Tried to show SoftProofing:Thwarted!

[walter.sk]

I have a couple of good friends, professional photographers, who print their own work.  They both said they never did softproofing, and asked if I would show them how to do it.  I've been softproofing, as well as profiling my monitors and papers for several years, depending on softproofing to keep me from unpleasant surprises.

I guess, because I always have the icc profile files placed in the Windows/System32/Spool/Drivers/Color folder, I somehow expected to see the paper profiles for my friends' printers in the drop-down box in CS4's View>Proof Setup>Custom dialog box under "device to simulate, and was surprised when I was unable to find any of their papers listed.

Friend #1 uses a Wndows PC with XP, and CS4, with an Epson 7600 printer.  The printer name came up in the dropdown box, but the listing for Epson Premium Glossy and Premium Luster did not show up, so I did not know what profile to choose for the softproofing.  In addition, when he brought up the print dialog I saw that he had "Printer Manages Color" selected.  The paper-type dropdown menu did show the variety of papers he uses.  He did not want me to change his settings to Photoshop managing color, so I assume there is no way for him to softproof his images.  Is that correct?

Friend #2 uses WinXP and an Epson 1280, but has printer color management turned off, and lets Photoshop manage the color.  She said she uses Epson Premium Luster and Epson Premium Glossy also.  Much to my surprise, when I tried to set up a custom softproofing I could find the name of her printer but not any of her papers.

The questions:  1)  Would I be correct in assuming that the profiles provided by Epson for both of them would be in some folder where their printer and driver are installed?  2) If so, should I copy them to the Color folder in Windows, so that thaey show up in the Proof Setup Custom dialogue?

It has been so long since I worked without either custom or home made profiles that I automatically assumed that everybody's paper profiles showed up int the Color folder in XP.

[Mark D Segal]

Walter,

I'm using XP, CS4, Epson 3800, formerly Epson 4800 - the driver behaves the same way for all of them, so I can relate to what you are talking about.

Yes, all the profiles should be where you indicate they should be:Windows/System32/Spool/Drivers/Color. First thing is to check whether or not they are there by looking in that folder on their hard-drives. If they are not there, they need to be downloaded and installed (once downloaded say to the desktop, either right click on the profile name and click on "Install Profile", or simply copy the profile into that folder using CTRL+C and CTRL+V in the usual way), or uninstall and re-install their printers from the get-go using the latest Epson driver files off their website, whereupon the profiles should automatically load into that folder. Then check again to make sure it happened.

Once the profiles are where they should be, they should all come up in the pull-down list of "Device to Simulate" under View>Softproof>Custom in CS4. This will happen regardless of whether the print window in CS4 is set to Photoshop or Printer Manages Color. Once in the print window of CS4, if Printer Manages Color is selected, the pull-down for selecting the paper profile is greyed-out because Photoshop is not managing the colour - the printer is. From that point everything depends on the printer firmware based on the paper selection in the printer driver. If Phtooshop Manages COlor is selected, then the printer profile is selectable in the CS4 Print window.

Mark

[Pat Herold]

Just another idea for another thing to look for / ask a question about since you're dealing with somebody else's computer:
Find out if they might have re-named their profiles.  If someone re-names a profile using the typical file-renaming procedure, then the name of the profile in windows explorer will change, but its "internal" name will stay the same, and the internal name is the one that is presented to you in Photoshop.  Sometimes that is why people can't find profiles  in the PS lists.  It is probably unlikely that someone who does not soft-proof would bother re-naming profiles, but it's possible.  It is not unheard-of for the manufacturer's canned profiles to have different internal & external names.