Photoshop CC, ICC Folder Location

[Remo Nonaz]

I was working on a black and white print and wanted to use a custom .icc file I made quite a while ago, before I adopted Adobe CC and began using CS6. When I went to the printer set up screen I could not find the .icc I wanted to use. I keep my .iccs in  the folder C>windows>system32>spool>drivers>color. I checked this folder and did not see the .icc I was looking for. I had a copy squirreled away in another folder and moved a copy to the .icc folder. I closed and reopened CS6.

The .icc still will not come up in the CS6 printer .icc selection box. Thinking that perhaps CS6 uses a different folder, I did computer-wide search on a couple of obscure .iccs, from the print screen drop down, that I know I did not create, to see what folder they were in. The computer search could not find them, which was odd. I can't find any indication in the Photoshop preferences as to where the .iccs should go and a search of Adobe did not come up with a useful answer.

I had a similar problem a year ago when I discovered that Lightroom will not detect non-RGB iccs. I'm 99% certain that the .icc I am looking for is not an RGB .icc as it was made before I had Lr and at that time I did not use the RGB .icc create tool in QTR. So, I have two questions:

1. What is the correct folder to put .icc files into for use with CC-CS6?

2. Is CC-CS6 able to use non-RGB .iccs?

[digitaldog]

As far as I know, there is noting new about CC with respect to ICC profiles from any easier versions. Yes, LR will only deal with RGB profiles. Photoshop can use non RGB profiles assuming they follow ICC spec.

[Alan Goldhammer]

1. What is the correct folder to put .icc files into for use with CC-CS6?

Right click on the profile in whatever directory that you found it and then select 'Install Profile'   Windows should automatically take care of putting it where it needs to be.  You can always look at all the profiles in your system that are 'active' by going to the Windows Control Panel and open up the Color Managment box; click on the 'All Profiles' tab.  PS and LR should have access to all the profiles that are automatically installed.

alan

[Remo Nonaz]

That's good information. I looked in the color profiles "all profiles" and the .icc is there. How do I get PS to pick up on it? It still does not show in the PS drop-down menu. 

[darlingm]

An ICC profile of course has a filename.  But, it also has an "internal description" tag.  Most programs creating an ICC profile make the filename and "internal description" the same.  But, some don't set an "internal description", or let the user set it.  And, you can rename the file itself which doesn't affect the "internal description".

In Control Panel's Color Management's All Profiles, you'll see two columns.  Is it possible that for this particular profile the "Name" and "File name" in here are different?

Photoshop shows the "internal description" tag, NOT the filename.  You could be looking for the wrong text in the pulldown.

Also, I've seen cases where I had to restart Photoshop for it to refresh the list.  (Not always, though.)  But, you said you already "closed and reopened".

[Remo Nonaz]

The file names and the internal descriptors are the same. I have seen the problem where, if you change the file name, it screws things up. Your comments does give me a good thought for changing the file names, if desired: change the internal file descriptor using Notepad, then change the file name with a matching new name.

The ICCs that I'm trying to use are listed in color management as "Color Space: GRAY", so I made sure I was using a grayscale color space in CS6, but this did not make any difference. The ICCs are still not listed as a choice in the printer pull down menu.

[digitaldog]

Post a profile for us to examine. I suspect it's not compliant with ICC spec of something. You made the profile IN Photoshop or using what? Custom grayscale? If you're on a Mac, run the ColorSync utility>Profile First Aid and see if it reports errors.

[Remo Nonaz]

I've attached the troublesome ICC. I created a new one today using the QTR, RGB-ICC create tool. That ICC showed up in CS6 without difficulty. That would lead me to believe that you do need to have RGB files but I do have other, non RGB ICCs that are showing up. It is still a mystery to me.

[digitaldog]

It's the profile according to Profile First Aid:

~/Library/ColorSync/Profiles/QTR_1400_RR-PM_UT14_EB-BLK.icc
   Tag 'desc': Tag size is not correct.
   Tag 'desc': Description tag has a bad Macintosh string.

ColorThink also says it's problematic:

These profiles do not have the correct Mac Finder tags.
Without these tags, profiles are invisible to ColorSync in Classic and will not show up in Classic ColorSync or application menus.

That said, the profile does show up in Photoshop CC on my Mac! I can select AND convert using this profile.

[Remo Nonaz]

Rodney:

Thanks for taking a look at the profile. I'm not sure what your information is telling me to do, though.

I did have another thought - Can other applications see the two profiles CS6 can't? I tried two random applications, and if you check the box "Show All Profiles", the two profiles I can't see in CS6 are present. I then went back to CS6, and in the printer driver box, checked the "Show All Profiles" selection. (Normally this panel is set for ICM and "Off (No Color Adjustment)" when Photoshop is controlling the printing.) Set this way, the missing profiles are in the printer setup dropdown menu. (See attached screen shot.)

So, If I turn this on in the printer settings, and select the profile I want, and then in Photoshop, select "Printer Manages Color" instead of "Photoshop Manages Colors", have I effectively worked around the fact that for some reason Photoshop won't present the profiles? And, if this is leading to something that works, should I also (or alternatively) select the profile in the "Printer Profile" dropdown - it is also available there.

[digitaldog]

Rodney:
Thanks for taking a look at the profile. I'm not sure what your information is telling me to do, though.

You're on Windows so I'm of no help there. It shows up here fine even though it is said to have issues with a Mac.

[Remo Nonaz]

I had occasion to want to generate a new .icc. My results were really terrible and knew that one of the issues that may be causing the problem is the fact that PS CS6 does not have the option to print with "No Color Management", which should be used when printing your baseline step scale. I decided to re-load an old version of CS4 so that I could have this setting available. I also decided to try both the QTR "Create RGB-ICC" and the regular "Create_ICC" and compare the differences.

What I found is that the .iccs created with the "Create RGB-ICC" tool will show up in both CS6 and CS4. The ones created with the grayscale tool only show up in CS4. This clearly means that CS6, like Lightroom, will not show a grayscale .icc. The .icc has to be RBG to show up in the CS6 menu. As for the create .icc tools, the ramps printed from the resulting .iccs were essentially identical.

The .iccs created with the ramp printed with "No Color Management" was better than the ones created using Gamma 2.2. Still, my ramps for the paper I'm working with are not very good, but that is an issue for a different forum.

[digitaldog]

This clearly means that CS6, like Lightroom, will not show a grayscale .icc. The .icc has to be RBG to show up in the CS6 menu.

The profile you provided below (QTR_1400_RR-PM_UT14_EB-BLK.icc) shows up in CS6 and CC on this end, with an RGB document.

[Remo Nonaz]

There are over 80 items in the CS4 printer drop down menu. In CS6 there are only 36 and none of the grayscale ICCs. All of the ICCs are in the Window Color Management panel. Perhaps it works differently on a MAC, but I if I want to print using these older ICCs, I'll have to do it out of CS4.

[Scott Martin]

The profile you provided below (QTR_1400_RR-PM_UT14_EB-BLK.icc) shows up in CS6 and CC on this end, with an RGB document.

It shows up in "Convert to Profile" but it doesn't show up in the Print dialog does it? PSCS6 and PSCC limit the profiles displayed in the print dialog only, and sometimes incorrectly.

[Remo Nonaz]

I'm not sure what you mean by "Convert to Profile". The CS profiles list is very abbreviated, which is what started this thread. I was wondering of CS6 goes and looks somewhere else, but it seems it does not. The question becomes,"How do we get CS6 (CC) to display all of the profiles that are available?"

[Scott Martin]

I'm not sure what you mean by "Convert to Profile".

There are several Photoshop dialog boxes where you can see a list of profiles. "Assign Profile", "Convert to Profile" (under the Edit Menu), View>ProofSetup>Custom... are three places were you'll see all the profiles that Adobe knows to look for.

It's important to understand that PSCS6 and PSCC reduce the number of profiles shown in the Print Dialog. If you have a printer that's managed via RGB profiles for example, the Print dialog will only show you RGB printer profiles, and not the others. This is likely the source of Remo's confusion here.

The question becomes,"How do we get CS6 (CC) to display all of the profiles that are available?"

Adobe will look in both the OS and Adobe's preferred profile locations. So for Windows there's these folders:

Windows>System32>Spool>Drivers>Color
C>ProgramFiles>CommonFiles>Adobe>Color>Profiles (for Windows versions up to Vista)
C>ProgramFiles(x86)>CommonFiles>Adobe>Color>Profiles (for Windows 7 and

And for Mac users there's these:
MacintoshHD>Library>ApplicationSupport>Adobe>Color>Profiles
MacintoshHD>Library>ColorSync>Profiles
(these folders are also found in the user's home folder - Adobe looks at all of them)

[digitaldog]

It shows up in "Convert to Profile" but it doesn't show up in the Print dialog does it? PSCS6 and PSCC limit the profiles displayed in the print dialog only, and sometimes incorrectly.

Use Convert to Profile (the profile in question is just fine), print using ACPU. OR, this might work:

Start with sRGB, then use Convert to Profile for grayscale profile, setup print dialog as below. Might work but I'd just use ACPU.



And at least on this end no, I've never seen the print dialog incorrectly provide a list of profiles.

[Scott Martin]

And at least on this end no, I've never seen the print dialog incorrectly provide a list of profiles.

There's a known bug where brand new i1Profiler RGB printer profiles don't show up in PSCS6 and PSCC Print dialog boxes on some (but not all) computers. I travel constantly and work on a lot of different client computers so I see this almost every week and it's infuriating. You may not have this problem on your computer but there are plenty of people that are having problems on theirs. I'm working with Adobe (who's finally acknowledged it) on fixing this but the process is slow.

[digitaldog]

There's a known bug where brand new i1Profiler RGB printer profiles don't show up in PSCS6 and PSCC Print dialog boxes on some (but not all) computers.

What version of i1P? As far as this dog is concerned, it's 1.5.0 and still filled with bugs but I've not had any issue as you describe nor as yet have any customers. And I'll bet you dollars to donuts it's an X-rite bug, not Adobe's.