ICC profiles

[Michele H]

Hi, can anyone show me on Affinity Design and Photo 

How_to_Use_a_Custom_Profile_V2.pdffinty how to add for sublimation printing. I have a EPSON Artisan 1430

 

Thank you

Michele

[stokerg]

Hi Michele,

Once you've installed the ICC profile as shown in the PDF guide you posted, you can then go to File>Print on this screen select Colour Management.  On this screen use the following settings:

On the Print window if you click on the Properties button you'll see the screens talked about in the PDF and you can set the sublimation setting there.

Then just make sure the Colour Management Section of the Print Window matches these settings: 

Colour Handling: Performed by app

Printer Profile: Select the profile you installed

Rendering Intent: From reading the PDF guide you posted, they recommend setting this to Relative colorimetric.

You can then print and the printer will use that profile  

 

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, BofG said:

I'm on windows, I have some printer ICC profiles installed. In Affinity Designer I can use them in a soft proof layer, and they are listed as options in the colour setting in document properties, but they don't show in the print dialogue.

I had just assumed that designer didn't support printer profiles, but from what you say they should be available. Any ideas on why they don't show up? They were created through colormunki, and are V4 profiles.

Also on Windows. Here's part of my Designer Print dialog:

If Designer is finding your profile for soft-proofing I would expect it to find it in that dialog, too.

[walt.farrell]

54 minutes ago, BofG said:

Do you have any custom profiles installed yourself that show there?

Yes, quite a few.

They are, however, for RGB output.

The Soft Proof Adjustment layer allows selection of CMYK profiles, but I do not see any of the CMYK profiles in the Print dialog when I have an RGB document.

However, as I just realized, you're not actually printing. You're sending it off to pring, so what you need to do is export to a file (JPG, TIFF, ...) using the document's ICC profile, and what the Print dialog allows isn't really relevant.

You would use the Soft Proofing layer to fine-tune the appearance of your image, then hide that layer, then Export the file saying to use the document's ICC profile. If you then view that file it will look wrong. However, when you send it to the printer and they print it, it should look close to how it looked for you with the Soft Proof adjustment active.

[walt.farrell]

5 minutes ago, BofG said:

Thanks for the info, are those profiles 'display' profiles or 'printer' profiles? I would imagine being RGB they are for a display?

They are printer profiles, because most inkjet printers expect to receive RGB data even if they use CMYK inks.

If your printer really expects to receive CMYK data then I'm a bit surprised, but I suppose in that case you might need to change your document to CMYK.

[v_kyr]

4 hours ago, BofG said:

but they don't show in the print dialogue.

I had just assumed that designer didn't support printer profiles, but from what you say they should be available. Any ideas on why they don't show up? They were created through colormunki, and are V4 profiles.

Are these Win system wide correctly installed? - The print panel in Affinity is probably a shared system resource, aka from the printer driver and thus maybe the printer driver doesn't show those up for whatever reason. Normally actual Win versions should be able to handle icc v4 profiles, but it might be still printer driver dependent. So do those printer icc profiles show up when using the printer driver from other software for printing?

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, BofG said:

It's nothing to do with the driver, the colour management/installation of profiles to the system is independent of the driver.

The above shown Affinity printer dialog from walt is a shared instance from the Win related printer driver, which in turn makes uses of Win colour management too!

[v_kyr]

It's maybe possible that Affinity wants to see an .icc file extensions and not an .icm file one. - See here ...

• How to use printer profiles?

You should give that a try out.

[v_kyr]

Ok now switched the seat over from a Mac to a beside Win box, trying your .icm file there it doesn't appear in the list of Affinity print dialog as a selectable profile. It's only selectable from doc colorformat settings via the CMYK/8 option.

[walt.farrell]

22 minutes ago, BofG said:

Seems like AD is limited to RGB only on the print side of things.

It does seem like that's true. I'm not sure if that's intended or a bug.

Since you've said your printer accepts either CMYK or RGB, you could create RGB profiles for it, and use those with the Affinity applications.

[v_kyr]

BTW under PS/PSE on Win that Xerox .icm profile is shown and reusable for printing ...

[R C-R]

@BofG I don't know if this has anything to do with it but I installed your Colotech icm profile on my Mac. In Affinity, it did not show up either as a soft proof or print dialog option. I then ran the Mac ColorSync Utility's "Profile First Aid" feature. This is what I got:

I ran the repair function, which resulted in this Xerox Colotech 350gsm Silk.icm version of the file. After doing that, the profile appeared both as a soft proof & printing option.

[R C-R]

20 minutes ago, BofG said:

@R C-R Could just be something to do with going through the forum upload?

If you want, you could upload a zipped version of your file, which should protect it from any mangling the forum might be doing to it, & I'll see if the Mac ColorSync Utility likes that any better. But I suspect that won't make any difference. 

26 minutes ago, BofG said:

It must be a bug with AD on Windows

You are probably right about that.

[R C-R]

Tried the zip version; same error, so the forum is not mangling the profile.

The print dialog shows considerably fewer profiles than in the soft proof list. I am not sure why; it may have something to do with the print drivers installed on my Mac. But regardless, on the Mac your repaired profile shows up in both, so it still looks like a Windows version bug to me.

[Dan C]

@BofG

Thanks for the information and the file, I can confirm this is a bug in the Windows version of Affinity and I've logged it with our developers to be fixed asap.  

[Michele H]

Ok, I need to know what to tell the profile guy, he doesn't know a lot about Affinity. I downloaded Sillouette and it worked perfect. So it is something I am missing in Affinity. I don't want to use another program. Any idea what could be wrong. One thing is my blacks, greys turn green tinge. I would appreciate any help. I have Epson 1430 Artisan I have Designer and Photo.  Thanks Michele

[walt.farrell]

4 hours ago, BofG said:

Assuming you are on Windows.

It should work if you do the following:

1. Install the icc profile (right click the file, select 'install..')

2. Set Windows to apply the profile to your printer. Win +R (for run), type "colorcpl.exe", select your printer, Add.. your colour profile and set as default.

3. Set your printer driver colour management to use host system. If that's not an option, choose application colour management. (not sure how exactly it would be worded in your driver).

4. In Affinity print dialogue, choose 'printer manages colour'.

 

But (unless I missed it) Michelle has not said she's using CMYK printing, and for an Epson Artisan 1430 (as with other Epson printers) I would expect she's using RGB. You're the one who brought the discussion of CMYK into Michelle's topic, BofG.

All Michelle should need to do is install the profile, then add a soft-proofing adjustment layer using that profile to make sure that the colors will look right. If they don't look right on-screen, then add adjustments to fix them. Then turn off the soft-proof layer and print. The official Affinity tutorials cover both printing and the use of soft-proofing.

[walt.farrell]

14 minutes ago, BofG said:

I always find that odd, given that a printer by definition has to use the CMYK scheme at the end

Actually, some printers don't use CMYK at all. I recall seeing one that used green and orange and some other colors. And then there are ones setup with multiple densities of K and no colors at all.

And even higher-end ones that are CMYK based may be more complex than that, having C, light-C, M, light-M, Y, light-Y, K, and light-K (or another separate variety of K for glossy paper). Or even more color breakdowns than that.

Most printers these days that I have seen or read about, except possibly for professional commercial varieties, expect to get RGB as their input, and they know how to do the conversion to their ink colors.

[MikeW]

36 minutes ago, BofG said:

...(I always find that odd, given that a printer by definition has to use the CMYK scheme at the end)...

Inkjets & even many/most color laser printers, whether they are consumer or (many/most) prosumer devices, will convert any CMYK to RGB at the print driver and then to the technology used in the printer whether it is pure or enhanced CMYK (and whether the driver is converting it or a special RIP in ROM doesn't matter). If RGB data is used but is characterized differently than the print driver uses, this RGB data may well also be converted to the RGB it is using in the driver.