A Little Light
May I shine a little light into the darkness and confusion ?
I too have encountered this problem, but with Canon printers (sorry DYP). I have posted on this topic giving a warning both on this site and the Adobe Photoshop Mac site. I have also been spending a considerable amount of time trying to get answers out of Apple, Adobe, and Canon - with a variety of success.
By far the most helpful have been Adobe US, with Canon UK ranking last for ignoring my letters and then completely misunderstanding the problem. Apple are just plain paranoid.
With Adobe I am in email correspondence with Kevin Connor who has been most helpful (does this mean I got the ‘stones’ then ?!).
Apologies for probably restating what Jeff Shewe and Eric Chan have already said in other forums and posts.
Adobe tell me that Apple have provided new printing APIs (probably from Tiger onwards) and that the new APIs require every file sent for printing to have a profile of some sort attached. Photoshop CS4 (and possibly other CS4 applications ?) implement these new APIs.
The problem arises when Photoshop CS4 sends a file for printing which has no profile attached to it, like targets for colour profiling. Eric Chan’s brilliant, but devious, workaround clearly confirms to Adobe’s statement be true.
This obviously begs the question (which others have also asked): how therefore do Apple expect users to profile devices when it is not possible to print without colour management ?
I have asked Apple this question.
Apple Europe came back with the answer “We cannot answer your question or help you with the issue you have identified”. When I asked why they said “For business reasons.”. However, one splendid person (who has to remain anonymous) suggested posting the issue as a bug on the Developers’ website. I have done this and received two contradictory replies which I am not allowed to tell you since they are covered by a non-disclosure agreement. I can tell you that they don’t really take us any further forward. I have asked Apple if I can reveal their reply since it is clearly in their interests to do so. I await an answer and will post it as soon as I am allowed to.
My conversations with Apple, and to a degree with Adobe, confirm that there is a general lack of understanding of the necessity to print without colour management. It is highly likely that the ColorSync engineers at Apple simply do not understand the importance of this issue. I do not agree with Wayne that this is a minor, and minority, issue. The ability to profile devices and media is key to being able to use colour management.
However asking, and answering, the following questions may give us some guidance as to where the problem lies and who therefore needs to fix it. Apologies, as this may add more fuel to the fire.
1. How many applications, and which, are effected by this problem ?
Currently we know of only one, Adobe Photoshop CS4. It appears, that other applications and profiling software, such as ColorMunki, are not effected. But we need more testing to be sure.
2. How many iterations of Mac OSX are effected ?
Evidence from the internet strongly suggests that it effects Tiger, Leopard, and Snow Leopard alike. It may be that the old printing APIs have been disabled/discontinued in Snow Leopard but there is no clear evidence for this yet.
3. Which printer models and makes are effected ?
Again, from the internet, it appears that Epson and Canon printers definitely are effected (DYP hold off from posting a reply for a minute and read the rest of this). Also possibly HP, but the evidence is scanty. It would not be unreasonable to conclude that all printers are effected but more testing is required.
There is some confusion about the extent to which the printer driver may have an influence on whether this problem is manifest or not. May I draw to everyone’s attention that there is a crucial difference between trying to print untagged (no profile) files without colour management and trying to print tagged files without colour management. In the former case, and with CS4, it will fail as ColorSync will try to impose some form of colour management. I know that DYP may be itching to reply to this, but consider this fact first - that Canon provide software specifically for printing targets for profiling on the Mac, the ‘Color Management Tool Pro’. Could this be because they recognise this problem is, perhaps, unrelated to the driver and so have provided their own workaround ?
I hope this helps clarify things. Apologies if it hasn’t (retires to a safe distance just in case).