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Author Topic: Apple and Colour Management – Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Out  (Read 43219 times)

Tim Lookingbill

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In addition all of this works as described printing out of Photoshop CS3.

Just checked printing from CS5 and the "Colorsync" and Epson Color Control radio button menu isn't grayed out with each now selectable.

The Epson Print Preview and Print Scaling/Centering interface within CS5 Photoshop print dialog has now put a button for selecting Epson Page Layout dialog for choosing Letter or Borderless Letter and other paper sizes inside the interface. In CS3 it was a separate "Page Setup..." selection above "Print..." under Photoshop's file menu.

So this is even more evidence that all three vendors Epson, Apple and Adobe are tweaking things with each upgrade/update. Who is doing what is anyone's guess.

I still get decent print matches printing to Ultra Premium Photo Glossy paper.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2012, 04:42:58 pm by tlooknbill »
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eronald

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I don't know if this interests you guys, but Linux has being moving to a color managed print workflow with untagged assumed to be sRGB, as on the Mac, thereby creating a seamless printing workflows for naive Desktop Linux users who want to print their Jpeg family snapshots and mobile phone photos.

However, as the color specialist for Gutenprint, I've lobbied to make it a design goal of color management for CUPS/Gutenprint on Linux that we be able to print files with "no color management".  I must say that what motivated me was my experience on the Mac the few past years, and conversations re. inkjet printing frustration which were held on the sidelines at ICC meetings I attended. After considerable debate, Till decided that a special *documented* option flag that passes through data without conversion would be implemented.

As a print option, this flag will override even the implicit assumption of sRGB now applied to print output from  legacy apps. Also, entire print queues will also be able to run with this flag set, thereby allowing the use of a Linux/CUPS/Gutenprint configuration as an externally color managed print server for legacy hardware.

With some luck, and if you lobby the Mac CUPS Gods hard enough (eg. feature requests), the same options *may* be propagated back into the version of CUPS on the Mac. For political correctness, let me emphasize that these options are designed to be used exclusively by experts who deliberately wish to bypass the consumer color management which is there to serve the vast majority of users.

Here is Chris Murphy's wonderfully clear explanation of the debate and its eventual outcome:
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To get color management enabled for dumb apps, we have to second guess their claimed usage of device space. Upon second guessing their claimed usage of device space, we now need an alternative way to specify when device space is really wanted. I don't see that we're going to get away with this by tagging the target files themselves, it seems inevitable we'll need an application or advance print dialog option that attaches job ticket metadata to get the behaviors we want/need.


The name of the option is still under debate. Here is Mike Sweet's comment on the default value of this print option, which of course is that color management is on:

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The only change I would recommend is  ...  call it "normal" instead of "profiled". Not only is that more explicit about the intent (the normal mode) but you'll get fewer questions when users start playing with this new "expert" option they think will solve their current woe..



Edmund
« Last Edit: May 16, 2012, 01:33:38 pm by eronald »
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Tim Lookingbill

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Edmund, do you think Quartz/Colorsync/PDF print spooling is what's responsible for getting such close matches on my dinky consumer level Epson "All In One".

What's your take on that Apple Developer page I linked to several responses back.

What I don't understand is from where the color translation is being defined through this "Printer Manages Color" pipeline in getting that close of a match. When I see how easily third party apps try to implement their own color management with terrible results regardless of settings, it makes what I'm getting with the Epson seem like a miracle.

Does Apple's Quartz graphics communicate with the printer driver? I've tried using Apple/Epson driver supplied Gutenprint printer describers with very bad results.

Why is it so hard to describe colors when a graphics card frame buffer and electronics can determine the right voltage level to be sent to illuminate each RGB filtered pixel seen on a display? Why couldn't they derive a color description/translation language that way?
« Last Edit: May 16, 2012, 03:49:24 pm by tlooknbill »
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eronald

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Does Apple's Quartz graphics communicate with the printer driver? I've tried using Apple/Epson driver supplied Gutenprint printer describers with very bad results.


Everything communicates with everything :)
As regards Gutenprint on the Mac at the moment, if you want high quality output, IMHO you really need to invest *a lot* of time in setup and profiling it, although the results can be worthwhile for people with expensive legacy printers. Some pro graphics arts guys with big legacy printers use it in production, with good results, but it is not intended at the moment to give professional results to naive users. On the other hand the Mac vendor drivers used with vendor media work very well out of the box.


Edmund
« Last Edit: May 16, 2012, 04:32:26 pm by eronald »
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