Printing Photos: Disabling The Printer's Colour Controls

[Michael Graubart]

I have just installed Affinity Photo 1.5.0 on my Mac with OS X 10.12.1 (Sierra). I use an Epson printer.

 

I am entirely new to Affinity Photo, so please forgive me if the answer to this is obvious. In Photoshop there is the option to let the printer's own colour controls manage the printed colours or to disable these and let PS manage the colours; I usually opt for the latter. I could not find an equivalent place in AP where I could make this choice, and when I printed a photo the print that resulted was grotesquely too dark and with bad colour balance. I should be very grateful for information about this.

 

I am aware that back in 2015 there was much discussion about the limited nature of the AP printing interface, but I hope that in the major upgrade to v. 1.5.0 this has been resolved.

[Fixx]

I was about to take a screen grab to show what is available in print dialog but both Affinity apps have decided to crash when trying to open print dialog. This is persistent. Screen capture shows how far I am able to get: halfway to print dialog opening animation. This is also exactly repeating behaviour.

 

[john7]

I also, being new to program, also tried printing and I also crashed. Not a good start to access printer properties causing a crash!

 

Reloaded the program and the next time it didn't crash. I tried 3 different printers and all worked. So I have no ideas what caused it to crash the first time. The only information I can find is 

 

Problem signature

Problem Event Name: CLR20r3

Problem Signature 01: Photo.exe

Problem Signature 02: 1.5.0.45

Problem Signature 03: 58480606

Problem Signature 04: Serif.Interop.Persona

Problem Signature 05: 1.5.0.45

Problem Signature 06: 584805f0

Problem Signature 07: 7532

Problem Signature 08: c7

Problem Signature 09: System.NullReferenceException

OS Version: 10.0.14393.2.0.0.768.101

Locale ID: 2057

Additional Information 1: 86b6

Additional Information 2: 86b6a8fc3f75c3297096cf7b8d92fef7

Additional Information 3: 3551

Additional Information 4: 3551f7cb786c5c3927df0431b2d09c5f

 

Extra information about the problem

Bucket ID: 7a5516761c1391a9e33ebaf87eb2f3d7 (129303760547)

[Michael Graubart]

I am glad to say that I have not had crashes so far. But to revert to my original post, I have now discovered a partial answer. The details will doubtless depend on one's printer, but with mine, in the initial dialog after selecting 'Print', Scaling and Artboards/Color Matching/ColorSync allows me at least to select from the usual range of printer profiles so as to match the kind of paper I am intending to print on. There is, however, still no indication of whether it is the printer settings or AP that is determining the colour balance, and a print that I made after discovering this, though vastly improved, is still not colour-accurate, making me think that it is still the printer and not AP that is determining the colour balance, white balance, etc.

 

There is another, and possibly even more serious, problem with the print dialog. One can choose between Actual Size, Scale to Fit and Scale. There is, however, no indication of whether margins have been allowed for, and the displayed thumbnail in the print dialog does not change with these settings, so one cannot tell, other than by repeated trial and error, whether one's prints will contain the entire image or not. 

 

In Photoshop, 'Scale to fit media' allows for margins by scaling the image to fit within standard 4 mm margins. That is how it should be.

 

I purchased Affinity Photo because Photoshop CS6, which I possess and have used for some years, frequently crashes now that I have upgraded my operating system to Sierra when trying to print (and I do not do photographic work regularly enough to warrant subscribing to Adobe's subscription scheme). It now seems that I shall not be able to print seriously in AP until the above problems are sorted out by Serif, and I feel that I have wasted my money by buying AP. I see, too, that another contributor to these discussions has AP 1.5.4, but the update I downloaded today (9 December, 2016) is only 1.5.1. How does one obtain these further updates?

[Michael Graubart]

I am discovering things one by one; I apologise for the serial nature of my comments. To resolve the margin issue, I decided to use Scaling and Artboards in the Print dialog to scale down my image to fit onto A5 paper with 4 mm margins. If I wanted to be pedantic, I would want to decide between 96% for 4 mm margins lengthwise and 94% or 95% for 4 mm margins widthwise. That sounds a trivial difference, but the margins will look distinctly different.

[Lee D]

Hi Michael,

 

Welcome to the forums.

 

Currently Affinity doesn't handle colour management when printing, this is all done in the Print window dialogue. As you have found out, you need to click Show Details > Color Matching > ColorSync and then select a colour profile.

 

The user referring to having 1.5.4, is more than likely confusing Affinity Photo with Affinity Designer

[Fotero]

When printer using an Epson printer, you have a check button for borderless printing.  What I do is that I enlarge my image to 8.5 * 11.  Then, I check the borderless box.  That does the trick.