Color management problems when printing with PSP PhotoPro x3

[Lupin]

I'd be really grateful for any advice on setting-up the color management in PSPPP x3, for accurate screen to print color matching. I've had no real trouble with this in the past when using Photoshop CS2/3 or Nikon Capture NX2, but just can't seem to get it right with PaintShop Pro. My prints are coming out about a stop darker than diplayed on the monitor, and also about a stop darker than those produced by Photoshop CS3 or Capture NX2 on the same PC. I'm currently using a ColorMunki to calibrate both the Dell U2410 monitor and the Epson R1800 injet printer, and this combination has given very good color matching in the past with Photoshop and Capture NX2. PaintShop Pro seems to have a mind of its own however, even after selecting the appropriate ColorMuki icm profiles both for the monitor and the printer. I now seem to have tried almost every combination of both "basic" and "proofing" profiles and parameters in the color management menu (and I have checked the "Enable color management" box!), but to no avail. All that seems to happen is a modest change in the diplay brightness and/or color balance but the print always seems to come out exactly the same overly dark image. I actually don't think that the density or the color balance of the print changes at all - it seems to be only the display that responds to these parameters. As with Photoshop and Capture NX2, I have color management turned off in the Epson printer driver interface. The Corel user-guide is incredibly skimpy on all this, despite using completely different terminology from Photoshop or Capture NX2. Am I right in assuming that "Picture", "Proof", Match", and "Graphics" are related to "perceptual", "relative colorometric", etc. rendering intents in Photoshop? Is there any way of tuning on "soft proofing" for different print paper profiles?
Can any experienced PaintShop Pro users give me any advice on this? I gave up with an earlier version for this very reason, and had dared to hope that PSPPPx3 might be more user friendly in its color management set-up.
Any advice most welcome.

[ronzie]

The impression I got in comparison with Photoshop comments doing color management research is that Photoshop actually drives/manages the printer. This appears not to be the case with PPPX3. I have a consumer printer (Canon S820) but for PPP I found a printer profile that someone made that actually worked. The monitor stays calibrated for its measured icm and I installed what I found on the web for a Canon S9000 for the papers I use I believe and in proof/match mode the print matched (icm was off in the S820 printer driver and it was in Auto mode).

The color space I use is the wide gamut monitor calibrated profile, not the sRGB workspace profile. That gave me a better match along with the discovered printer profile.

The calibrator I use is for the monitor only (It is a wide gamut LCD from NEC including their Spectraview II calibration system.). That calibration stays as the workspace and monitor profile. (This monitor has its correction in the monitor hardware uploaded from the PC, not in display software. The icm profile for the PPPX3 software is then used to make sure PPP uses what was intended.)

The Canon S9000 profile was made for photoshop by a user with a calibration system but does work modifying the display for a soft proof. It was better than the Canon S2000 Bubblejet icm supplied with the printer.

So as you change the printer profile in PPPX you will not see the printer behave differently - that is strictly in the operating system printer driver. All is does is make the display attempt to match what the printer output is expected to look like.

I gathered this from a thread on another forum.

So if you are expecting PPPX to set up the printer driver, it will not and that appears to be the issue for many used to Photoshop and some other packages. All you are setting up in PPPX3 is emulation of the display for the printer output. It appears to me as a reverse flow from the way Photoshop works according to users comments.

Make any sense?

[Lupin]

Ronzie,
Many thanks for taking the time to explain the way colour management works in PaintShop Pro - this was exactly what I wanted to know! As you suggest, in both PhotoShop and Capture NX2 the the program's own color management takes over completely from the Windows printer driver (which has its own color management switched off)
As far as I can see from your explanation, in PaintShop Photo Prox3 I should set the Epson printer driver (in Windows) to use Epson's own standard profile for this printer according to the most appropriate paper type. Presumably I then set PSP's color management to my own monitor calibration profile (under "Monitor Profile") and the same Epson standard profile (under"Printer Profile") that I used for the printer driver in Windows (and choose "Match" under "Rendering Intent"). For soft-proofing I should additionally select my own ColoMunki-generated printer profile under "Emulated Device Profile", this time with "Proof" as "Rendering Intent". Does that sound about right?
Thanks again for your help.

[ronzie]

I think you've got it but you could also try your Colormunk printing profile under match for the output of the monitor section. I got the best results though in Proof.

For Windows XP I also picked up this handy utility from Microsoft as mentioned in another forum:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... 8d429fbb9e

or search for Microsoft Color Control Panel Applet for Windows XP.

It helps register color profiles but it associates them by device type. Until I tried this for the profiles I found, I could not get them to associate in the PSPP color management upper section for the output profile, just proof. Weird. (Just putting the .icm file in the proper folder and right clicking on it selecting install did not allow it to show up as I described.) I don't know if versions exist for VISTA or Win 7.

[Lupin]

Thanks again Ronzie,
Hopefully, I'll get to grips with all this in the next few days. I'll let you know how I get on.

[ronzie]

Check out this support article:
http://corel.custhelp.com/app/answers/d ... _id/760314

[David Milisock]

I noticed these posts on color management and wanted to chime in a bit. The printing of color to a device that is non-postscript forces the application to convert all data in the application to convert to RGB VIA the GDI, (graphic device interface) in Windows, in PSP this may or may not be sRGB I assume it will be. A non-postscript printer will by design assume sRGB as the color space unless is is capable of decerning a print stream with an embedd profile. I.E. if your PSP working profile is Prophoto RGB and you print to a non-postscript device, the color space will change in the GDI to sRGB shifting color (assuming a gamut in the original Prophoto image wider than sRGB) then the printer will convert the already shifted color to the CMYK media profile for the device and the paper.

I am in the process of determining if PSP like CorelDRAW, Corel Photo-PAINT and Adobe Photoshop can send a tagged print file through the GDI.

A postscript device can take tagged RGB, CMYK, Grayscale and spot color as native color and convert it directly to the spcific device media profile.

I have written two book on color management for CorelDRAW and am nowlookng at and developing a CM book for PSP X3 which will be avialable at www.graphictechnology.com as are my other books.

[ronzie]

See my reply to your second post.

PSPPX3 can only provide a soft proof with CM. It will not drive a GDI printer with CM applied within PSP. I do not have a color Postscript printer so I can't help you there.

I have an older Canon S820 printer so I needed to create my own V2 profiles (with Color Munki Photo) to drive it with a third party app called QImage Pro. There is no "print with preview" or "let PSPP manage printer" color option in PSPPX3 like in PS.

More details are in a reply to your second post.

[David Milisock]

Thanks I've been using RIP driven postscriptdevices so in that work flow a TIF is a TIF.