Peachpit Press

Photoshop Printing Tips

Avoiding Common Pitfalls By Chris Murphy

Printing from Photoshop and getting the color you expect is not the most intuitive
thing. Not only can Photoshop do color conversions at print time, but so can the
printer driver itself. To make matters worse, they can both do color conversions
at the same time, and this usually results in disaster. This tip sheet, based-on
Real World Color Management, chapters 11 and 12, will explain how to avoid
“double color management“ and help you better achieve the results you expect.

2. In the Print Space section of the Color Management dialog,

Basics select Same As Source. This makes the Source Space and Print
Ensure that your display is calibrated and profiled, and that Space the same, and therefore Photoshop will not convert
you have a suitable profile for your printer. Many “canned” the document at print time. When setting your printer
printer profiles supplied by manufacturers are less than drivers’ color management features you can use whatever
ideal, but actually work reasonably well if they are for driver settings you want, knowing that Photoshop isn’t
newer products. If you are using manufacturer supplied affecting the output. (See Figure 2.)
profiles, you must use that manufacturer’s recommended
inks and media, or you won’t get expected results.

Photoshop: Print with Preview

By default, Photoshop 7 brings up the Print with Preview
dialog instead of the regular Print dialog. Ensure you are
Figure 2
requesting the Print with Preview dialog. At the bottom is a
Show More Options checkbox that when checked will reveal a I recommend using a good profile for your printer, and
pop-up menu. Select Color Management in the pop-up menu. letting Photoshop do the conversion (which means going
You should see something like Figure 1. with option 1). In conjunction with a calibrated and profiled
Adobe uses the term “Source Space” to refer to the profile display, this will provide the most accurate screen to printer
assigned to the document you have chosen to print. The profile “match.” Some people may prefer a more pleasing and less
listed here is the document's assigned profile. accurate result than using ICC profiles, so it’s possible you will
prefer option 2.
Adobe uses the term “Print Space” to refer to the destination
profile. To keep things simple, I’ll discuss the two most likely
options you could select here.

1. In the Print Space section of the Color Management dialog, Proofing

select the profile for your printer and media—if you are using If you want Photoshop to help you generate proofs of
ICC-based color management. (See Figure 1.) Photoshop will your RGB images, change the radio button in Source
do the color conversion at print time. When setting your Space to Proof Setup. This tells Photoshop to first convert
printer drivers’ color management features, ensure that they your document using the profile listed after Proof Setup,
don’t also use ICC-based color management. (See “Color and then convert it to the Print Space profile. Ensure the
Management in Printer Drivers: Turn it Off” on the other side following three things:
of this page.)
1. That Proof Setup (found in the View>Proof Setup>
Custom dialog) is set to the profile for the output
device you want to simulate, such as a printing press.
2. That Print Space is set to the profile for the local
printer you will be printing to.
3. That Color Management in the printer driver is
turned off.
Figure 1
 Photoshop Printing Tips
Avoiding Common Pitfalls

Rendering Intents and Black Point Compensation Color Management in Printer Drivers:
To obtain the most accurate color reproduction, select Relative Turn it OFF!
Colorimetric from the Intent drop-down menu in Photoshop’s We’ll use the Epson Stylus 2200 as our example printer.
Print with Preview dialog’s Color Management section. This tells
Photoshop to attempt to exactly reproduce colors that are in the 1. Ensure you select the correct Media Type for the kind
original. However, you may prefer sacrificing some accuracy for of paper you are using. On Mac OS X, this is found by
more pleasing effects such as improved saturation at the selecting Print Settings from the pop-up menu, and on
expense of hue, increased contrast, or increased rendering of Windows in the Main tab.
detail at the expense of saturation. Therefore you may prefer 2. Next, we need to get to the drivers’ color management
the Perceptual or Saturation rendering intents with some of features. On Mac OS X select Color Management from
your images. There are no rules that define how these intents the pop-up menu. And on Windows, in the Main tab’s
must behave, so it’s just a matter of experimenting with the Mode section, select Custom, then click the Advanced
profiles and seeing which one you like better. Ultimately, that’s button. You should now see something like Figure 4 for
all that matters. Mac OS X and Figure 5 for Windows.

3. If you are using manufacturer supplied profiles, you

must select No Color Adjustment. (See Figure 4.)

4. If you are using custom profiles, you must recreate the

Figure 3 settings used at the time the profile was built. Most
Absolute Colorimetric rendering is functionally similar to likely this is also No Color Adjustment.
Relative Colorimetric rendering except that the source white is
simulated on the destination. This is often called the “Proofing
Intent“ because it’s used when proofing something like a print-
ing press, which typically uses paper stocks that are more yellow
and gray than inkjet papers. This intent will cause your printer
to simulate that yellow-gray paper color using ink.

Black Point Compensation is really a scaling function. It scales

the entire dynamic range of the image based on the source and
destination black points. If the source black is darker than the
Figure 5
destination black, Black Point Compensation will allow shadow
detail to be rendered on the destination instead of clipping it. If Figure 4
the source black is lighter than the destination black, Black Point
Compensation will expand the dynamic range of the image so
that black prints as dark as possible. While there is sometimes a Summary
slight sacrifice in saturation when using Black Point
The main thing is to ensure that either Photoshop or the
Compensation, it is usually outweighed by the benefits.
printer driver are doing color management, not both of
them. For other printer drivers, you will need to do some
digging around to find the “off switch.“ Look for the
GATF/RHEM following possible options: color management, color
Light Indicator correction, or simulation.

Non-standard lighting conditions are one of the most

common reasons for color matching problems from screen
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Copyright 2003 Chris Murphy. All rights reserved. No part may be reproduced or distributed without prior written permission.