Color Management

[Jimmy Gahl]

Hello All,

I’m new to PSP and want to use it to print my artwork created in Painter 2018. I’m using an HP Omen laptop with a Cintiq 22HDTouch to render my art. Output is to an Epson 2880 photo printer. I have calibrated the Cintiq with the Wacom Color Manager. I mostly use Red River papers and have profiles for each of them. Now I want to get out from the Adobe noose. I had been using an older version of Photoshop which will not reliably install in Windows 10.

When printing from Photoshop on my now defunct Windows 7 machine, I would bring the artwork in as a PSD. Setting up paper output, I would turn on “out of gamut” button and adjust the hue, saturation, and brightness to get as clean a print as possible. Most of the time what came out of the 2880 was pretty close to what I saw on the screen.

I have bumbled my way through the PSP color management and so far I have reached a dead end with no changes in the output. All that said, could someone jump in and give me some help, please. I really want this to work.

Thanks,

Jimmy

[bruce1951]

Unfortunately these forums have many 'bad' posts about PSP's poor Color Management. I gave up on it long ago. I'm sure Corel doesn't know how to fix it.

I do a lot of printing for museums etc. To retain full control over color, profiles, printer control etc etc I use QImage. http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage-u/I would suggest when it comes time to the final print open your image in QImage do a soft proof and start printing. Download the trial of QImage and give it a try.

bruce

[Jimmy Gahl]

Hey, Bruce... Thanks for your grounded reply. My conclusion about PSP color management matches yours. I looked over QImage at their website. Well, the hype was what I expected. I did spend some time with their PDF manual, to try and get familar with the program a bit. It’s about the learning curve...! Before I download the trial, would you be willing to lay out a simple workflow for me, please? Could we start with me opening a PSD of my painting, including all the layers. (Or is it better to start with a flattened image?) I do have profiles for my Cintiq, my Epson 2880, and the Red River linen paper I want to use. Please, where would you go in QImage, step by step, before I hit the Print button. Thanks...Me thinks I owe you a beer!

Jimmy

[bruce1951]

Jimmy I'm pressed for time at the moment as I'm about to start a 24 hour flight to the USA.

First let me say they have a good help/user forum and are quick to reply and help out users.

My main editor is Photoline. (Some older work is still in PSP hence my continuation with it). Both my PSP and Photoline files are layered files. My work flow always involves flattening those files into a 16bit tiff print file. I use that tiff file for printing via QImage. (Any changes are made in the Pl or PSP file and resaved as tiff).

QImage allows you to set up 'Jobs'. ie I print the majority of my work on A4 and A3+ photopaper. Simply set up a 'job' that includes printer,(Epson), paper, (Moab or SIHL) and ink, (Epson), profiles. Then load the 'job' and choose the file to print. (QImage has many editing features. I don't use any of them. For me it's all about controlling my printing).

QImage has an excellent softproofing feature that I find very accurate. (Subject to monitor calibration).

You could dive right into QImage and make it as complicated as your brain can cope with. Or be like me. Set up the various 'jobs' and hit the print button. (In reality I open QImage. Open the appropriate folder. Then 'Recall' the appropriate 'job', ie if I'm printing A3+ on SIHL paper I simply open the saved 'job' for that paper. (It's not a huge task to load the various ICC profiles and create the 'jobs'). Select the image required. Check soft proof and hit the print button.

bruce

[Jean-Luc]

I have bumbled my way through the PSP color management and so far I have reached a dead end with no changes in the output.

You may try to print with or without Color management checked.
Does your TIFF file has an ICC Profile embeded (before to print) ?

[Jimmy Gahl]

Back again... Bruce I have been trying out QImage and you are right, the color rendition is very close. Latest was a Painter original greeting card. Color was good, but the background of the entire card was a light grey with the color of the paper (white) appearing as a 1/4” boarder. Entire card was to be a white background.

I mean QI is so complex... My head is spinning. Is there a setting I messed up? Need to get this cleared up before my trial days are over so I can decide to purchase or not. Can you help, please. Thanks! Jimmy

[bruce1951]

Jimmy I suggest you ask your questions here - http://www.ddisoftware.com/tech/ Scroll down to the QImage Ultimate forum. My settings may,or may not, work for you.

bruce

[CHoffman]

I made it my 2018 mission/resolution to harass Corel into fixing PSP color management. I don't even think it would be that hard. Unfortunately I've been busy and forgot about it. I had the interest of a Corel person for a while, but never heard of any action on the matter. IMO, the product would have a lot more professional users if they could just address this one thing. Their reluctance to do so suggests maybe they lost the code for that section, don't understand it or have some other technical reason that nothing can be done. Makes me think that part of the program was jobbed out to somebody who was subsequently hit by a bus. So for now, use Qimage. It has a learning curve, but isn't so bad once you play with it for a bit. Qimage beats PSP in every case, though PSP can do an OK (not brilliant) job with sRGB images. It's useless for any wider gamut situation.

[Jimmy Gahl]

Just a quick word to you guys for your responses to my plight. Posted to Mike Chaney’s forum and got help from Fred A. He was patient and detailed in his help. Happy camper! Ended up buying QImage Ultimate and wow cranked out some art that is color perfect.

Am in the process of creating greeting card templates and want to be able to modify the text I add to the cards. Text is editable in Painter, but when saved in PSD format and opened in PSP, the text is not editable. Am I asking too much here? Is there a workaround, by chance?

Jimmy

[bruce1951]

Jimmy I hope QImage works out for you.

A word to Corel. - If you can't, or won't, fix up things like Color Management how about including an External program feature. By do that users would use PSP as their base/go to editor and be able to flip back and forwards to other programs to do specialised tasks. Otherwise users may just find something better and simply not bother with PSP at all.

bruce

[JoeB]

Jimmy I hope QImage works out for you.

A word to Corel. - If you can't, or won't, fix up things like Color Management how about including an External program feature. By do that users would use PSP as their base/go to editor and be able to flip back and forwards to other programs to do specialised tasks. Otherwise users may just find something better and simply not bother with PSP at all.

I don't know how Qimage works or how it is utilized, so perhaps my comments here will be irrelevant.

While I agree it would be best if Corel included an External program feature, you can open external programs from PSP using a script. We usually use it to open programs like standalone plugin/effects programs that can't be run as an Effects plugin within PSP, and then return the image from the plugin that is run by the script back to PSP, either as a new layer on the image being processed or as a new image.

But if Qimage is a program to which a PSP user would want to send an image so that, in Qimage, custom print profiles could be utilized and the image printed from Qimage and then when finished with whatever Qimage does the user would close Qimage to go back to PSP, then the script would easily work for that purpose.

[bruce1951]

JoeB I appreciate that Scripts 'may' work for those familiar with Scripts. But for 'simple' folks like me an External program feature would be easier!!!

In the meantime I think there is a flaw in my suggestion. If PSP is 'messing up' color management then it may well send the wrong information to QImage to work with. Thus negating the whole point. Using the correct colour information is critical in many cases. If PSP 'messes them up' then how would QImage know they are the wrong colour? So two wrongs won't make it right!

Nah the only answer is to edit with a program that handles color management correctly in the first place. I'm afraid PSP isn't capable of being used for colour critical tasks.

bruce

[JoeB]

JoeB I appreciate that Scripts 'may' work for those familiar with Scripts. But for 'simple' folks like me an External program feature would be easier!!!

You'll note that I did start by saying that I agreed that it would be best if Corel introduced the External program feature.

In the meantime I think there is a flaw in my suggestion. If PSP is 'messing up' color management then it may well send the wrong information to QImage to work with. Thus negating the whole point. Using the correct colour information is critical in many cases. If PSP 'messes them up' then how would QImage know they are the wrong colour? So two wrongs won't make it right!

That was my concern about my suggestion. As I stated, I don't know how Qimage works. I made the suggestion based on my admittedly uninformed guess that perhaps when an image was sent from PSP to Qimage, then in Qimage the user could select an already saved custom color print profile created by the Qimage user, and that the printer would then print according to that profile. I'm also unaware of whether or not an image sent from PSP to Qimage could then be edited in Qimage to create a desired look and then matching color profile that could then be saved - as well as perhaps imbedded in the image - and then the printed image from Qimage would look the way the user wished.

And, to carry that thought a bit further, if the image could be sent to Qimage, then edited and a color profile created and embedded in the image, then the image could be returned to PSP as a new image (TIF format maybe?) with the embedded color profile that - hopefully - would automatically be applied by Qimage whenever and however later opened in Qimage for printing. But that's likely going waaayyy too far with my expectations!

So just throwing out suggestions given my very limited idea as to how Qimage works.

But given all that, my main point - given that it would be better if Corel implemented the feature - is that a script quite a few of us use can be used to open almost any other program as an External editor/plugin/ or whatever program from PSP. So for those who wish to do so it can be done with little effort, and the script can be bound to an icon and added to whatever toolbar or menu is relevant to the purpose.

For example, I use PSP2018 to have my 64bit plugins available and to take advantage of the processing/memory management advantages of the 64bit PSP. But I have a script bound to my Effects menu that will open PSP X9 32bit as an external editor with the image that I'm working on in my PSP2018 workspace so that I can apply a 32bit only filter. The script then returns the resultant, modified image back to PSP 2018, either as a new layer (if I sent only one layer) or as a new image (if I sent the full multi-layered PSP image). Works just fine, and can be made to send and return multiple layered PSP images or just the visible layer from PSP2018. Better than waiting for Corel to make this a feature!

I've always said that, besides the editing features for the price available in PSP, the greatest feature is how easy it is to customize it to do what you want it to do when the program itself doesn't quite provide what you wish it did. I always take advantage of the easy customization options available in PSP.

[bruce1951]

I would be wary of any editing with PSP with any colour critical work. I don't understand what PSP does when it opens and closes files. So even If I managed to send a file to QImage, which by the way is a capable editor in itself, and back to PSP will/does PSP 'play' with the colour settings?

bruce

[JoeB]

I would be wary of any editing with PSP with any colour critical work. I don't understand what PSP does when it opens and closes files. So even If I managed to send a file to QImage, which by the way is a capable editor in itself, and back to PSP will/does PSP 'play' with the colour settings?

I guess that is the real problem, because everything I've read about the subject in the forum would at least suggest that PSP does play around with color settings. How or in what manner isn't anything I would have a clue about.

The only thing that I do know is that there are two options in the Color Working Space dialogue. If the first one is selected then opening an image with an embedded profile that is different from the Color Working Space profile causes a dialogue to pop up saying that the embedded profile is a mismatch to the color working space profile and that the documents colors were changed to the working space profile. And even if nothing is done by you in PSP, if you try to close the image you'll get asked if you want to save the changes, so I assume that the image is now embedded with your color working space profile.

On the other hand, if the second option is selected then, when opening an image with the different, embedded profile, you don't get that dialogue. And you can close the image without being prompted to save the changes, and the original embedded profile seems to be retained in the image when it's closed because if you change back to the first option and open the file again you'll get the warning about the color profile mismatch. BUT if you open the image with the second option selected and don't get the warning about PSP changing the color profile, and if you manipulate the image and then save it as a different file name, it apparently saves with your working space profile, because if you go back to the first option and open that saved file you also don't get the warning about changing the color space.

What any or all of that means is way above my meagre knowledge, so I'll leave it to others to determine if it means anything useful at all!