but in trying to diagnose my problem I did run PS set to the Apple CMM in order to check whether that was causing the difference between "adobe manages color" and the "printer manages color" output. The difference is so big that I doubted it could be due to choice of CMM, and printing from PS with relCol rather than perceptual rendering made the match between the two printing pathways, so that seems to be the underlying issue.  I just can't figure out how to wrench control of the rendering intent option away from the "printer manages color" colorsync workflow.

Again ColorThink has provisions to edit the profile for a preferred CMM so in theory, you could select ACE and in theory get BPC but I have no idea if that would work. But the bigger issue here is probably Printer Manages Color in your case (and in many other cases) ain’t working. I’m under the impression that the app, driver and OS all have to behave correctly for this to work. Even when its “right” I have no idea if you’d get identical results as Application Manages Color. It would not surprise me in the least if that were not the case. I suspect that is why so many make the suggestion not to use Printer Manages Color except in the rare case where App Manages Color doesn’t work. Odd is it seems, I’ve seen a few isolated cases where App Manages Color simply will not work no matter how much trouble shooting one attempts and at that point, Printer Manages Color works or is at least the only viable fix. Yes, its a huge stinky pile of dog doo.

[digitaldog]

My interest in a "printer manages color" workflow on the Mac is motivated by a desire to help amateur photographers who aren't quite ready to pony up for PS, Lightroom, or CS suite.  Apple Pages and Microsoft Word 2011 are not bad "poor man's" RIPs these days as both are competent at dragging and dropping photos onto their pages. The catch seems to be in coaxing decent color managed output from non Adobe apps on the Mac.

How about Preview?

[MHMG]

How about Preview?

Well, the softproof feature in Preview would be cool, but it has no "simulate paper color" or simulate black ink" feature which makes the softproof feature basically useless, and like Word and Pages, Preview seems to rely on a "let printer manage color workflow". I don't see a "let application manage color" option. So, I haven't tried it, but I'll bet it will produce the same problem. Anyway, thanks for the suggestion.

[MHMG]

...Odd is it seems, I’ve seen a few isolated cases where App Manages Color simply will not work no matter how much trouble shooting one attempts and at that point, Printer Manages Color works or is at least the only viable fix. Yes, its a huge stinky pile of dog doo.

Hard to believe we are now a solid 15 years beyond the first colorsync enabled workflow on the Mac, and we are still fighting these fundamental issues. Geez, if a photographer understands what an embedded tag in a source file is, knows that more than one CMM could be selected, chooses an appropriate printer/ink/paper profile, and finally chooses a rendering intent, what's so hard about this workflow that the OS, printer driver, and application software engineers can't figure out?

[digitaldog]

Well, the softproof feature in Preview would be cool, but it has no "simulate paper color" or simulate black ink" feature which makes the softproof feature basically useless, and like Word and Pages, Preview seems to rely on a "let printer manage color workflow". I don't see a "let application manage color" option. So, I haven't tried it, but I'll bet it will produce the same problem. Anyway, thanks for the suggestion.

OK, I thought you were looking for an expensive (in this case free) solution to print color managed san’s Photoshop (as even LR doesn’t have soft proofing).

[MHMG]

OK, I thought you were looking for an expensive (in this case free) solution to print color managed san’s Photoshop (as even LR doesn’t have soft proofing).

Yeah, softproofing is definitely a closely guarded up-sell feature for imaging software. There's a quasi-jailbreak implementation (photoshop elements plus) that add's softproofing to photoshop elements and thus is within price range of many amateurs, but Preview and other apps which have softproof features simply don't implement softproofing correctly. That's all I was really trying to say. The more overarching consideration was whether Preview had an "application manages color" path that would allow the user more direct control over rendering intents than I've been able to find for the customary "printer manages color" path on the Mac.

[Doyle Yoder]

Yeah, softproofing is definitely a closely guarded up-sell feature for imaging software. There's a quasi-jailbreak implementation (photoshop elements plus) that add's softproofing to photoshop elements and thus is within price range of many amateurs, but Preview and other apps which have softproof features simply don't implement softproofing correctly. That's all I was really trying to say. The more overarching consideration was whether Preview had an "application manages color" path that would allow the user more direct control over rendering intents than I've been able to find for the customary "printer manages color" path on the Mac.

On the Canon printers have you tried printing from Preview or for other apps for that matter, selecting "Vendor Matching" under Color Matching, then Under Main/Color Mode: set dropdown to "Color" click of Set, go to Matching tab and select ICC Matching Mode, where you can choose rendering intent. I have not successfully printing with this method so I was wonder if you tried it and what results you achieved.

[MHMG]

Well, vendor matching is definitely broke for my computer and my 8100, but it may be a computer related issue as we've noted in another thread.  I will give it a go on my iPF5000 and see if it works. Anyway, that would be great for canon printer owners but definitely not a universal solution for many photographers working on a Mac with other printers.

[MHMG]

On the Canon printers have you tried printing from Preview or for other apps for that matter, selecting "Vendor Matching" under Color Matching, then Under Main/Color Mode: set dropdown to "Color" click of Set, go to Matching tab and select ICC Matching Mode, where you can choose rendering intent. I have not successfully printing with this method so I was wonder if you tried it and what results you achieved.

Hi Doyle, as I noted earlier, I couldn't get Canon's "vendor matching/ICC matching" mode to produce a properly color managed print on my iPF8100 but it did print. On my iPF5000 the vendor matching mode wiil print until I also invoke the ICC matching mode. Then it breaks the printer connection and can't print. It would have been a nice work around for Canon users, but alas...

So, back to my original question. Anybody here Know how to choose a rendering intent when using "printer manages color/colorsync" printing path in Snow Leopard? Is Colorsync really that crippled?

[Doyle Yoder]

I think I figured it out, but it ain't pretty.

If printing from a none Adobe app, in the print dialog go to Preview. Save a tiff out of Preview. Open the tif with the ColorSync Utility. At the bottom of the CU window choose Match to Profile, Printer profile of your choice. Choose Intent, Relative Colorimetric, then go back into Intent and choose Black Point Compensation. Now hit Apply on right side. Now save file/photo as a tiff.

Now you have to remove the profile tag so Preview will not do any profile conversion. Open finder window to Library/ColorSync/Scripts. Now drag tiff file you just saved to Remove.app. You can check the assign profile before and after dragging to the Remove script by dragging tiff to Show Info script.

Now open tiff in Preview and print with No Color Management in printer driver.

I opened up a tiff file in the CU with an assign working space of ProPhoto RGB and tried the above workflow and it printed perfectly. Don't know how it will work exactly when printing from applications to Preview but I will let you test that.

[MHMG]

I think I figured it out, but it ain't pretty.

Yeah, I had figured out that you can open an image directly in Colorsync utility, and then use the utility to "match to profile" which is more or less what we all call "convert to profile", but I didn't get as far as you have what with then stripping away the tag to make it then print successfully in a "no color adjust" mode. All in all, that's an absurd workflow even if one attempted to automate it for a batch of images.

Still scratching my head in disbelief that I can't figure out how to make a "printer manages color" workflow work correctly on the Mac. The company that successfully brought us Colorsync and an ability to implement a fully color managed workflow in the mid 1990s has apparently deprecated all of its print output usefulness starting with OS10.5 and now even worse in 10.6.

I should add that PS Elements appears to me at this time to be the cheapest way to add an "application manages color" workflow to the Mac. I was hoping the free Adobe Reader might have this feature but no such luck. Go figure.

kind regards,
Mark