Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers - Martin Evening [300]
Figure 13.10 This shows the Windows Vista Print Settings for the Epson 4800 printer. Again, you will need to use the Media Type menu to select the correct paper to print with. For the Print Quality, select a high quality setting, such as the Max Quality setting selected here. For the Color settings mode you will need to look for the advanced or custom options. In this dialog I needed to check the Custom button, which enabled the menu below, where I could select the ‘Off (No Color Adjustment)’ option. If you look back at the Figure 13.3 example, you'll notice that for the Epson R1900 printer I had to go to the Advanced panel mode, click the ICM button and check the ‘Off (No Color Adjustment)’ option. Lastly, click on the OK button to return to the Photoshop Print dialog from where you can click on the Print button to make a print.
The system print settings dialog options will vary a lot from printer to printer. As well as having Mac and PC variations, you might have a lot of other options available to choose from and the printer driver for your printer may look quite different. However, if you are using Photoshop to manage the colors, there are just two key things to watch out for. You need to make sure you select the correct media setting in the print settings and that you have the printer color management turned off. This will mean selecting ‘No Color Adjustment’ in the Print Settings or Color Management sections and ignoring any of the other options you might see such as: ‘EPSON Vivid’ or ‘Charts and Graphs’.
Saving the print presets
Once you have established the operating system print dialog settings shown here for a particular printing setup, it makes sense to save these settings as a preset that can easily be accessed every time you want to make a print using the same printer and paper combination. To do this, apply all the required page setup and print settings, then pull down the Print Presets menu (see Figure 13.11), choose ‘Save As…’ and give the setting an appropriate name.
Figure 13.11 Saving the print settings as a preset.
Print output scripting
Up till now it has not been possible to make the combination of the Photoshop Print dialog and system print dialog settings a scriptable process. In the past, the Page Setup… settings had to be configured first, before the Photoshop Print dialog, and that made scripting rather difficult and error-prone. In Photoshop CS5 all the system print settings come after the Photoshop Print dialog. This means it is now possible to record a Photoshop action in which you select the printer model, the media size, type and orientation plus the system print settings, followed by the Photoshop Print dialog settings. Once recorded, you can use this action to make print outputs with the click of a button (Figure 13.12). You can also convert such actions into Droplets (as shown in Figure 13.13), where you can simply drag and drop a file to a droplet to make a print (I'll be discussing actions and droplets later in Chapter 15).
Figure 13.12 Photoshop actions can now be used to record the complete print process. Once you have done this you can make further prints by simply replaying the action.
Figure 13.13 You can automate the print process further. If you convert an action like the one shown in Figure 13.12 into a droplet, you can make it possible to simply drag and drop files to the droplet to initiate the desired print output. This allows you to bundle the printer