OS X ColorSync, printers, and CMYK profiles... what am I missing here?

[ComputerDork]

I recently profiled this Lexmark C543 color laser printer that I have with a ColorMunki. Through some powerful magic that I don't understand, the ColorMunki stuff decided that it needed to generate a CMYK profile for the C543. Everything looks great when using Photoshop's color management stuff to print with this profile. Yay!

But trying to get this CMYK profile to work with other stuff seems to be a problem. After tinkering around for 2 hours trying to figure out why neither the ColorSync print options (in the system Print dialog box) nor Lightroom would recognize the profile, I finally managed to figure out that Lightroom (at least) doesn't support CMYK profiles (according to the docs, and according to it not working).  Uh, ok? Well, that's kind of sad. Then again, Lightroom should really have soft proofing too, and it doesn't. (Adobe please..... these seem like basic features for a supposedly professional level application like Lightroom! Just copy the Photoshop RIP into Lightroom and disable some of the fancier options. Nobody is going to stop buying Photoshop as a result. END OF RANT)

Lightroom is one thing, but why the heck won't ColorSync in the system print driver stuff recognize and use a CMYK profile?

The other thing that I notice that I can't find an answer to is that RGB profiles almost always seem to have XYZ as the PCS, and CMYK profiles almost always have a Lab PCS. I suspect maybe this has something to do with the problem, but why is Lab any better than XYZ for CMYK profiles? Do I need a Lab<->XYZ profile or something to get these things connected?

Is there anything I can do to get other apps to work with CMYK profiles via the print driver, or am I stuck herding everything through Photoshop even for simple stuff? (Hopefully I won't be using this printer too much anyway.)

[Czornyj]

I'd create RGB profile instead, and ignore ColorMunki opinion in this respect. CMYK profiles are only needed for very specific purposes and I'm sure RGB profile will work much better in this case.

Lightroom doesn't support CMYK because you don't really need CMYK profiles to print photos.

RGB display profiles use XYZ as PCS, while printer profiles use L*a*b and BTW L*a*b is mathematically derrived from XYZ. It's better for printer characterisation, as it's (almost) perceptually uniform, so you can achieve better results when interpolating RGB/CMYK values from a space between profile grid points.

[digitaldog]

You want to figure a way to force the issue and have Munki build an RGB profile, period.

[ComputerDork]

Ok, thanks. I did mail X-Rite support a while back and they had no solution for me when it came to forcing the profiler to generate an RGB profile. I also asked how the software had even decided between RGB and CMYK and didn't get a response (or haven't after a few days).

Does anyone know of any hacks to force the ColorMunki Photo printer profiling software to try to generate an RGB profile? Is there anything else I can use like maybe Argyl CMS? (Luckily I'm not afraid of command line tools.)

[afx]

Does anyone know of any hacks to force the ColorMunki Photo printer profiling software to try to generate an RGB profile?

I wonder why it would generate a CMYK profile in the first place.... Did not even think it was capable of that.

Is there anything else I can use like maybe Argyl CMS? (Luckily I'm not afraid of command line tools.)

Quite trivial, but paper consuming thanks to the large patch size the CM needs (even with the high density switch).
I've done my first printer profile with Argyll and CM just recently (I usually use Argyll to calibrate my Linux screens). This forum and the Argyll web site have enough info (I am not at the system that used to generate the profile, otherwise I'd just post the commands here, PM me if you want them).

cheers
afx

[ViperGeek]

This is a bit of an old thread, but I may be able to shed some light on ColorMunki Photo's penchant for CMYK on some printers:

http://printplanet.com/forums/color-management/26414-force-colormunki-profile-rgb

Apparently RIP is to blame.  For more info on RIP, check this out:

http://www.crucialservice.com/products/rips/rips_home.htm

- Dave

[ViperGeek]

This is a bit of an old thread, but I may be able to shed some light on ColorMunki Photo's penchant for CMYK on some printers:

http://printplanet.com/forums/color-management/26414-force-colormunki-profile-rgb

Apparently RIP is to blame.  For more info on RIP, check this out:

http://www.crucialservice.com/products/rips/rips_home.htm

Confirmed by X-Rite support:

"The issue that you are describing is not due to ColorMunki software, but rather that the printer driver you use requires that you create a CMYK profile. Lightroom (being primarily a photographic program) is aimed at people who use RGB printers, so they only support RGB profiles.

"ColorMunki looks at the printer driver and makes the appropriate type of profile based on this. Because your HP printer wants CMYK profiles, that's what ColorMunki creates. In your situation, the only workflow that I think will work for you will be to take your images from Lightroom, into a program that can accept and use both RGB and CMYK printer profiles. Photoshop would be the most logical program for you to use.

"To recap, ColorMunki won't produce an RGB profile for what it knows is a CMYK printer. Given that Lightroom won't print using a CMYK profile, Ayou will want to take your images into Photoshop to print them.

"At some time, perhaps Adobe will add CMYK profile support to Lightroom, but that would be a question for Adobe."

Bruce Wright |  Technical Support Specialist (Imaging)
X-Rite, Incorporated  |  4300  44th Street SE; Grand Rapids, Michigan 49512  USA

[ComputerDork]

Thanks ViperGeek. I actually asked X-Rite about this but I don't believe I got an answer when I asked if the software looked at the printer driver. Instead I got some answer like "the software does what it thinks is best" or somesuch.