pink color cast on "white" border

[Thenolands]

I have an image I am printing that I added a border to in photoshop and saved as a TIFF. I am printing on Red River Aurora Art Natural paper and using their color profile. The actual image looks great but the border has a pink tint. Printing via lightroom on a mac. In print module I have RR's profile selected under color Management and relative intent. I have run into this problem once before using one of their gloss profiles but I use one of their luster paper profiles all the time without incident. Any ideas what could be causing this and any fixes? Again, the pink tint is only on the border and not on the whole image.

[digitaldog]

Sounds like the paper profile or an issue with it. What about Perceptual? Kind of doubt that is the issue but worth a try. A very, very old bug where a profile produced a 'scum dot' on paper white showed up in the past.
Do you see it if you test with say this document:
http://www.digitaldog.net/files/2014PrinterTestFileFlat.tif.zip

[Mark D Segal]

I have an image I am printing that I added a border to in photoshop and saved as a TIFF. I am printing on Red River Aurora Art Natural paper and using their color profile. The actual image looks great but the border has a pink tint. Printing via lightroom on a mac. In print module I have RR's profile selected under color Management and relative intent. I have run into this problem once before using one of their gloss profiles but I use one of their luster paper profiles all the time without incident. Any ideas what could be causing this and any fixes? Again, the pink tint is only on the border and not on the whole image.

When you say you "added a border", what do you mean? How did you do that? If you created a new background document in Photoshop and then layered the photo into that background, it could be that there is an error in your Photoshop settings that produced a slightly off-white background, which would show only on the borders exposed from the background, not the photo. To test your colour management set-up in Lr, I would suggest importing the photo into Lr WITHOUT that border you created and printing it. If any white areas within the photo print well, it would indicate the profile is OK and something was amiss in Photoshop. And, BTW, you don't need Photoshop to create margins for printing from Lr. You can do all that from within Lr's print module whether working from a RAW, TIFF, PSD etc. - much easier and with one piece less software, less room for error.

[Thenolands]

Thanks for the reply. For simplicity I said I created the border but really I did a digital reproduction of a pencil drawing and the artist took the file and added the border and feathered the edge to blend it into the border. The image printed without the border is fine so I agree with you that the profile is either not the issue or the profile is interpreting the border data incorrectly somehow?

Is there a better way to do it to eliminate the possibility of this pink cast if using photoshop? What presets or options might be causing this? I can tell you the border does not have a color when I review the photoshop file. But I am not a photoshop expert by any stretch.

I would love to use lightroom but the feathering he wants is an issue and the only thing I have ever seen in Lightroom is the border and stroke options which 1) have limited range of thickness and 2) shrink and crop the image as the border expands. Any way around these 2 issues?

[Mark D Segal]

You'd have to work directly with the artist to determine exactly what he did, how he did it, what all the relevant colour management settings in Photoshop or any other application he used, what colour management policies accompanied the file back to you, etc. It gets complicated and I don't think can be answered without in-depth first-hand review. As for page sizes and margins in Lightroom - this can be managed without shrinking the photos by creating and using custom settings. Perhaps see the chapter on printing from Lr in Martin Evening's book, or the Lr tutorials on this website.

[Rand47]

As a quick and dirty work-around, try selecting the border and desaturating it completely.

Rand

[Thenolands]

Update:

I created my own photoshop file so I would know exactly what was done to it. I simply added the reproduction file and creating a larger "canvas" size than the print (I believe by default the "canvas" is transparent). I then saved as TIFF and imported into lightroom. I printed a relative colorimetric print next to a perceptual colorimetric and the results were MUCH different. The relative had the pink cast still and now that I see it next to the perceptual rendering, it does indeed have the pink cast over the entire print (not just the border). The perceptual rendering has the VERY SLIGHTEST color on the border though it is more of a gray than a pink cast. It is so faint I probably would not have noticed if I wasn't specifically looking for it.

So my first thought is the Red River profile for this paper (and a few others) simply are not very good. I could live with this and get a custom profile done or try a different generic profile however 1 question is still bothering me. Why would any profile, no matter how good or how bad, print anything on a transparent border? I could see the print having a cast due to a poor profile but why is anything being printed where there should be zero color data?

Regarding using lightroom. I would LOVE to use lightroom to add my border but I left out a few details about what I am printing with. I am printing on roll paper using an IPF8400. Due to using roll paper, I am needing the printer to add crop marks for cutting the paper after printing. So what I am needing is the image with a border around it with crop marks along the edge of the border for cutting. Now knowing those details, is it still possible to do this using lightroom? I tried using "single image/contact sheet" but the crop marks are still aligned with the image and not the border and I wouldn't be able to print multiple prints of varying sizes on a single print run using the contact sheet layout.

[mearussi]

Are you actually printing on the edges, or is the pink cast just the "natural" white of the border without ink? 

[Thenolands]

ink is definitely being applied. There is an obvious line where the border begins and ends. And, no, I am not printing edge to edge.

[Garnick]

I'm obviously missing something here, which of course wouldn't be a totally new experience.  I believe you have mentioned that the border is transparent.  Therefore, when you look at the border in that file it is not white, but a white and grey checkerboard pattern, correct?  If that's the case, why not fill the border with pure white and see what happens when you print it.  If indeed the border does appear to be white, then obviously it is not transparent.  Also, if the border in the file "appears" to be white, use the Eye Dropper tool and take a measurement of that border.  Open the "Info" dialog and check the RGB numbers.  If they are anything but 255, 255, 255, you do not have a pure white border.  You can also use the Digital Color Meter, which you will find in Applications > Utilities.  That will also determine if the border is indeed pure white.  However, I believe you have determined that the whole image has a very slight color cast, which of course can be corrected in PS or LR.  If the border has any density at all it will definitely pick up that cast.  I would suggest that you do a selection of the border and fill that selection with pure white.  If that's not an alternative you want to approach, perhaps get the digital file of the original and place it on a pure white background to produce the border you need.

In reference to the crop marks.  Since most of my work is done in PS, I'm not totally familiar with how LR would handle that.  I do not like the crop marks in PS, so I simply add a one pixel black stroke inside the image and crop to that.  Works great!

Gary   
 

[digitaldog]

Transparency will flatten and whatever color you've set for the background color will apply! Type the D key to reset the foreground/background color to default and try again. The enlarged canvas should of course read 255/255/255 after flattening and print paper white!
Or as suggested, just fill the border with white (Fill command will do so).

[Thenolands]

I'd like to thank everyone that has chipped in thus far. Truly amazing community here!

I created another file with a white (255/255/255) background layer. I used dropper tool and verified it was 255/255/255. Saved a TIFF (keeping the layers - would this matter?), imported into lightroom and printed using relative colorimetric intent and RR Aurora Art Natural profile and it still applied ink to the border.

Digitaldog, I know you are a wealth of knowledge regarding icc profiles, is it possible that a profile especially for a "natural white" paper would apply ink to a 255/255/255 area of a print? The thought being that on a "warm" paper like this there is not true white? That doesn't make a lot of sense but I am running out of ideas. This has me truly stumped! It obviously has something to do with the profile and the rendering intent.

To remove another variable and hopefully isolate the issue, I used lightroom's "photo border" option in the print module with an image of the reproduction without a border and it did not apply any ink to the border. Yay! That is great and, again, I would use this option instead but it crops with width of the image as the border thickness increases which the artist is not going to like (plus it only reads the border width in "its" and I would like to know exactly how thick it is.

So, the icc profile can read true white and not apply ink it seems but somehow the 255/255/255 border that i am applying in lightroom is not being interpreted as 255/255/255?

[digitaldog]

Be useful if you can upload the profile that's causing this issue.

[Thenolands]

Be useful if you can upload the profile that's causing this issue.

Profile attached

[digitaldog]

Good news, it's not a Version 4 profile. Somewhat bad news, made from a Spyder (not ideal) but not anything that would create a scum dot. The soft proof is pretty awful. Did you try using this profile on my Printer Test File (URL below) and did you see magenta within the image area where there is paper white?

[Thenolands]

Good news, it's not a Version 4 profile. Somewhat bad news, made from a Spyder (not ideal) but not anything that would create a scum dot. The soft proof is pretty awful. Did you try using this profile on my Printer Test File (URL below) and did you see magenta within the image area where there is paper white?

I’ll try the test print. I don’t see the url, though.

[digitaldog]

I’ll try the test print. I don’t see the url, though.

http://www.digitaldog.net/files/2014PrinterTestFileFlat.tif.zip

[Doug Gray]

The problem may be the profile. If you convert a pure white image in 16 bit space using the RR profile and Rel Col, then convert back to Lab you get L*=100, a*=2.5, b*=1.9. This is abnormal behavior as well as an illegal Lab value (at L*=100, a* and b* MUST be 0).

[Thenolands]

The problem may be the profile. If you convert a pure white image in 16 bit space using the RR profile and Rel Col, then convert back to Lab you get L*=100, a*=2.5, b*=1.9. This is abnormal behavior as well as an illegal Lab value (at L*=100, a* and b* MUST be 0).

Interesting! Would never have found this on my own that is for sure! I will contact RR and at least let them know.

[Doug Gray]

Interesting! Would never have found this on my own that is for sure! I will contact RR and at least let them know.

Looking at the profile with ProfileInspector, it's marked as a V2.0 profile but the math (BtoA1) appears to be that of V4 profiles. For instance L*=100 is encoded in the LAB PCS as 0xffff whereas it's 0xff00 for V2 profiles. This isn't enough for most people to notice. Usually. But it could be causing a color shift depending on whether color management engine detects this and adjusts to accommodate.

http://www.color.org/v2profiles_v4.pdf