Color Management

[PhotoNewbie]

Questions from a newbie perspective so please excuse if I am mixed up. I am trying to improve the color in the photos that I print. Maybe that is as simple as just upgrading from the rather cheap HP deskjet 3520 printer that I have, IDK. The photos print a little washed out. Anyway, I have set my (2015) rMBP display to Adobe RGB 1998 and also in the Affinity Photo Preferences. I dont have the option to set that in my printer profile. After this change I see no difference in the washed out look of my printed photos tho but again, from a newbie's perspective maybe I just dont understand the coordination of color management between my mac display, printer and how it influences my prints. I do set up my print screen correctly with as many of the print details as offered such as photo paper type and max dpi.

 

Also, this may be totally unrelated but after making these changes to Adobe RGB on my Mac display and Affinity Preferences, Affinity Photo crashed several times as I was editing a photo. As I restarted AP, I would get a msg there was a recoverable cooy but it would be missing several of my edits so I had to keep repeating to get my photo completely edited. Like I said maybe unrelated to my switching to Adobe RGB but AP has never crashed before (purchased 11/15). I do have dGPU in my MBP and I read that can have various graphic issues.

[Madame]

I'm not an expert.. rather the opposite, but there's one or two things that came to my mind.

It's not all printers that have the option to set colour profile. If your printer don't have that, you have to check "let printer manage colour profile"

 

The second thing is to calibrate the screen if you haven't done that. That's the main reason to why the colour is different between what you print and what you see on the screen. 

[DWright]

Hi PhotoNewbie,

 

HP do not have any colour profiles for the your printer so I would stay with the default sRBG IEC61966-2.1 profile, Also the paper that you are using will effect how the colours are printed.

[PhotoNewbie]

Thanks, I did calibrate the monitor using Apple's Calibration. I am using HP's Advanced Glossy paper and have selected that. I have thought about the Spyder tool but did not know if monitor calibration would really help my prints. Also, is there a better printer that will allow Adobe RFB to be selected?

 

Any comments as to whether this switch to Adobe RGB had anything to do with AP crashing for the first time ever?

[jmac]

You say the colors in the printed image are "washed out". Are the colors in the printed image wrong or are they too light? That is two different issues it seems to me but I am no expert on printing.

[DWright]

Can you check if your image is using any CYMK settings as if this is printed to an RGB printer the colours will be lighter due to the conversion of 4 colour channels to 3.

[PhotoNewbie]

The colors are not wrong altho the reds being washed out don't look right either. I checked my photos that I have edited in AP and they are all Document>Color Format>RGB 16 bit.  I don't see anywhere the I have selected CYMK since I knew nothing about that.

[R C-R]

A bit off-topic, but can someone explain to me what an "RGB printer" actually refers to? Surely it can't mean a printer that uses only red, green, & blue inks (or toner or whatever), can it?

[Madame]

Colour format and colour profile are not the same.

Can there be some confusion here?

[Madame]

PhotoNewbie, can you go to Document>assign ICC profile and check sRGB iec61966-2.1 I think it's at the bottom of the list.

[PhotoNewbie]

Yes, I can see where to assign that. What will that do tho?  I thought I needed to have monitor, Affinity Photo and printer profile (not possible on my HP printer) all set for the same Color Profile.  

 

To answer your question as to the confusion over Color Profile vs Color Format.   In my OP, I said I set the Color Profile on my Mac and Affinity Photo Preferences to Adobe RGB.    When I said above that I clicked on Document>Color Format, I was referring to Dwright's question as to if I had any of my "images" set to CMYK. I'm sure the confusion comes from my newbie status tho.

[Madame]

I was just wondering if some of the posts were addressing colour format and some colour profile.

 

sRGB will affect how your pictures display on the screen, and then of course how you edit them.

Also, the amount of light your screen displays will influence the outcome of your edit.

Most people tend to have too bright screens, so the print will be to "pale".

[PhotoNewbie]

In researching my HP printer I find that upon drilling down, I am able to select a color profile in the print setup page. So I can set my MBP display, Affinity Photo Preferences and my HP printer to be all the same settings i.e. they all have the same color dialog to pick from. So, can you be so kind as to clear one last questions and then I will let this go and just take my prints as they are.

 

1. Do I want my MBP Display Color, Affinity Photo Preferences Color Profile, and my HP printer profile Color Match to be set at all the same thing i.e. sRGB iec61966-2.1 or Adobe RGB 1998 or something else from the dialog (remember all devices have the same color profile choices as AP Preferences) or does it matter?  I guess the real question is, regardless of what they are set to, do they all need to match?

 

Thank you all so much for always helping me!!!

[R C-R]

It may help to read the (comparatively) brief Wikipedia article about digital Color Management to get an overview of how complex this subject really is, & why there is no one color profile that is right for everything.

 

To grossly oversimplify it, the basic idea is to "map" everything to a reference color space, which is typically done with ICC color profiles that characterize the color response of each device. The mapping compensates as much as possible for their differences, using one of several "rendering intents," so that for example the screen image will closely approximate what the printed output will look like.

 

So in general, it is usually best to set your MBP to an ICC profile tailored to its response (a custom calibrated one if you have that) but the rest of it will depend on the printer, inks, paper, intended use, if the image has an embedded profile or not, the lighting conditions, & so on.

 

Hopefully, somebody else can do a better job of explaining this than I can (& correct any mistakes I have made), but keep in mind it isn't something that can be summed up very well in just a paragraph or two.