casterle Posted June 9, 2022 Posted June 9, 2022 I'm having trouble getting my printed output to even come close to what I'm seeing on the screen. I'm trying to understand what's going on and how to correct the issue. There are apparently 3 places I can choose things that influence color; Preferences, Document Setup/Creation and the Print Dialog. In Preferences/Color I can set several profiles. RGB Color and 32bit RGB Color allow me to select profiles for my BenQ monitor. CMYK allows me to select whether my paper is coated/uncoated, sheetfed vs web - what does this do? Grayscale and LAB offer but one choice (Grayscale D50 and CIELAB D50 respectively) - does this affect what I see on my screen or what is printed or both? I have the RGB profiles set to the profiles I've created for my monitor and the CMYK profile is set to U.S. Sheetfed Uncoated. When I create a new document, I can choose document parameters like size, orientation and resolution. Can I assume correctly that the DPI I set here is for display purposes only and has no impact on printing? I can also select my color format. Included among the choices is CMYK/8 - isn't CMYK for printers? There's also a LAB option. What, exactly, am I setting here? The RGB choices imply monitor settings but CMYK implies printer settings and I'm not sure what the LAB format implies. Next I select a color profile - among the choices are my monitor profiles AND my printer profiles. Am I supposed to select my monitor or my printer here? Finally, when I go to print I can select the Rasterize resolution - should this be set to the native resolution of the printer? In Color Management, the Printer Profile defaults to Adobe RGB; I can select my printer from the drop-down list, but I can also select my monitor profiles as well as color spaces like sRGB (and the default of Adobe RGB). Why can I select something that isn't a printer here? I've tried all four Rendering Intents with Color Handling by the app as well as the printer with little difference in the output. Any help greatly appreciated! Quote Windows 11 Pro, XP-Pen Deco 03, AP, AD & APub
NotMyFault Posted June 9, 2022 Posted June 9, 2022 This might help: https://affinityspotlight.com/article/display-colour-management-in-the-affinity-apps/ Advise for beginners (experts may use whatever works for them) Display profile must be assigned in OS for display. Nowhere else. Display settings must match profile in OS. If in doubt use sRGB on both. Use RGB/16 or RGB/8 for documents. May use AdobeRGB or CMYK if you know to handle the process. never use RGB/32 except you really know what you are doing. Let the print drive do the profile conversion for the print process (often CMYK, matching the paper type you are using) Avoid printing directly from Affinity. MacOS has some driver quirks. casterle 1 Quote Mac mini M1 A2348 | MBP M3 Windows 11 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080 LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5 | Dell 27“ 4K iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589 Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps. I use iPad screenshots and videos even in the Desktop section of the forum when I expect no relevant difference.
casterle Posted June 10, 2022 Author Posted June 10, 2022 On 6/9/2022 at 1:32 PM, NotMyFault said: This might help: https://affinityspotlight.com/article/display-colour-management-in-the-affinity-apps/ Advise for beginners (experts may use whatever works for them) Display profile must be assigned in OS for display. Nowhere else. Display settings must match profile in OS. If in doubt use sRGB on both. Use RGB/16 or RGB/8 for documents. May use AdobeRGB or CMYK if you know to handle the process. never use RGB/32 except you really know what you are doing. Let the print drive do the profile conversion for the print process (often CMYK, matching the paper type you are using) Avoid printing directly from Affinity. MacOS has some driver quirks. First, thanks for the pointer to affinityspotlight.com - I don't think I've run across that site before. The article to which you referred doesn't help directly as I'm on a Windows system. It did get me looking at my display configuration in Windows; I found HDR disabled - it must be disabled by default? Enabling it made an immediate difference in monitor brightness and color. Can you shed some light on any of my other questions? For example, when I create a new document, I can select a Color Format. The RGB settings make sense - I'm selecting how many bits I want to store for the red, green and blue elements of a pixel. Same with Grayscale - I'm selecting how many bits to store for the red, green and blue elements (although all three values would be the same). What is CMYK for? Since each pixel only has 3 sub-elements and none of them are cyan, magenta, yellow or black this seems to be a print setting. Same question with LAB - what's it for? I can also select Color Profile. I see choices for color spaces like Adobe RGB as well as my BenQ monitor profiles and a profile for my Canon printer. Am I supposed to choose a color space here? If so, why do my monitor profiles appear in the list? Quote Windows 11 Pro, XP-Pen Deco 03, AP, AD & APub
NotMyFault Posted June 11, 2022 Posted June 11, 2022 8 hours ago, casterle said: I can also select Color Profile. I see choices for color spaces like Adobe RGB as well as my BenQ monitor profiles and a profile for my Canon printer. Am I supposed to choose a color space here? If so, why do my monitor profiles appear in the list? Whenever in Affinity Apps, only choose RGB/16, and sRGB IEC61966-2.1. Do not use the BenQ monitor or printer profile for Documents. It is a pity that Affinity does not filter out these irritating profiles from the list. You said the printout colors won’t match the displayed colors, so please try to get same colors using sRGB. all the other things like CMYK, AdobeRGB, HDR make the process much more complicated. Stay away from the for the moment. After you get sRGB working (correct colors for print), we can do the next step and look into that profiles. But you need a correct sRGB profile as „baseline“ and starting point. Quote Mac mini M1 A2348 | MBP M3 Windows 11 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080 LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5 | Dell 27“ 4K iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589 Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps. I use iPad screenshots and videos even in the Desktop section of the forum when I expect no relevant difference.
casterle Posted June 12, 2022 Author Posted June 12, 2022 22 hours ago, RichardMH said: I assume your monitor is calibrated. Yes, just last month, with Palette Master. RichardMH 1 Quote Windows 11 Pro, XP-Pen Deco 03, AP, AD & APub
casterle Posted June 12, 2022 Author Posted June 12, 2022 18 hours ago, NotMyFault said: Whenever in Affinity Apps, only choose RGB/16, and sRGB IEC61966-2.1. Do not use the BenQ monitor or printer profile for Documents. It is a pity that Affinity does not filter out these irritating profiles from the list. You said the printout colors won’t match the displayed colors, so please try to get same colors using sRGB. all the other things like CMYK, AdobeRGB, HDR make the process much more complicated. Stay away from the for the moment. After you get sRGB working (correct colors for print), we can do the next step and look into that profiles. But you need a correct sRGB profile as „baseline“ and starting point. Are you suggesting sRGB because it has the best chance of matching my printer's color space? I have gradients that need to rescale gracefully, without distortion, so I selected a larger color space (AdobeRGB) and threw more bits at the problem with a RGB/16 format. Will I run into issues w/my gradients in sRGB? Quote Windows 11 Pro, XP-Pen Deco 03, AP, AD & APub
RichardMH Posted June 12, 2022 Posted June 12, 2022 You might be over thinking this. I have a calibrated Benq and get pretty close with the colours. I've had my printer profiled for one of the papers I use and that one is very close. For print I have the monitor set to 5000K. I also have 80 cd/m^2 brightness and black point at 0.4 cd/m^2. When I hold blank photo paper in front of the monitor displaying white it matches quite well under the lighting I use. My print images are either Adobe RGB (1998) or ProPhoto. I actually print with a program called Mirage as its easier. Quote
casterle Posted June 12, 2022 Author Posted June 12, 2022 8 minutes ago, RichardMH said: You might be over thinking this. I have a calibrated Benq and get pretty close with the colours. I've had my printer profiled for one of the papers I use and that one is very close. For print I have the monitor set to 5000K. I also have 80 cd/m^2 brightness and black point at 0.4 cd/m^2. When I hold blank photo paper in front of the monitor displaying white it matches quite well under the lighting I use. My print images are either Adobe RGB (1998) or ProPhoto. I actually print with a program called Mirage as its easier. I expect my main problem is my printer - a Canon MF630C. It comes with a profile, but I know of no way to 'calibrate' it. Quote Windows 11 Pro, XP-Pen Deco 03, AP, AD & APub
RichardMH Posted June 12, 2022 Posted June 12, 2022 Have you tried printing through a dept store or some other outside printers. Should give an idea of where the problem is. And its pretty cheap. Its what I did before I did a printing course and learnt how to set things up properly. Quote
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