ColorMunki for Mac – How To Print Accurate Targets (Workaround)I am assuming that readers of this post will have at least a basic knowledge of colour management; and will be familiar with the ColorMunki, Photoshop, and printer software. These instructions apply to all printers.
AimThe aim of this workaround is to remove the interference in the printing path, introduced by Mac OSX (from Leopard 10.5.X onwards), that prevents targets being printed without colour management. Currently the only application known to do this reliably is the ‘Adobe Color Printer Utility’ which can be downloaded from this URL
Adobe Color Printer Utility (note the webpage refers to Photoshop CS5 but this also applies to all subsequent Photoshop versions).
OutlineThe workaround involves exporting the targets as PDFs, importing them into Photoshop (without colour management), doing a little bit of formatting (if you want), saving them as an untagged TIFF, opening them in Adobe Color Printer Utility to print them, allowing them to dry, and finally measuring the prints with the ColorMunki.
These instructions assume a new profile is being created from scratch.
Steps1. Open the ColorMunki software and select ‘Profile My Printer’. When you get to the printer dialogue box select the button bottom-left-corner marked ‘PDF’ (I assume this is the same in all latest versions of OSX) and select ‘Save as PDF…’ from the drop-down list.
2. Open the PDF in Photoshop. Two things are important when you get to the ‘Import PDF’ dialogue box. ‘
Crop to:’ should be selected to “Media Box” and ‘
Mode:’ to “
RGB Color”. The latter is very important to avoid the system trying to colour manage the file.
3. In the ‘Edit’ menu in Photoshop select ‘Assign Profile’ and in the dialogue box select “Don’t Color Manage This Document”. This removes the profile/tag.
4. The Adobe Color Printer Utility, which you will be using to print the targets, has a bug which prints onto the page with an offset. Although the targets will be readable by the ColorMunki you may want to adjust this offset, which you will have to do by trial and error. Make a note of how much offset you apply as you will need this again later. I also add a text layer in which I write details about the printer, date, paper type, and so on.
5. Save the file as a TIFF. The Adobe Color Printer Utility will only open TIFFs; but it can open any type of TIFF, compressed or uncompressed, and will open a layered file (but flattened).
6. Open the Adobe Color Printer Utility (ACPU) – available here
Adobe Color Printer Utility. Note, the webpage refers to Photoshop CS5 but also applies to all subsequent versions. Open the target file in ACPU. Print the file and wait for it dry.
7. Open the ColorMunki software and go through the same procedure to print the target, but you can use the tickbox “I have already printed my target” to go to the measurement stage without having to print.
8. Then you need to follow the instructions above to create the second target PDF, import it into Photoshop, save it as a TIFF, print it from ACPU.
9. When you then come to create the profile from the two printed targets there is a little trick you need to know to fool the ColorMunki software into thinking it has printed the second target. Let it take you to the print dialogue box, but then click ‘Cancel’, and it will move you to the measurement stage.
That’s it ! Good luck !
This was tried and tested on Mac OSX Lion 10.7.5 and Photoshop CS5.1 and CC 14.2.1. I cannot speak for later versions or iterations of software.
Please, X–Rite fix your software.
