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Author Topic: LR5 Printing Anomaly  (Read 7415 times)

jwlimages

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LR5 Printing Anomaly
« on: September 06, 2013, 12:20:26 am »

Very weird printing results...

- I have returned to printing from LightRoom (had been printing out of Photoshop or thru RIP) now that I've upgraded to v.5:
1. Turn on Soft Proofing, make SP copy, then tweak for output thru a custom profile I made with i1Profiler (profile is quite satisfactory printing thru Photoshop to Epson SP7880).
2. Print using LR doing conversion to output profile, all color management disabled in Epson driver.

- results are way off, prints are much darker (particularly the blues), more contrast, etc. Not darker & greener that might suggest no conversion to output profile, but clearly way off.

Double- & triple-checked all settings, in LR and printer driver - can't find an error. (guess I should mention here that I'm not a rookie, have been using PS & LR each since beta status, color management & printing veteran as well, and am pretty confident I have ruled out operator error in the apps & printer driver - nobody's perfect of course  ;), but I've checked, re-checked settings & replicated this behavior a couple times)

Eventually I tried exporting the Soft Proof Copies themselves as Tiffs, opened them in Photoshop to see what they look like & soft proof appearance (Proof Setup) - they match up pretty well with LR5's prediction in Soft Proofing. Just for grins, in the Photoshop Proof Setup > Custom window, I checked "Preserve RGB Numbers" - bam - a very close match to the actual print output! Which suggests to me that LR5 sent the files to the printer driver without converting to the printer profile.

So I next reprinted the same Soft Proof Copies from LR5, but this time told LR to have "Printer Manage Colors" & set the Epson driver to use the same custom profile I had previously specc'd in LR. The output matches LR's soft proofing very closely!

What might be going on here? Have I stumbled into a circumstance where LR5 is not using the output profile (not converting) despite being set to do so? Sure seems like it.

Or have I overlooked some obvious (to everyone but me, perhaps) error?

Thanks for your thoughts.

John
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tommm

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Re: LR5 Printing Anomaly
« Reply #1 on: September 06, 2013, 03:57:16 am »

Have you tried repeating this with a couple of different printer profiles to make sure the problem isn't in the profile?

Might also be a good idea to try using a printer test image (such as from Bill Atkinson) without doing any adjustments and just printing out of Lightroom both with Lightroom managing the colour and the printer managing colour in the way you mentioned, and then also print out of Photoshop and compare all the results.

Tom
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PhotoEcosse

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Re: LR5 Printing Anomaly
« Reply #2 on: September 06, 2013, 06:34:27 am »

I can't shed any light on your problem, John, and I appreciate that exactly correct colours can be crucial for a professional photographer  undertaking product photography.

But my own experience as an amateur - but trying to produce salon-quality work - is that using Lightroom and an Epson R3000 printer, the standard Epson profiles produce an acceptably close result on any of the high quality papers that I use. As a carry-forward from the old R1900 days, I did begin by producing ColorMunki profiles for each paper type but quickly decided that letting the printer control the printing gave excellent results for my purposes.
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jwlimages

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Re: LR5 Printing Anomaly
« Reply #3 on: September 06, 2013, 12:06:03 pm »

Thanks for the replies.

Tomm - I'm pretty certain the profile itself is not the problem - as I said, produces great results printing from Photoshop (and as I recall, also from LR4, tho I didn't mention this in my post). And the same profile is in use by the Epson driver when I tell LR to let "Printer Manage Color". But I will try another paper/profile combo to see if LR5 behaves this way consistently.

PhotoEcosse - I'm surprised because I have always printed using application-managed color, with custom-built profiles, because that produced superior results to letting the driver manage color with custom or "canned" profiles. But what I'm getting now is not just "slightly off" color, but something that looks as if LR sent un-color managed data to the print stream (no conversion to the output profile) - this should not be possible, from what I understand. Weird.

I just posted because this seems so wacky & have not seen any similar reports. Will test further when I get time. I should say, I hope I find an explanation that I just made a silly error somewhere - but can't find any indication of that yet...

John
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keithrsmith

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Re: LR5 Printing Anomaly
« Reply #4 on: September 07, 2013, 01:39:31 pm »

You haven't by any chance got the  print adjustment set - (below where you set the profile)

Keith
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jwlimages

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Re: LR5 Printing Anomaly
« Reply #5 on: September 08, 2013, 12:38:36 am »

Hi Keith,

No, print adjustment at zero.

Had a bit more time to test - I have replicated this strange result with a second print profile - a v2 RGB printer profile made by i1Profiler. Then I tried to illustrate the workflow:
1. did some screen grabs of LR5 Print module & relevant Epson driver settings;
2. made prints & photographed them;
3. exported the "Proof Copies" from LR > opened the resulting .tifs in Photoshop CC;
4. did screen grabs of two windows for each .tif - one "straight", next to it a "Proof Preview" using the same output profile as specc'd in LR5 Print module.

I put together a quick little web gallery to show all of the above & put it in my public area of Dropbox (didn't want to clutter up the forum). You can check it at http://tinyurl.com/mvasjfr

I tried to make it self-explanatory, but if in doubt, #1-4 above should help. Now of course the rephotographed print output doesn't exactly match up with the screen grabs of PS's Proof Preview, but I think it's pretty close considering I didn't go all out with careful copy lighting (just shot the prints in my GTI viewer booth), plus the inherent white point/contrast/brightness range differences of "transmitted light" screen grabs vs "reflected" light off the prints.

It's still a mystery why "Printer Manages Color" produces correct output when LR5 managing color fails with the same output profile...

John
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Rhossydd

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Re: LR5 Printing Anomaly
« Reply #6 on: September 08, 2013, 03:44:40 am »

a v2 RGB printer profile made by i1Profiler.
Which version of Profiler ?
Does this happen with other profiles NOT made with Profiler ?
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Jimmy D Uptain

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Re: LR5 Printing Anomaly
« Reply #7 on: September 08, 2013, 07:24:49 am »

I ran into the exact same problem when I upgraded to 5. I was getting strong blue /purple hues and dark prints.
It turned out that LR was looking in the "wrong" place for the profile.
I'm at work right now so I cannot tell you where I moved it, but there are two places that color profiles can reside on the Mac. One of them is hidden as Apple don't want us messing around in there. I found that folder, dropped in the profile and all was right with the world.
I then dragged the folder into the left pane of the finder window so I wouldn't have to hunt it down again.
I'll look when I get home if you like.
Hope this helped......
Jimmy

Update: I just got home so here's a screenshot.
LR doesn't look in the "users" Library but in the Macintosh Library which is hidden by default in Mountain Lion. At least this was my issue. I hope its yours.
Sorry for the poor screenshot. You may have to squint :)


 
« Last Edit: September 08, 2013, 09:09:46 am by Sysyphus »
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jwlimages

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Re: LR5 Printing Anomaly
« Reply #8 on: September 08, 2013, 12:24:18 pm »

Thanks for the thoughts, guys.

Rhossydd - hmm, not sure of i1Profiler version. Probably 1.4? Whatever version was current when I made the two profiles, one in March, the other April, 2012. I'll try a "canned" manufacturer profile next.

Sysyphus - now there's an interesting thought! I'll have to check that MacPro, because I may well have moved profiles out of 'Users/~myusername/Library?ColorSync/Profiles', which I formerly used, to the corresponding root directory. I too got frustrated trying to access profiles in the former, now hidden folder - especially when you're trying to access one via an application dialog (e.g., ColorThink), it's a pain!

Seems like if LR5 can't find the profile, though, it shouldn't show up in the interface & let the user select it for use...

John
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Jimmy D Uptain

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Re: LR5 Printing Anomaly
« Reply #9 on: September 08, 2013, 04:54:15 pm »

Thanks for the thoughts, guys.

Rhossydd - hmm, not sure of i1Profiler version. Probably 1.4? Whatever version was current when I made the two profiles, one in March, the other April, 2012. I'll try a "canned" manufacturer profile next.

Sysyphus - now there's an interesting thought! I'll have to check that MacPro, because I may well have moved profiles out of 'Users/~myusername/Library?ColorSync/Profiles', which I formerly used, to the corresponding root directory. I too got frustrated trying to access profiles in the former, now hidden folder - especially when you're trying to access one via an application dialog (e.g., ColorThink), it's a pain!

Seems like if LR5 can't find the profile, though, it shouldn't show up in the interface & let the user select it for use...

John


I had a feeling you would bring that up.
Just like in your case, my LR would show the profile as normal, but wouldn't apply it. Once I moved it out of the user folder and into the hidden folder it would apply the profile. I wasted a few 8x10's to finally get this right.
Imagine hand feeding a 7900 a steady diet of 8/12 x 11 Ilford GFS in another room and getting crappy results time and time again. My 7900 is a little fussy with 8.5x11 anyway. Kinda glad I used most of it up during that nightmare.
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jwlimages

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Re: LR5 Printing Anomaly
« Reply #10 on: September 08, 2013, 06:23:02 pm »

Sysyphus - I checked the MacPro, and as I said, I had moved the profiles. But unlike what you're saying, I moved them out of the "hidden" folder (the User's Library) and into the root level Library... folder.

Putting things into the root level Library is supposed to make them available to all users, so you'd think that would make them "more visible" if anything. Furthermore, I had done this before installing LR5, so not clear why LR5 should be looking for profiles in the former location (the "hidden" User-level folder). Maybe just picking this up like a preference setting from the LR4 catalog during update?

Then again, if LR can't access a particular profile, one would think it would throw up an error message...

Weird. Especially if this turns out to explain the issue!

I have more testing to do.
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jwlimages

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Re: LR5 Printing Anomaly
« Reply #11 on: September 08, 2013, 08:48:09 pm »

More testing, no joy:

1. Replicated same problem using a Red River paper & profile (apparently built by CHROMiX - Color Valet). Prints wacky when LR5 manages color, but spot on with Printer Manages Color.

2. Moved profiles out of root/LibraryColorsync/Profiles back to User level. LR5 doesn't show them at first, so I have to open the Profile 'Other' feature in the Print module, LR now shows them (so it sees the "hidden" Library just fine), so I can select relevant profile(s). LR5 seems fine w/this, everything shows as normal in the interface. But still same print issue. Again, Printer Manages Color works just fine.

Getting tired of burning prints on this. But maybe I'll try firing up LR4 one more time to reprint to see if results are different?

John
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Jimmy D Uptain

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Re: LR5 Printing Anomaly
« Reply #12 on: September 09, 2013, 01:19:01 am »

I think you misuderstood me. Or maybe lack of sleep kept me from being clear.
What I was saying is that my issue was resolved by moving the profiles into the hidden folder.

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jwlimages

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Re: LR5 Printing Anomaly - Resolved
« Reply #13 on: September 10, 2013, 03:19:38 pm »

More testing, printing through LR4 & PS CC - started to get same print problem. So I gave up & reset the printing system. (never had to do this before, but was desperate)

Added back all printers & now things seem to be behaving predictably again.

So looks like it wasn't the fault of LR5 at all - whew! Sorry if I wasted others' time.

John
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headmj

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Re: LR5 Printing Anomaly
« Reply #14 on: September 10, 2013, 09:21:24 pm »

Still good data!
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