CS5 "no colour management" print option gone

[digitaldog]

I don't buy that. I think more and more users are probably running into this, now that profiling tools such as Colormunki have made printer profiling so much more affordable.

Except the Munki software handles all the target printing, as it should for this usage. Other than having to print untagged targets for profiles, the vast, vast majority of Photoshop users don't need a No Color Management setting in the print dialog. The companies who ask users to print targets for profiles should be doing this instead. Nice of Adobe to supply another free utility to do this, but I see no reason why they should have to.

[Farmer]

I don't buy that. I think more and more users are probably running into this, now that profiling tools such as Colormunki have made printer profiling so much more affordable. It's not like "No Color Management" was the default choice, or even a difficult concept to understand. Reading between the lines it seems like the real reason it was removed is because Apple screwed the pooch by making this option not behave the way it should on recent versions of their OS. Personally, I hate the "Trust us, we know what's best for you" arrogance that results in taking away flexibility/functionality in the name of usability.

Well, Andrew already covered the Munki issue.  As to not buying the reasoning, I can assure that is the first hand information that I have.  It's definitely not a "trust us" issue or arrogance at all.

[JeffKohn]

Well, Andrew already covered the Munki issue.  As to not buying the reasoning, I can assure that is the first hand information that I have.  It's definitely not a "trust us" issue or arrogance at all.

I can understand why they removed it from the Mac versions, as the option clearly wasn't working correctly in a significant number of cases (BTW it did affect Canon ipf printers initially, Canon's fix was an application-specific hack which is why the problem resurfaced for some users when they switched to LR3 beta). Adobe was in a tough spot, and I can see why this was a headache for them on the Mac side.

But I've never heard of this option not working correctly on Windows, so I don't see how it's a usability issue. Having the option there didn't make the product more difficult to use, if anything removing it will for some users. The only reason I can see for pulling it on Windows is because it was pulled on Mac. You can argue whether that's a good reason or not. As a Windows user I can't help but roll my eyes at the whole mess, it certainly doesn't improve my opinion of Macs.

It's nice of Adobe to release a separate utility, hopefully users who need it won't have to wait for long. For folks on the Windows side who need to print a profile target now, I suggest trying a demo of QImage.

[Rhossydd]

For folks on the Windows side who need to print a profile target now, I suggest trying a demo of QImage.

The work round published by Adobe is easier to use than trying to get to grips with Qimage. Qimage is a very powerful program, but it's not intuitive or easy to learn.

Using 'printer manages colour' ought to be the easy way on Windows systems and still no one has given any explanation or example of why it wouldn't work for printing targets.

Paul

[Farmer]

Using 'printer manages colour' ought to be the easy way on Windows systems and still no one has given any explanation or example of why it wouldn't work for printing targets.

Well, then I've been unclear.  Let me say it again.  "Printer Manages Colour" is *NOT* a profile-free printing path.  It's not the same as "No Colour Management".  If you don't get everything precisely right from a heap of options, it won't work when you come to trying to print using the profile you created.

[JeffKohn]

Well, then I've been unclear.  Let me say it again.  "Printer Manages Colour" is *NOT* a profile-free printing path.  It's not the same as "No Colour Management".  If you don't get everything precisely right from a heap of options, it won't work when you come to trying to print using the profile you created.

I agree you have been unclear, in fact it seems you're being intentionally vague. From what Eric has said the only real difference is that the data is sent from Photoshop to the print driver as tagged rather than untagged. The only "heap of options" you need to set with print drivers I've seen is "No Color Management". If you know of a printer where it's more complicated than that on Windows, I'd be interested to know which one.

[Farmer]

I agree you have been unclear, in fact it seems you're being intentionally vague. From what Eric has said the only real difference is that the data is sent from Photoshop to the print driver as tagged rather than untagged. The only "heap of options" you need to set with print drivers I've seen is "No Color Management". If you know of a printer where it's more complicated than that on Windows, I'd be interested to know which one.

I'm not being intentionally vague, Jeff.  There's really no need to suggest anything untoward on my part.

There's not a lot to explain.  If you want to use that option on Windows go ahead.  All I can tell you, from first hand discussions and experience, is that it won't always work.  Because the file is sent as tagged, you can't rely on it doing what you expect - choosing NCM in the driver may or may not work depending on what the driver does as a result of receiving a tagged file.  Sometimes it will appear to work because of assumptions made in the drivers, but those assumptions differ for different brands and models so as a workflow - something that can be repeated with confidence and consistency, I would not recommend it.

My platform of choice is Windows - I mention that because I think you may be assuming that it's a Mac thing and people are glossing over Windows alternatives because they're Mac users.

[JeffKohn]

I'm not trying to suggest anything untoward, but your replies have been vague in that you don't give specifics of a case where this has been known to happen, which leaves me to wonder if this really an issue on Windows or if you're speaking in hypotheticals. I'm not trying to be an ass, I really am curious to know if there is a case on Windows where selecting NCM in the driver results in some sort of color transform taking place. To me such behavior would be completely illogical, especially if we're talking about printing a test chart (since the source document is untagged to begin with).

Take Canon iPF for instance. The print-plugin gets a tagged document from PS when you choose File-Export (assuming the document was tagged to start with). So I don't see how choosing NCM in the print-plugin would be any different than using PS print dialog with the "Printer Manages Colors" option, and then choosing NCM in the Canon driver. If the behavior in these two scenarios were different, I would consider that a bug.

I'm also curious, in the case of an untagged document being printed with CS4, if choosing NCM in the print dialog is any different than choosing "Printer Manages Colors". Does PS send the working space tag, or no tag at all in the latter case?

[digitaldog]

I'm also curious, in the case of an untagged document being printed with CS4, if choosing NCM in the print dialog is any different than choosing "Printer Manages Colors". Does PS send the working space tag, or no tag at all in the latter case?

With PMC, yes, that’s the idea. If there is no tag, there’s going to be some assumption made and here lies a potential pit fall.

[adamlogan]

....In the meantime, use the work around for CS5, or use CS4 or CS3 or even use Apple's Preview on the Mac...ain't no big dealio, ya know?

Is Preview.app really a valid alternative for printing test targets? Using this approach I guess Color Matching "In Printer" then "Image Quality > Color Correction > None" should do it for No Color Management? Guess I should get off my butt and just learn how to compare using Argyll.

[madmanchan]

Hi Jeff, for the Printer Manages cases, PS sends the document space (e.g., if your doc is Adobe RGB, PS tags the document as such) as the tag. If the document is untagged, then PS will use your working space as the tag (the thinking being there's no other tag to use ... so in the absence of information, why not). For NCM, the answer is more complicated, because it's platform-dependent. In principle, NCM means just gimme the darn direct device values, no mucking around. Some platforms don't have that mode, so special internal paths are needed to "simulate" NCM. You're probably rolling your eyes and thinking "wow that's gross" and you'd be right.

[Rhossydd]

for the Printer Manages cases, PS sends the document space ... then PS will use your working space as the tag

To just summarise what's been said here;
FOR WINDOWS; When using 'Printer Manages Colour' PS CS5 only tags the working space to an untagged profiling target and doesn't carry out any data transformation.
So the only risk that a profiling target won't be printed correctly using this option is if the printer driver's 'no colour management' option fails to work correctly and makes a data transformation based on the working space tag.

To put it another way; it will work just like 'no colour management' did in previous versions assuming the printer driver is working correctly.

All this seems to match my tests here and no one has been able to cite an example of a driver with a faulty 'no colour management' option.
Frankly, if the driver's no colour management option isn't working as it should, the whole process is pretty futile anyway.

It would seem that recommending users to print profiling targets via 'printer manages colour' from CS5 on Windows is simpler and has less room for error than the more complex work round suggested by Adobe.

Paul

[Farmer]

To just summarise what's been said here;
FOR WINDOWS; When using 'Printer Manages Colour' PS CS5 only tags the working space to an untagged profiling target and doesn't carry out any data transformation.
So the only risk that a profiling target won't be printed correctly using this option is if the printer driver's 'no colour management' option fails to work correctly and makes a data transformation based on the working space tag.

To put it another way; it will work just like 'no colour management' did in previous versions assuming the printer driver is working correctly.

All this seems to match my tests here and no one has been able to cite an example of a driver with a faulty 'no colour management' option.
Frankly, if the driver's no colour management option isn't working as it should, the whole process is pretty futile anyway.

It would seem that recommending users to print profiling targets via 'printer manages colour' from CS5 on Windows is simpler and has less room for error than the more complex work round suggested by Adobe.

Paul

As Eric said, it's not just the driver or PS - it's the OS as well (and different versions of both Windows and OS X handle it differently).

Trying having a working space of Pro Photo and send an untagged target through to a consumer level printer (like an Epson 2880) and see how it handles it from XP to Vista to 7 and 10.4, 10.5, 10.6 etc.  It's not a consistent and simple answer to just use PMC.  I wish it were, but it's not.  The people who deal with this stuff on the most intimate level are telling you to use a specific work around. If you don't want to, that's fine, and it may well work for what you're doing, but please be careful in telling everyone it will work for them.

[FrankPinkston]

 I kept the CS4 version on my Windows 7 PC when I installed Photoshop CS5.
If I print targets in CS4 using the No Color Management option, will the profiles generated from those targets work well in CS5?

Thanks,
Frank

[na goodman]

I kept the CS4 version on my Windows 7 PC when I installed Photoshop CS5.
If I print targets in CS4 using the No Color Management option, will the profiles generated from those targets work well in CS5?

Thanks,
Frank

Yes.

[MHMG]

Using an older version of photoshop to print the targets isn't a total solution, either.  In my case, I have CS3, not CS4, and while Adobe doesn't bless "compatibility" for CS3 with 10.6, all of the CS3 programs appears to work OK in Snow Leopard.  However, while CS3 appears to run correctly in OS10.6, I can say with certainty (and two painful days of testing) that PSCS3 and the Epson 3880 driver just  don't talk to each other under OSX 10.6  the same way they do when printing to identical driver under OSX 10.5 (The same Epson driver is recommended for both 10.5 and 10.6).

One can use either the "Photoshop manages colors" with the No color adjust method, or even use the null transform technique, and the PM5 TC918 target prints well on the OS10.5 machine but differently under 10.6. The printed targets from both systems look like plausible "no color adjust" results yet they differ by a max delta E = 26. The tip off that something was wrong with the 10.6 version came to light because the resulting profile had poor quality (hooking in the blues) and usually making a custom profile for an Epson paper on an Epson printer with PM5 profiling software is a no-brainer.

To summarize, the printed targets from both systems both looked like a plausible "no color adjust" output, but the profile made with target data and same settings under 10.5 = good, profile made with same settings under 10.6 = bad.  Ironically, printing the target out of InDesignCS3 on 10.6 using a null transform method matched the CS3/10.5 NCA method output perfectly (within experimental error).

So, my conclusion is that just "keeping an older copy" of photoshop around for target generation isn't the answer, either. Upgrade hell is alive and well!

[digitaldog]

To summarize, the printed targets from both systems both looked like a plausible "no color adjust" output, but the profile made with target data and same settings under 10.5 = good, profile made with same settings under 10.6 = bad.  Ironically, printing the target out of InDesignCS3 on 10.6 using a null transform method matched the CS3/10.5 NCA method output perfectly (within experimental error).

Did (or can you) run a deltaE report of the two targets printed each way? If not, I can do this in ColorThink. It would be interesting to not only see a report but where in color space the targets themselves are different.

[Doyle Yoder]

So, my conclusion is that just "keeping an older copy" of photoshop around for target generation isn't the answer, either. Upgrade hell is alive and well!

Certain not CS3, that was a CM printing mess that seems to mix Apple's old and new printing path. CS4 will work fine though.

Doyle

[FrankPinkston]

Do we have anticipated date for Adobe to release the utility to print profiles?

Frank

[madmanchan]

Not yet. Still under development.