Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers - Martin Evening [298]
Color Management
Now let's look at the Color Management settings for the Photoshop Print dialog (Figure 13.7). The source space can be the document profile (which in this case was ProPhoto RGB) and if you click on the Proof button it defaults to using the current CMYK workspace or can use whatever Custom Proof Condition you might have set (see page 685).
Figure 13.7 The Photoshop Print dialog, showing the Color Management options.
Next we come to the Color Handling section. If printing from an RGB image, there are two options. The ‘Printer Manages Colors’ option can be used if you want to skip to the Photoshop Print dialog settings and let the printer driver manage the color output. However, if you want the most print control, you should really select the ‘Photoshop Manages Colors’ option (as shown in Figure 13.7). When this option is selected you can use the Photoshop Print dialog to manage the print pipeline. First of all you will need to mouse down on the Printer Profile menu, where you'll see a list of profiles. Here you need to select the printer profile that matches the printer/paper you are about to print with. It used to be the case that canned profiles were frowned upon as being inferior, but with the latest Epson printers at least, the printers themselves are very consistent in print output and the canned profiles work well, so you would be advised to use their own brand profiles for the papers that their printers support. In Photoshop CS5, selecting the printer in Print Settings also filters the ICC profiles that are associated with the printer, so these now appear at the top of the profile list (see Figure 13.8). Also, the printer selection and profiles are sticky per document, so once you have selected a printer and associated print settings, these are saved along with everything else in the document.
Figure 13.8 This shows the printer profile list, with the printer manufacturer profiles for the currently chosen printer placed at the top of the list.
Accessing canned printer profiles
A set of canned printer profiles should be installed in your System profiles folder at the same time as you install the print driver for your printer. If you can't find these, try doing a reinstall, or do a search on the manufacturer's website.
No Color Management missing
The Color Management Color Handling options no longer include an option for printing with ‘No Color Management’. This is due to the fact that updating the Mac code to Cocoa 64-bit has made it problematic to retain the ‘No Color Management’ print route. This option was required for producing neutral target prints intended for reading and generating ICC profiles. However, do check out labs.adobe.com for news of a future ‘no color management’ print utility.
The Rendering Intent can be set to Perceptual, Saturation, Relative Colorimetric or Absolute Colorimetric. For normal RGB printing the choice boils down to two settings. Relative Colorimetric is the best setting to use for general printing as it will preserve most of the original colors. Perceptual is a good option to choose when printing an image where it is important to preserve the detail in saturated color areas, or when printing an image that has a lot of deep shadows, or when printing to a smaller gamut output space, such as a fine-art matte paper. Whichever option you choose, I advise you to leave ‘Black Point Compensation’ switched on, because this maps the darkest colors from the source space to the destination print space. Black Point Compensation preserves the darkest black colors and maximizes the full tonal range of the print output. The Print dialog preview can be color managed by checking the ‘Match Print Colors’ option. Admittedly, the preview could be made a bit bigger, but it does at least give you some indication of how a photograph will print and you will notice that as you pick a printer profile or adjust the rendering intents, you can preview on-screen what the printed colors will look like. When proofing an RGB output in this way you can also check