Assigning an ICC Color Profile when Printing

[R C-R]

34 minutes ago, BofG said:

@R C-R the OP was trying to print with the soft proof turned on purely out of desperation in the hope it might work.

Desperation or not, that is not how the AP Soft Proof Adjustment should be used, so of course if it is not hidden it will throw the colors off.

[BofG]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

Desperation or not, that is not how the AP Soft Proof Adjustment should be used, so of course if it is not hidden it will throw the colors off.

I know this, as does the OP. It's just you asked if they understood it and I thought I'd mention the reason why they tried it.

Whether the soft proof is on or not though doesn't seem to matter, the colours didnt come out correctly either way.

[thomaso]

6 hours ago, R C-R said:

Also, for your tests with an AP Soft Proof adjustment, the idea is to turn that on & use it as a guide to adjust the colors (via curves or whatever adjustments) so the image looks as close to what you want the print to like like as possible, & then to turn it off for the final export. Otherwise, there is no point in using soft proofing.

Does it mean a Soft Proof Adjustment is NOT the Affinity substitution to output an image for a specific device on print – like a specific profile of a print service is chosen on export?

And so profiles for print & export are entirely different from profiles for Soft Proof?

And, for instance this profiles for the paper "Hahnemühle PhotoRag"  are meant to be used NOT for print & export but for Soft Proof only?

If yes: Since various papers handle ink differently I would expect a profile by Hahnemühle which adjusts the ink density on print according to its paper 'PhotoRag'. Don't such profiles exist at all? It appears strange to me that I need to manipulate the colors in the image and save that file – instead of choosing a profile, during the print process only, to get the file's colors optimised according to the specific paper and print hardware.

[thomaso]

7 hours ago, R C-R said:

12 hours ago, panelson3 said:

Being a Mac user, my only choice at the moment when using Affinity apps is ColorSync.

So just to confirm, you do not see a "Color Matching" choice for your printer & for that a choice between ColorSync & printer matching?

I noticed meanwhile that I do get in Affinity the additional "Color Matching" menu only if I setup a printer in macOS as IP printer. Then, with my printer's .PPD selected, I also get an additional menu "Printer Features" in Affinity print options, which includes some more paper and color options, obviously Epson specific by their wording.

In macOS for a printer setup by default not "IP" is selected but "AirPrint", which seems to influence the printer driver in a way and is called "driverless" by Apple:

Quote

Printer and scanner drivers for Mac

If you have an older printer that doesn't support driverless technology, your Mac might automatically install the driver software needed to use that device.
Many printers and scanners use driverless technologies such as AirPrint or IPP Everywhere, which don't require additional drivers on your Mac.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201465

... and it seems to communicate with the printer and to suppress printer driver options in purpose for more intuitive mac-like user experience without the need (~ ability) of specific settings:

Quote

About AirPrint

With AirPrint, it's easy to print full-quality photos and documents from your Mac, iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch without having to install additional software (drivers). AirPrint is built into most popular printer models, such as the ones listed in this article. AirPrint features include easy discovery, automatic media selection, and enterprise-class finishing options.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201311

So, you guys all were right with your assumption that it is no Affinity decision to show the menu "Color Matching" or not.

[BofG]

@thomaso The soft proof is only to account for the differences in colour capabilities between the monitor and printer. Your monitor can produce a lot more colours than the printer. The soft proof shows what will come out on paper. It is not intended to adjust what gets put on the paper. That is for the print colour management to handle, using the same profile.

If you don't use a soft proof, what you see on screen won't match your printed output. If you try and print with no colour management but with the soft proof visible the printer won't receive the adjustments it needs. If you use colour management and soft proof it goes wrong as the start data is off, because the soft proof has already altered the colours. 

The issue is that Affinity seems to be fine on the soft proof, but it's doing either nothing or something wrong when it comes to applying a profile to the print output.

[lacerto]

(...)

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

Does it mean a Soft Proof Adjustment is NOT the Affinity substitution to output an image for a specific device on print – like a specific profile of a print service is chosen on export?

The AP Soft Proof Adjustment is meant to do what the help topic I linked to says it does; that being to simulate on screen what a printout would look like on paper when using an ICC profile intended for that combination of printer, paper, ink, & driver (if it is not 'driverless').

As I understand it, the process would be very much like what I wrote about here regarding adapting the process in that post's linked article written for a typical Photoshop workflow to one in AP.

[R C-R]

7 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

I do not think that they are meant for print purposes. But as far as I know the feature uses the same ICC profiles that are used by printer drivers when a specific media is selected from the driver (or by Adobe and Affinity apps when specifying app-based color management in context of local printing). It is just that they might be meant to be used with sRGB color space and not with Adobe RGB or some other wide gamut color space.

If that was true, why would the Soft Proof Adjustment offer such a wide variety of proof profiles, including Adobe RGB & ROMM RGB (a.k.a. ProPhoto RGB) among many others?

(Not a rhetorical question.)

[lacerto]

(...)

[R C-R]

3 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

The problem is that neither method seems to produce reliable results so it is impossible to say whether soft proofing could actually be used for anything else than "experimental" purposes when applied in print jobs.   

When I refer to the workflow example in the article I linked to in the other topic, specifically to steps 10-12 to make the necessary adjustments to compensate for differences in printer/paper/ink color gamuts, it seems to me that a very common use of soft proofing is to create printer-specific exports, as per that article's steps 16 & 17. It is also consistent with other articles I have seen about the primary use of soft proofing, for example this one. That one does mention "trial & error" so I assume that is an inherent part of the process.

However, I lack the expertise or experience to make an informed comment on if or to what extent doing this in Photoshop, Krita, or whatever would be comparable to using soft proofing for the same purpose in AP, what the exact steps should be in AP, or how reliable it would be.

[panelson3]

13 hours ago, R C-R said:

So just to confirm, you do not see a "Color Matching" choice for your printer & for that a choice between ColorSync & printer matching?

Also, for your tests with an AP Soft Proof adjustment, the idea is to turn that on & use it as a guide to adjust the colors (via curves or whatever adjustments) so the image looks as close to what you want the print to like like as possible, & then to turn it off for the final export. Otherwise, there is no point in using soft proofing.

You understand that, right?

@R C-R, Yes, I have the "Color Matching" menu item in my printer dialog, and I see both "ColorSync" and "Epson Color Controls". The reason that I said that ColorSync is my only option is because it works within the ICC color management workflow where the Epson controls do not.

Yes, I understand that the SP adjustment layer is for soft proofing so that I can simulate on screen what is going to come out of my printer. However, I respectfully disagree that one has to make adjustments when soft proofing to make it worth doing. I've used soft proofing to decide which rendering intent to use. I've had other occasions when I've looked at a soft proof, thought the color looked fine, and sent it to the printer without making any adjustments. If I decide I need to make adjustments, it is usually because I am printing to a printer/paper that has a color gamut much smaller than my working space, like AdobeRGB to US Web Coated (SWOP) or some variant of CMYK.

I recently saw a YouTube video that showed how to use the gamut warning in the sp adjustment layer along with some Curve and HSL adjustments to bring the out of gamut colors into the printer's color space. While this exercise gives the user the control for how the out-of-gamut colors are brought into the printer's color space, one could also just let the color management conversion handle it. Since the printer is not going to print out-of-gamut colors because it can't, the original color is going to be reproduced by the printer as accurately as it can depending on the quality of the ICC printer profile and the rendering intent that is chosen. I don't want to have to make adjustments to my image so that I can get it close to what the printer can reproduce. That's the function of an ICC color managed workflow - let color management make the color translations so that I don't have to. That said, there's nothing wrong with making adjustments while viewing a soft proof to really fine tune the color for output, but that is not the sole purpose of soft proofing.

[lepr]

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

I lack the expertise or experience to make an informed comment

That was an informed comment.

 

[lacerto]

(...)

[panelson3]

I just thought I would post my rationale behind using the Soft Proof Adjustment Layer as a potential way to solve the color managed printing problem.

If I have an image in a layer in A Photo and place a Curves adjustment layer above it and make some adjustments to the curve, not only will I see those adjustments in A Photo on my computer display, I should also see the results of the curve adjustment on printed output (the color may not be accurate, but I should still be able to see the results of the adjustment, ie: brighter, darker, more contrast, whatever). This should hold true of any adjustment layer that I place above my image layer in the layer stack.

If I place a Soft Proof adjustment layer above my image layer and assign my printer profile, rendering intent, and black point compensation, then what I see on my color profiled display should be an accurate representation of what my printer will reproduce. Essentially, I'm taking my image layer, let's say it's currently in the AdobeRGB working space, and I'm having the soft proof adjustment layer translate the AdobeRGB to the printer's color space using the ICC profile defined in the adjustment layer. The adjusted color is then sent to the display by way of the display's ICC profile to render the simulated color of the print job.

So, if I can send the soft proof to the screen, why can I not leave the soft proof adjustment layer on and send the printer translated color to the printer and achieve an accurate color print? Would this not be the same as manually converting the working space color to the printer color (using: Document > Convert Format / ICC Profile...) and printing (no color management conversion in the printer driver, since the color has already been converted)?

Because of the lousy results, there's clearly a hole in my thinking or Affinity is doing something with the color translation that I don't understand.

[panelson3]

7 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

So I used Affinity Photo app color management in the Print Dialog box (only available in Windows versions)

The color management is not coming from Affinity Photo. It is provided by the operating system and written into the driver by the print driver's developer. In Adobe parlance, this would be equivalent to a setting of "Printer Manages Color" vs "Application Manages Color". The CMS is provided by Windows and is translating the color after you printed from Affinity Photo. In my case, I want Affinity Photo to translate the color ("Application Manages Color") when I initiate the print job. This would provide a consistent way to color manage for output to any printer on whatever OS that Affinity supports, rather than depending on the printer manufacturer to write the color management capabilities into their driver which would be inconsistent from one printer to the next (Epson vs HP vs Canon, etc).

[lacerto]

(...)

[panelson3]

7 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

I really do not know what happens under the hood, but why use this terminology (which is pretty much equivalent to one used in Photoshop):

I

This is equivalent to saying that the app has already performed the color conversion and not to perform the conversion again. In this case, the word "App" could mean any app that is sending a print job to the printer. It's not specific to Affinity. It's the same with the second image you posted, which basically says don't convert the print job that I just received. In the world of Epson and most major printers for that matter, there exists the option to turn off color management in the driver. If the "App" has already translated it, you want the translated color to pass through the driver and on to the printer without any additional color conversion.

[lacerto]

(...)

[panelson3]

39 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

What does the other option (that you can choose in Affinity) mean then

What other option are you referring to?

[lacerto]

(...)

[panelson3]

41 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

There are clearly issues with local printing within Affinity apps but the reasons for the oddly bad results that you have demonstrated in this post when printing using Adobe RGB workflow on an sRGB printer seem to be ones related to trying to pass through unconverted color data. Perhaps this is device-dependent as I did not experience similar problems printing virtually the same image.

Whereever the color conversion is performed, on Windows versions of Affinity apps there is no need to explicity convert the colors to sRGB, so similarly as when using Photohop, I can print from a document that uses the Adobe RGB color profile, choose the rendering intent of my choice while having printer controlled color management turned off, choose a target device specific media profile from the app rather than from the printer driver, and get acceptable (even if not great) results.

There is no such thing as an sRGB printer, and I never mentioned using sRGB for printing. So, I am confused by your post.

sRGB is a common color space originally developed to present accurate color in a web browser. For color consistency and ease of use, sRGB has been adopted by many hardware manufacturers and software developers. It happens to have a rather small color gamut, so for printing there are better options with larger color gamuts. That's why AdobeRGB is commonly used as a working space for graphics being sent to a commercial printer.

The process that you describe for Photoshop is exactly what I've been writing about all along. I want the same capabilities in Affinity software.

Working Color Space (AdobeRGB) converted by Affinity to the Device Color Space (Epson P800 on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag), sent out to the printer driver which is set to No Color Management (so that the color that has already been converted passes through and is not converted again by the driver), and then sent to the printer. I have been doing this for years with very predictable results.

[lacerto]

(...)

[panelson3]

13 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

It is in the screenshot: "Performed by Printer" (in contrast to "app"). 

So if the conversion can happen in the app or in the printer driver, you need to tell both the app and the driver which you prefer. If the app is performing the conversion, you have to make sure to turn it off in the driver. If the app is not performing the conversion, then you have to set up the driver to handle it. You never want to have both the driver and the app perform a conversion. It's either one or the other.

[panelson3]

1 minute ago, Lagarto said:

I mean printer that expects the color input to be in sRGB, such as your Epson does (as default).

Epson doesn't expect sRGB.

[lacerto]

(..)