Mac - No rendering intent for printing

[Mags1892]

I have been supporting people on colour management for many years, I have no issues with the windows versions of affinity designer, However the mac version has no options for picking the rendering intent at the print stage, this is VITAL for printing and you need to have the option of which to use ideally perceptual and relative intents or absolute for proofing.

Is this feature going to be added to the Mac versions ?

[TomM1]

I will add here that in AP the soft proof adjustment layer has rendering intent options

but at the print dialog there is no such choice under color matching>colorsync>profile.

[Richard Liu]

Let me add my vote for this feature.  This seems like a severe oversight, all the more so since it is not documented and hence unclear, what rendering intent the printer is actually using.

[TomM1]

There is also rendering intent choice in preferences.

[fde101]

On 5/6/2019 at 4:12 PM, TomM1 said:

at the print dialog there is no such choice under color matching>colorsync>profile.

This part of the printer dialog is provided by the OS; I don't believe the individual applications have any control over it.

[Richard Liu]

Can we get confirmation from a developer on this?  After all, the Soft proof adjustment layer would seem to be somewhat useless without the ability to specify the same rendering intent for the print.

[TomM1]

3 hours ago, Richard Liu said:

Can we get confirmation from a developer on this?  After all, the Soft proof adjustment layer would seem to be somewhat useless without the ability to specify the same rendering intent for the print.

And is the rendering intent choice in preferences only for new documents?

[Richard Liu]

Here's a link to a topic with the same concern that contains slightly more background information:

 

[mac_heibu]

@Richard Liu, would you please answer to @TomM1 post?

It is hard/impossible to discuss a subject, if some posts simply are ignored …

Additionally: The is an option for choosing the rendering intent in the Affinity Apps:

[Richard Liu]

@mac_heibu,

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to ignore @TomM1's posts.  I took his last post to be adding to mine, i. e., I asked for a developer to confirm something, and he added something related that he would like to have confirmed.  Similarly, his post after my first in this thread, seemed to be an addendum to my argument, offering another reason why omitting support for rendering intent in the print dialog is curious, namely, that rendering intent can be set in other parts of Affinity Photo.

[Richard Liu]

@mac_heibu,

Quote

 

Additionally: The is an option for choosing the rendering intent in the Affinity Apps:

 

Yes, but this is the control for the Soft proof adjustment layer.  As this layer is usually not checked when one prints, those options aren't carried over into the print dialog.  That this is so is easily proved, for in the print dialog one specifies the printer profile, despite (presumably) having specified it for the soft proof.

 

[Andrew Gerzso]

Has the feature been added which would allow specifying rendering intent when printing ?

This is crucial for making my decision to move from Photoshop to Affinity.

[fde101]

A bit of a workaround in the interim...

If you save as a PDF from the Print dialog, you can then open that PDF in ColorSync utility and print from there.  ColorSync Utility does allow you to override the rendering intent from its Print dialog (this is included in macOS and is in /Applications/Utilities).

[Andrew Gerzso]

Hello,

Thank you for your kind reply ! 

I would prefer that the rendering intent be available directly without going through a PDF however.

Let us hope this will be added in future versions of Affinity !

Best Regards,

Andrew

[fde101]

2 hours ago, Andrew Gerzso said:

I would prefer that the rendering intent be available directly without going through a PDF however.

The Mac printing system is built on the foundation of PDF; you are going through a PDF whether you are aware of it or not whenever you print.

I do agree that it is unfortunate that there is not currently an option to do this directly from the print dialog, though I would argue it should really be provided by the OS rather than by the application.

In past versions of MacOS X, it was possible to select a "Quartz Filter" to be applied while printing, and the list of those could be customized to include options that would set the rendering intent, but sadly that was removed at some point.  The filters can still be customized using the ColorSync Utility, but I can no longer find any way to apply them when printing (other than using ColorSync Utility to do it).

 

By the way, if you drop an alias to ColorSync Utility into /Library/PDF Services it gets added to the PDF menu button in the Print dialog, and selecting that opens the PDF in ColorSync Utility much as you can open it in Preview...  the only strange thing I've noticed is that it opens behind the current application instead of in front of it. 🤨

[Andrew Gerzso]

All I can say is thanks ! I learned something today !