Seriously wrong colors when printing: double printer profiling? Win7/PS CS5

[CASpyr]

Problem:
When printing from PS CS5 letting PS manage colors and selecting the proper profile for my printer/paper combination AND setting the printer driver to 'application managed colors', colors come out seriously wrong (strong brownish-greenish tint and way too dark).


My setup:
Pentium i5 machine with 8GB of RAM
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, clean install (no upgrade) and kept up to date constantly
Photoshop CS5 64-bit, latest update
HP B9180 printer, directly connected via USB, using the latest HP driver; printer/paper profile from paper manufacturer (Hahnemuehle)
Dell U2711 monitor, calibrated and profiled (ColorMunki)

Things I've tried / observed:
- I've made sure (really!) that the printer driver does not try to color manage by setting it to 'application managed colors'. I set this in the printer driver dialog just before printing but also in the default settings in the printer properties on a system level (control panel>printers) just to make sure I'm not the victim of the dreaded 'non-sticky' driver setting problem. Nevertheless, the way the pictures print, some sort of double profiling seems to be going on behind the scenes.
- As a test, I then printed using 'printer manages colors' in the PS print dialogue and setting the printer to it managing the colors ('ColorSmart' as it is called in HP speak). Result: very nice print closely matching the appearance on screen! This eliminates the printer as a potential source of the problem, i.e. print heads, print cartridges, self-calibration etc. and it takes the possibility of a faulty monitor calibration out of the equation.
- I tried to print from Lightroom V3.3 letting Lightroom manage colors and again making sure (and double checking) that color management by the printer is turned off. Result: exact same bad result as from Photoshop with very bad color and tone. At least the problem is consistent...
- I previoulsy have printed successfully both from Lightroom 2.x/3.x and PS CS3 for several years (so IMHO I think I know what I'm doing in terms of color management) BUT under Windows XP.
- I have read Andrew Rodney's excellent recent article here on LL (and think I understood it)

My diagnosis:
The only culprit I can make out is Windows 7 and/or the interaction of the HP printer driver with Win7. Quite obviously, there is some double profiling going on but for the life of me, I cannot figure out why and don't know how to prevent the application of a second profile after Photoshop (or LR) has done so.
I've done extensive research on this forum as well as on the internet at large without having found a solution. There are reports of strange colors from people who seem to know what they're doing in terms of color management but nobody has a solution. A change or upgrade to Windows 7 is often mentioned however.

Has anybody had similar experiences or maybe even solved similar problems?
Any help is greatly appreciated!

Christian Spyr

[Schewe]

Problem:
When printing from PS CS5 letting PS manage colors and selecting the proper profile for my printer/paper combination AND setting the printer driver to 'application managed colors', colors come out seriously wrong (strong brownish-greenish tint and way too dark).

Actually, dark and greenish is what happens when no color management has taken place which means the image is sent to the printer un-managed...light and magenta is what happens when you apply double color management (a profile some how applied twice).

You need to double check your steps. Have you tried actually doing a convert to profile and then send it unmanaged from Photoshop with color turned off at the driver?

[CASpyr]

Thank you for your reply and for spinning me around and pointing me in a new direction.

I've tried your suggestion by converting the image to the printer/paper profile (Hahnemuehle German Etching) and printing it with PS set to 'printer manages color' and the driver set to 'application manages color' (this is what you suggested, right?).
Result: ....the exact same greenish dark picture.

Starting to doubt my sanity (of which not much is left anyway thanks to our newborn daughter most active at night...), I tried printing on HP Advanced glossy paper which worked nicely in the past. I did this by letting PS manage colors and turning off color management in the driver.
Result: very good match to soft proofed image on screen! So printing with PS handling color management DOES work on my system! Sanity (partly) saved...

Your assumption seems correct that there was no color management. The culprit seems to be the paper profile (which I downloaded from the manufacturer's website). It is recognized by PS CS5 as soft proofing seems to work and the print preview picture changes when ticking the 'match print colors' tick box underneath. However, for some reason, the profile does not seem to get applied when the image is converted from the working space (ProPhoto RGB by the way) to the output space, neither when doing a 'convert to profile' nor on the fly when printing. As a side observation, I tested what happens when I tick the 'preserve RGB numbers' in the soft proof setup dialog. The preview on the screen shows a similarly distorted picture as in the unsuccessful prints. This would further support your diagnosis of no color management taking place.

I'll try to make a custom profile for the German Etching paper and see if that improves things.

[CASpyr]

I'm running in circles. Making a custom profile has not helped, greenish-brownish-dark as before (at least I now have a profile for the German Etching paper that appears to encompass more colors and is smoother than the canned one).

To go back to basics, printing again with the driver managing the colors on good old HP Advanced glossy paper (my sanity check) yielded a reddish picture typical for double profiling. Say what??!??!

Fiddling around in HP's Solution Center (HA! what a name!!), in the driver settings from within PS and from the printer settings accessed through Win7's control panel revealed that I cannot trust the settings in the printer driver when I change them from within Photoshop. When doing that, settings are not changed when double checking through the solution center and Control Panel>Printers. This discovery has not let me far, as adjusting the settings from the Solution Center has yielded double profiling.
I sense there is structure in this madness but I'm too confused and tired now to draw the right conclusions. The only one I can make is that the interaction of PS CS5, the HP B9180 printer driver and Win7 is complex in a way that makes reproducible printing extremely difficult.

Any ideas? Fellow 9180 owners (there still are some out there)?
Jeff?

Christian

[Schewe]

I sense there is structure in this madness but I'm too confused and tired now to draw the right conclusions. The only one I can make is that the interaction of PS CS5, the HP B9180 printer driver and Win7 is complex in a way that makes reproducible printing extremely difficult.

Any ideas? Fellow 9180 owners (there still are some out there)?
Jeff?

Sorry...I got nothing. I don't use Canon printers and I've not had any issues using Epson printers on Vista or Win 7 and PS CS5. The only thing that tickles my memory was some sort of issue regarding stickiness inside of the PS CS5 Print dlog. There were posts about in on the Win PS Forums on Adobe. Something about toggling bak and forth from Application Managed Color to Printer Managed Color and then back to Application Managed Color to clear out some sort of stuck thingie...sorry I can be more descriptive...you might try searching the Adobe Win PS Forum and see if you can find the thread. It had LOTS of posts about CS5 printing on Win and a variety of printers having problems...

EDIT: Oooops...I see now I didn't actually catch the HP vs Canon printer you are using. But same diff-I haven't used HP either :~)

[Anthony.Ralph]

Have you thought about getting the free trial download of QImage and trying that instead of Photoshop? This would at least change one of the elements. You can get QImage or the printer to manage printing and you can use your printer profile of course.

It may not yield any better results, but is a £ cost free approach...

Anthony.

[ChasP505]

So what are you using for the media type?

[Iliah]

Print a pure yellow gradient with colour management switched off and examine the print - if any trace of blue or cyan ink is present on the printout it indicates some sort of a colour cross-channel transform (profile or not) is on the way.

[CASpyr]

Have you thought about getting the free trial download of QImage and trying that instead of Photoshop?

That's exactly what I will try next. It seems obvious to me that PS CS5 / Win7 / HP printer driver don't get along very well in terms of CM, so breaking up this setup seems worthwhile.
I'll report what I find. Thanks!

Christian

[CASpyr]

So what are you using for the media type?

For the German Etching paper, I set it to HP Hahnemuehle Watercolor paper, as per the recommendation of Hahnemuehle
For the HP Advanced glossy paper, it's the media type with the same name

Christian

[CASpyr]

Print a pure yellow gradient with colour management switched off and examine the print - if any trace of blue or cyan ink is present on the printout it indicates some sort of a colour cross-channel transform (profile or not) is on the way.

I will certainly try that (I'll try about anything). Just for my understanding: how would such a colour cross-channel transform happen?
I'll certainly not dismiss this possibility before having tried it, but it seems to me that the problem is that either no profile is being applied at all (greenish-dark) or two profiles at once (magenta - too bright).

Christian

[CASpyr]

Sorry...I got nothing. I don't use Canon printers and I've not had any issues using Epson printers on Vista or Win 7 and PS CS5. The only thing that tickles my memory was some sort of issue regarding stickiness inside of the PS CS5 Print dlog. There were posts about in on the Win PS Forums on Adobe. Something about toggling bak and forth from Application Managed Color to Printer Managed Color and then back to Application Managed Color to clear out some sort of stuck thingie...sorry I can be more descriptive...you might try searching the Adobe Win PS Forum and see if you can find the thread. It had LOTS of posts about CS5 printing on Win and a variety of printers having problems...

EDIT: Oooops...I see now I didn't actually catch the HP vs Canon printer you are using. But same diff-I haven't used HP either :~)

Thanks for the hint and your time. Funny like software sometimes behaves like mechanical hardware....'toggling back and forth to clear out some sort of stuck thingie'...if computers were mechanical, I'd give mine a good bang of my fist by now...

Christian

[Iliah]

> how would such a colour cross-channel transform happen?

Double profiling would be one example.

> no profile is being applied at all (greenish-dark)

In that case you can try converting to printer profile directly in Photoshop, before entering print dialogue.

[Iliah]

> I've tried your suggestion by converting the image to the printer/paper profile (Hahnemuehle German Etching) and printing it with PS set to 'printer manages color' and the driver set to 'application manages color' (this is what you suggested, right?).

The procedure which is a little more stable here is to convert to printer profile in Photoshop, set print dialogue to colour management in Photoshop and set output profile to the same printer profile (that is source and destination profiles now match and no conversion will take place), relative colorimetric intent, no black point compensation.

Have you tried printing through Adobe "no color management" print utility, http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2010/12/a-no-color-management-print-utility-for-photoshop.html ?

Can you provide a link to the profile in question please?

[CASpyr]

The procedure which is a little more stable here is to convert to printer profile in Photoshop, set print dialogue to colour management in Photoshop and set output profile to the same printer profile (that is source and destination profiles now match and no conversion will take place), relative colorimetric intent, no black point compensation.

Have you tried printing through Adobe "no color management" print utility, http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2010/12/a-no-color-management-print-utility-for-photoshop.html ?

Can you provide a link to the profile in question please?

Iliah, thank you for taking the time to post these suggestions.
I tried the following:
- converted to printer/paper profile, let PS manage colors, same profile as for conversion, no BPC, color management in printer driver to 'app managed'. Result: better tone and color, but not very good (about halfway between the greenish-dark and the good prints/screen appearance). Oddly, the print preview in PS showed some gamut warning.
- tried the same with BPC (no gamut warning shown). Result: greenish dark
- followed your yellow gradient recommendation and printed it through Adobe's 'no CM' utility, turning off CM in the driver. Result: a beautiful light lime gradient...lots of green in the yellow.

The paper profile can be found here: http://www.hahnemuehle.com/media/HFA_HPB9180_MK_GermEtching.zip

@Anthony: I had high hopes for QImage...but it didn't help. Greenish-dark print.

Some setting deep in the system is stubbornly stuck....

Christian

[Iliah]

I looked at the profile and it does not look good, sorry. See the screenshot attached.

Am I reading you right and the only way the prints come good is when you allow the printer to manage colour?

Have you switched off the printer internal calibration before printing your own profiling target or yellow test strip? Have you tried disabling the printer profile from Windows (Control Panel -> Printers -> HPB9180 -> right-click -> Properties -> Color Management -> Manual and de-associate the profiles)?

[davidh202]

a real shot in the dark..

a long time ago I purchased custom Software for managing and pricing work orders in my custom framing business.
It was acting totally screwy.One time I would enter figures in and the next time I opened the program they would be gone...
after a long frustrating couple of days I spoke to the developer and we came to realize I had accidently loaded two versions of the software and they were swapping places when I opened it.
Is it  possible you have a conflict with two versions of the same files, profiles, or drivers that are interfering with each other?

[davidh202]

One more thing to check would be the Color management settings in Win7

type in "color management" in the search box in the start menu- under the control panel list choose color management and when the window appears go to the advanced tab of the dialogue box and make sure everything is set right.

[CASpyr]

I looked at the profile and it does not look good, sorry. See the screenshot attached.

Am I reading you right and the only way the prints come good is when you allow the printer to manage colour?

Have you switched off the printer internal calibration before printing your own profiling target or yellow test strip? Have you tried disabling the printer profile from Windows (Control Panel -> Printers -> HPB9180 -> right-click -> Properties -> Color Management -> Manual and de-associate the profiles)?

Iliah, you'll need to educate me a bit on what can be deduced from the graph you posted. What makes it a 'no good' profile? Can this profile be blamed for greenish-brownish colors and an underexposed look?
I have made a custom profile for this paper (Colormunki) which didn't improve things. However, since I have no control over which profile actually gets applied how many times when printing, I'm not sure under what conditions I printed the test charts.

CM by printer: indeed I was able to get a nice print with colors managed by printer.

The internal printer calibration is something that is not on all the time. It is something that is done after delivery of the printer and can be repeated thereafter if needed, but it is a procedure involving printing of test pages that are read by a printer-internal sensor. It can't interfere in my opinion.
Regarding deassociating the profiles: when I first checked the settings you are referring to, the profile was not on the list. I added it which didn't help. I proceeded to eliminate ALL profiles in that list for that printer. No change.
According to QImage's documentation, Windows 7 does not really do anything with the profiles in that list. They're merely listed as being associated with the corresponding device as information for software making use of such profiles.

One thing I'll explore in more depth is reinstalling the driver. I have done this already, but I have not 'exorcized' it (as described in other forums) by cleaning the registry after uninstalling. Furthermore, another HP printer (an all-in-one) is installed on my system by means of a wireless print server. I'll kick it off the system and see if things improve.

Regards
Christian

[CASpyr]

One more thing to check would be the Color management settings in Win7

type in "color management" in the search box in the start menu- under the control panel list choose color management and when the window appears go to the advanced tab of the dialogue box and make sure everything is set right.

Thanks for your ideas, David. I've been fiddling around with settings in that panel (see my reply to Iliah's post) with no success so far. Part of the problem here is that the description on what these settings do as provided by Microsoft are rather cryptic...to me at least. I have however not given up the hope to find the 'magic tick box' as of yet...

Regards
Christian