CS5 "no colour management" print option gone

[Schewe]

It's a necessary functionality for "X" number of people, and if the problem is lodged within the OS that's unfortunate.

Again...a CS5 user CAN print out color targets if they 1) open the target and assign a color space such as Adobe RGB then 2) in the Print dialog, turn on Photoshop's color management and use the same color space (such as Adobe RGB) then 3) in the driver, turn off color management.

So, it's not like removing "no color management" PREVENTS users from printing targets, they just can't print targets the exact same way as in previous versions of Photoshop.

So, really, all the hand wringing is really unjustified. And yes, as a trade off for the benefit of removing the NCA from the Print dialog Adobe decided to provide a free way of doing the same thing that WILL be easier when needing a rev that trying to rev an entire application like Photoshop.

[Mark D Segal]

Yes you're right and of course thanks to Eric for developing that workaround. The point remains, Jeff, that had Apple not made the change it did to the behaviour of Colorsync the whole problem and the need for the workaround most likely would not have arisen in the first place. It has generated enough interest and concern that it can't be dismissed as trivial. In the same breath, I know with software revisions we win some and lose some, and I'd be the last one to suggest that it turns the world upside-down, because for every problem there is a solution. Nonetheless I still find it surprising that Apple did this and didn't see fit to revise it. But the world will go on and we'll have ways of printing our targets correctly - in part thanks to Adobe, in part thanks to legacy solutions.

[Schewe]

Nonetheless I still find it surprising that Apple did this and didn't see fit to revise it.

So, I guess you've never really worked closely with Apple, huh? Ever meet Steve Jobs? I have...and all the people around him were absolutely terrified of him.

The product manager for ColorSync at the time and a bunch of us were all eating at the Mac Cafe in Cupertino when Steve Jobs walked by (I won't mention the product manager's name but Andrew will remember cause he, Bruce and Martin and I were all together). The guy literally sunk in his chair and looked like he was gonna vomit. I said, hey, there's Steve...I said to Martin wanna meet him? (Cause I had met him a couple of times and Martin hadn't). The poor product manager (for ColorSync mind) you whispered "please don't call him over, I've never met him and I don't want him to know I'm alive" (that's almost a direct quote, right Andrew?

So, I'm actually surprised that people actually drink the Kool-Aid when it comes to Apple...ColorSync could be great, it's just at the moment, it isn't (and really hasn't since OS X came out).

[Photo Op]

The real question is - did Jobs recognize you? Now that would have been a conversation between two Alphas!  

[Mark D Segal]

So, I guess you've never really worked closely with Apple, huh? Ever meet Steve Jobs? I have...and all the people around him were absolutely terrified of him.

The product manager for ColorSync at the time and a bunch of us were all eating at the Mac Cafe in Cupertino when Steve Jobs walked by (I won't mention the product manager's name but Andrew will remember cause he, Bruce and Martin and I were all together). The guy literally sunk in his chair and looked like he was gonna vomit. I said, hey, there's Steve...I said to Martin wanna meet him? (Cause I had met him a couple of times and Martin hadn't). The poor product manager (for ColorSync mind) you whispered "please don't call him over, I've never met him and I don't want him to know I'm alive" (that's almost a direct quote, right Andrew?

So, I'm actually surprised that people actually drink the Kool-Aid when it comes to Apple...ColorSync could be great, it's just at the moment, it isn't (and really hasn't since OS X came out).

This is a very interesting and revealing post Jeff - thanks for sharing that insight - and no - I never have worked closely with Apple or met Steve Jobs - he's "a bit" above my pay-grade. This shows those of us (and I plead guilty) who routinely seek for rationality in corporate decision-making (because companies are supposed to be rational economic agents according to the textbook) can be disappointed by the fact that all these companies are made-up of us human beings who are not always rational in the text-book sense. So it applies to Apple Computer like anywhere else. Shouldn't be surprised after all. But we do need to put all this in perspective. I remember where personal computing was back in the early to mid 1980s, and it's fair to say that Steve Jobs put it on the map and hasn't stopped since. Let's hope these public discussions incite them to really make more mileage with Colorsync.

[na goodman]

Ok, I've been following this thread and do agree with almost everything said about Colorsync. I am a Mac person thru and thru but I just couldn't take the problems any longer between Apple, Epson, Adobe.
And then to top it off the i1 Match software has a conflict with SL. I did something I never thought I would do in a 100 years. I hooked up a pc running as a print server to my wide format printers and installed Qimage. I do everything on my Mac and then move the files to the pc and print thru Qimage. No more grey bars, blue haze, pc doesn't care if it is a V4 or V2 profile. I don't worry if the print will come out ok or not, jobs are recalled with all settings. Like I said, I can't believe I resorted to going that route but my workflow is so much better and the prints are wonderful. Yes, I love my Macs and will always be a Mac person but for now and the foreseeable future my pc print server and Qimage have taken all the stress out of printing.

[Mark D Segal]

Ok, I've been following this thread and do agree with almost everything said about Colorsync. I am a Mac person thru and thru but I just couldn't take the problems any longer between Apple, Epson, Adobe.
And then to top it off the i1 Match software has a conflict with SL. I did something I never thought I would do in a 100 years. I hooked up a pc running as a print server to my wide format printers and installed Qimage. I do everything on my Mac and then move the files to the pc and print thru Qimage. No more grey bars, blue haze, pc doesn't care if it is a V4 or V2 profile. I don't worry if the print will come out ok or not, jobs are recalled with all settings. Like I said, I can't believe I resorted to going that route but my workflow is so much better and the prints are wonderful. Yes, I love my Macs and will always be a Mac person but for now and the foreseeable future my pc print server and Qimage have taken all the stress out of printing.

Yes, well this just underlines the point that we all need to be "brand-agnostic" and focus simply on what works best for the purpose at hand. My experience using Windows with the Epson printer driver has been fine for printing with several generations of Epson printers. The driver layout and its interface with Photoshop CS4 are very good, the division of labour between the two is sensible and easy to master, and the OS does not get in the way. It all works as it is meant to. Very recent tests I've done using spectrophotometric readings of enlarged pixels from a sample print compared with the file numbers for those pixels demonstrated insignificant dE values. Hence I have substantial confidence in that end of my colour management set-up.

Interestingly, I was researching a question put to me by a colleague this morning and came across the following in Martin Evening's excellent Lightroom 3 book, on page 535, dealing with printing from LR using the option for LR to handle printer color management. Here he says: "Most important, the ColorSync/ICM settings should be set to No Color Management, because you want to avoid double-color-managing the print image data." So unless I've misunderstood something about the details of the ColorSync problem, it seems as if not being able to turn-off colour management in the OS would matter to more than whatever number of people want to print profiling targets - it would seem to also affect anyone printing from LR with LR managing color. For completeness I should mention that in the side-note of page 537, Martin mentions the ColorSync issue in the context of profile target printing, where at the bottom he notes the workaround mentioned by Mark Dubovoy in this forum for that purpose. I'm wondering now what one does to print photographs from LR3 with LR managing color if using a Mac with Snow Leopard.

[Czornyj]

Ok, I've been following this thread and do agree with almost everything said about Colorsync. I am a Mac person thru and thru but I just couldn't take the problems any longer between Apple, Epson, Adobe.
And then to top it off the i1 Match software has a conflict with SL. I did something I never thought I would do in a 100 years. I hooked up a pc running as a print server to my wide format printers and installed Qimage. I do everything on my Mac and then move the files to the pc and print thru Qimage. No more grey bars, blue haze, pc doesn't care if it is a V4 or V2 profile. I don't worry if the print will come out ok or not, jobs are recalled with all settings. Like I said, I can't believe I resorted to going that route but my workflow is so much better and the prints are wonderful. Yes, I love my Macs and will always be a Mac person but for now and the foreseeable future my pc print server and Qimage have taken all the stress out of printing.

The problems with SL, Colorsync and i1match are irrelevant - but the lack of Qimage for Mac platform is a real disaster... They really should have mercy for all these poor Epson+OSX users...

[Farmer]

The problems with SL, Colorsync and i1match are irrelevant - but the lack of Qimage for Mac platform is a real disaster... They really should have mercy for all these poor Epson+OSX users...

Mike Chaney explains why that will never happen:

http://ddisoftware.com/tech/articles/may-2...me-sour-apples/

[WombatHorror]

I remember where personal computing was back in the early to mid 1980s, and it's fair to say that Steve Jobs put it on the map and hasn't stopped since.

I guess the Apple II did pretty much bring it to the forefront.

That said the AppleIIe and MAC were pretty weak compared to stuff like Atari 8bits, Amigas, etc.
It's a shame the companies with poor hardware and OS had genius marketers and the companies the actually good product had bumblers for management (and that the press so easily swallowed up all the MS/Apple/IBM influence).

[Czornyj]

It's a shame the companies with poor hardware and OS had genius marketers and the companies the actually good product had bumblers for management (and that the press so easily swallowed up all the MS/Apple/IBM influence).

I started a carreer in DTP over 15 years ago with a PC 486 33MHz, 16MB RAM (but only 4MB were really available in Windows 3.11) and 120MB HDD. When I saw a Quadra 950 - 68040 33MHz stuffed with 128MB of RAM that actually worked, 1GB SCSI HDD, and in dual monitor setup (shock!), I thought it must had been brought to Earth by aliens! I wouldn't dare to say they had poor hardware back in '90-ties...

[shewhorn]

The problems with SL, Colorsync and i1match are irrelevant - but the lack of Qimage for Mac platform is a real disaster... They really should have mercy for all these poor Epson+OSX users...

The folks at Colorburst have an interesting solution. Not necessarily as economical as QImage (and in certain areas not as functional... most notably QImage has a wonderful sharpening algorithm) but...

http://www.overdriverip.com/

Cheers, Joe

[shewhorn]

Scott Martin mentioned this tool on the Canon IPF Wiki as well:

http://www.bluecubit.com/

A little bit more affordable than Colorburst Overdrive.

[oriwo]

... if I use the "null transform" solution with OSX 10.6.x / PS CS5 / Canon iPF5100 than I can't deactivate CM driver settings because they are greyed out. So the question is: Is CM in Canon's iPF5100 driver deactivated or not in this kind of status?
 
B.r.
oriwo

[eronald]

Jeff, I'm afraid you're wrong. I was doing some profiling tests yesterday, network printing with from a Snow Leopard Mac with CS 4 to an Epson 3880 hanging off a Linux Gutenprint. The only way to print targets was to do Eric Chan's workaround with sRGB; using a printer profile as both source and destination would fail. No color management would fail. Printer manages colors would fail. sRGB and maybe AdobeRGB seem to be hardwired into the system and usable for the workaround.

And even worse actually, the Mac was trying to double-color manage all the files printed with a profile from CS4 to the remote system.

Edmund

Again...a CS5 user CAN print out color targets if they 1) open the target and assign a color space such as Adobe RGB then 2) in the Print dialog, turn on Photoshop's color management and use the same color space (such as Adobe RGB) then 3) in the driver, turn off color management.

So, it's not like removing "no color management" PREVENTS users from printing targets, they just can't print targets the exact same way as in previous versions of Photoshop.

So, really, all the hand wringing is really unjustified. And yes, as a trade off for the benefit of removing the NCA from the Print dialog Adobe decided to provide a free way of doing the same thing that WILL be easier when needing a rev that trying to rev an entire application like Photoshop.

[Doyle Yoder]

... if I use the "null transform" solution with OSX 10.6.x / PS CS5 / Canon iPF5100 than I can't deactivate CM driver settings because they are greyed out. So the question is: Is CM in Canon's iPF5100 driver deactivated or not in this kind of status?
  
B.r.
oriwo

Look under Main/Color Mode: If No Color Correction is listed and grayed out then CM in the driver is deactivated. If Color is listed and grayed out then Photoshop CS5 is not listed in the special casing file (AppColorMatchingInfo.xml) in the driver. Refer here for an updated AppColorMatchingInfo.xml file. http://canonipf.wikispaces.com/message/view/FAQ/26106471

You can also install the driver for the iPF6300. It has CS5 and LR3 listed but not LR3.2RC.

Doyle

[oriwo]

Look under Main/Color Mode: If No Color Correction is listed and grayed out then CM in the driver is deactivated. If Color is listed and grayed out then Photoshop CS5 is not listed in the special casing file (AppColorMatchingInfo.xml) in the driver. Refer here for an updated AppColorMatchingInfo.xml file. http://canonipf.wikispaces.com/message/view/FAQ/26106471

You can also install the driver for the iPF6300. It has CS5 and LR3 listed but not LR3.2RC.

Doyle

Hello Doyle,

thanks for explanation.

Oliver

[madmanchan]

True, the workaround (assign, etc.) requires you to choose one of the builtin profiles (like Adobe RGB). Otherwise you won't get the desired NULL transform.

[nkpoulsen]

So, this is interesting.

Based on what's been suggested, Adobe removed the NCM option, because it led to problems with various combinations of operating systems and print drivers.

But if Photoshop can't correctly print an image (a target) without applying a profile (i.e. the NCM option), why should we necessarily assume that it can correctly print an image (a photograph) after applying a profile (i.e. Photoshop manages color) for the same operating system/driver combination?

[Schewe]

But if Photoshop can't correctly print an image (a target) without applying a profile (i.e. the NCM option), why should we necessarily assume that it can correctly print an image (a photograph) after applying a profile (i.e. Photoshop manages color) for the same operating system/driver combination?

Because in the case of Photoshop Manages Color, the file data is being converted to an output profile by Photoshop and being tagged. It's "untagged data" as in the case of a profile target that has issues. As long as you can turn color management OFF in the print driver, an output profile managed by Photoshop behaves normally.