Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

New Mac, color profiles, printing problems

cool11

cool11

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Sep 3, 2006
1,840
227
I just upgraded to my new mbp.
I migrated my system setting from my older mac.
The problem is that something going wrong with the printing(inkjet).
I tried to print a photo from photoshop.
It was printed almost like it was a bad drawing, faded colors, washed out, etc.

I tried several things by myself, but if I keep printing and testing like that, after a while I will surely run out of colors very soon.

The printer is installed correctly. Photoshop told me about 'colorsync' at some time, but even though I tried altering it, choosing something else did not gave me better printing results.

Can you help me solve the problem, and be able again to print photos at high quality, like I did with my previous mac?
 
cool11 said:
I just upgraded to my new mbp.
I migrated my system setting from my older mac.
The problem is that something going wrong with the printing(inkjet).
I tried to print a photo from photoshop.
It was printed almost like it was a bad drawing, faded colors, washed out, etc.

I tried several things by myself, but if I keep printing and testing like that, after a while I will surely run out of colors very soon.

The printer is installed correctly. Photoshop told me about 'colorsync' at some time, but even though I tried altering it, choosing something else did not gave me better printing results.

Can you help me solve the problem, and be able again to print photos at high quality, like I did with my previous mac?
Click to expand...

What things did you try?
Have you checked you have the latest printer drivers installed.
Have you selected the correct paper type in your printer settings?
Does your paper manufacturer have paper profiles you can download?
Did you try printing from a different application?
Have you calibrated your monitor?
 
Apple fanboy said:
What things did you try?
Have you checked you have the latest printer drivers installed.
Have you selected the correct paper type in your printer settings?
Does your paper manufacturer have paper profiles you can download?
Did you try printing from a different application?
Have you calibrated your monitor?
Click to expand...


Why should I do all these, when in my previous mac I did nothing at all?
In my previous mac, I printed photos only from photoshop. I want to keep printing from photoshop.
In my previous mac I never bothered downloading any profiles. Why should I do it now?
I know about papers, I chose the right ones.
Osx downloaded the latest driver, should I manually uninstalled it an installed it once again?
In my previous mac I never made any calibration to my monitor. Should I do it now?


I am a just a plain user. I mean, if I should make a dozen of 'try and see' alterations in order to just print a photo, and all these....on a mac, then something is wrong.

Print a photo, should be a straightforward process.
I am not a typographer to set up every aspect of a printing process.

So, can we streamline all these, and focus on a 1-2 things that possibly give me this problem?

I saw mac downloading the 'driver' automatically, and as I can see here
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...&lc=en&os=4159&product=3919448&sw_lang=#N1120
this is the only way the printed could be installed.

I should say that the inkjet printer was also connected to my previous mac.
 
Last edited:
cool11 said:
Why should I do all these, when in my previous mac I did nothing at all?
In my previous mac, I printed photos only from photoshop. I want to keep printing from photoshop.
In my previous mac I never bothered downloading any profiles. Why should I do it now?
I know about papers, I chose the right ones.
Osx downloaded the latest driver, should I manually uninstalled it an installed it once again?
In my previous mac I never made any calibration to my monitor. Should I do it now?


I am a just a plain user. I mean, if I should make a dozen of 'try and see' alterations in order to just print a photo, and all these....on a mac, then something is wrong.

Print a photo, should be a straightforward process.
I am not a typographer to set up every aspect of a printing process.

So, can we streamline all these, and focus on a 1-2 things that possibly give me this problem?

I saw mac downloading the 'driver' automatically, and as I can see here
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...&lc=en&os=4159&product=3919448&sw_lang=#N1120
this is the only way the printed could be installed.

I should say that the inkjet printer was also connected to my previous mac.
Click to expand...

The things I suggested are to try and isolate the issue and troubleshoot it. I'm not suggesting you shouldn't print from Photoshop. Just try something else to see if you have similar results.
Downloading paper profiles is just something I would ways recommend if they are available for your printer.
Try going to your printer manufactures web page and download their printer driver for Mac and delete the previous installed one. Does that make a difference?
Calibrating your monitor fixes a lot of printing problems, but your issues seem a bit more extreme than just dark or saturated prints.
Last thing to try is do you still have your old Mac? Connect it back up and see if you can print okay with it. If not it could be the printer.
I assume you have cleaned your heads and realigned them? Also when were you last able to make a good print? Recently?
 
cool11 said:
Why should I do all these, when in my previous mac I did nothing at all?
In my previous mac, I printed photos only from photoshop. I want to keep printing from photoshop.
In my previous mac I never bothered downloading any profiles. Why should I do it now?
I know about papers, I chose the right ones.
Osx downloaded the latest driver, should I manually uninstalled it an installed it once again?
In my previous mac I never made any calibration to my monitor. Should I do it now?


I am a just a plain user. I mean, if I should make a dozen of 'try and see' alterations in order to just print a photo, and all these....on a mac, then something is wrong.

Print a photo, should be a straightforward process.
I am not a typographer to set up every aspect of a printing process.

So, can we streamline all these, and focus on a 1-2 things that possibly give me this problem?

I saw mac downloading the 'driver' automatically, and as I can see here
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...&lc=en&os=4159&product=3919448&sw_lang=#N1120
this is the only way the printed could be installed.

I should say that the inkjet printer was also connected to my previous mac.
Click to expand...

Why you should do any of those things?? Because you came here with a problem and he gave you possible solutions to fixing said problem.

Since not doing anything seems to work for you. Have fun with the crappy print jobs.
 
NukeIT said:
Why you should do any of those things?? Because you came here with a problem and he gave you possible solutions to fixing said problem.

Since not doing anything seems to work for you. Have fun with the crappy print jobs.
Click to expand...

I appreciate the 'Apple fanboy' posts.
Of course I tries some of these things.
I just hope it was a more straight solution, we are on mac, not million problem pc's....
 
Your problem sounds like you did not properly setup your printer on your new computer with a driver that is specific to your printer. A non-PostScript HP printer may print text OK with the wrong driver. However, graphics may look like crap until you properly setup your printer.
 
cool11 said:
I appreciate the 'Apple fanboy' posts.
Of course I tries some of these things.
I just hope it was a more straight solution, we are on mac, not million problem pc's....
Click to expand...

Before you do anything drastic...

1) Look at a photo on your new Mac that you know looked good and printed well on the old Mac. Does the photo still look OK? (More or less). If the photo looks the same as what you'd expect, then your monitor is not badly calibrated. This doesn't mean that it won't get better with calibration - just that it probably isn't the cause of badly printed photos. If the monitor was really badly calibrated, you would think you were 'fixing' the photo in Photoshop when in fact you were making a good image file match a broken profile.

2) Print the same same photo from Preview as from Photoshop. They won't match exactly, but are they close or really far off? If they are both really far off then I would suspect a problem with the driver or the printer itself. I'm going to guess that the Photoshop version is badly printed and the Preview version is OK. If I'm correct, then that points at Photoshop being the culprit - which should be easy to fix.

-- It is a very common mistake to have let both Photoshop and the printer do colour management. In the case of Photoshop the preferred method is let Photoshop 'Manage the Colours and turn off Colour Management in the printer. I generally print from Lightroom (another Adobe product) - and I probably have a different printer so my dialogues will be different... but it should be close enough that if you take your time you can figure it out. In my case I have to tell Lightroom to do the Colour Management in it's print dialogue, and then I have to tell the Printer to not Manage the Colours in its dialogue. You do this once, and then it should stick. This is a really easy thing to miss for a lot of people - and I think it's likely the case for you.

By "Colour Management" what is happening is that you have a bunch of colours being displayed on the screen by pixels that display RGB using transmitted light. When it's time to print that image Photoshop translates the data used to display the colours into data used put CYMK ink onto paper - which you see via reflective light. If the printer is also set to Colour Manage then it is making a similar translation of the data it receives before printing. Except in its case it is not working with the data used to display the image on the screen, but the data that was good enough for printing. Essentially it's a double translation. Think of a translation from French to English, and then translating that to Japanese. A lot of content is lost and mangled.

Hopefully this will solve your problem.

For the record it is not that hard to download and install paper profiles and they will likely give you better results. But perhaps you should leave those for later when you are back up and printing.
 
Last edited:
cool11 said:
I appreciate the 'Apple fanboy' posts.
Of course I tries some of these things.
I just hope it was a more straight solution, we are on mac, not million problem pc's....
Click to expand...

Printing can be the most problematic area of a photographers workflow. Did you try mine and the other suggestions? Did this get things working for you?
 
I want to find the time to try these things, I hope to do it as soon as possible.
 
Apple fanboy said:
Printing can be the most problematic area of a photographers workflow. Did you try mine and the other suggestions? Did this get things working for you?
Click to expand...
Yes - absolutely. That and creating a workflow that allows you to find things again ... ;)

cool11 said:
I want to find the time to try these things, I hope to do it as soon as possible.
Click to expand...

Good idea. You don't want to rush into making a mistake. With some bias, I suggest you start with my suggestions since it involves no serious changes to your setup. But I am biased... :)
 
compuwar said:
Starting with a clean baseline before making the other changes is more logical ;-P

Paul
Click to expand...

Normally I'd agree - if something was 'broken'. (And normally I agree with just about everything you suggest in this forum.) In this case, it may just be a 'user' error. It is very common, imo, for someone to forget to turn off Colour Management in either Photoshop or the printer. If it turns out not to be the Colour Management issue then I would also suggest a Printing Subsystem reset. Though I would want to confirm which version of OS X is involved. The OP's "… new mbp…" might still be an older OS X if they meant " new-to-me". If it's an older OS X I'd recommend upgrading it first.

I just had to do a reset myself to get my Epson 3800 printing again. I have no idea what happened to cause the problem … but the reset fixed it. Problem is I also lost my presets for my 2nd printer (my office document printer). Not a biggie, but as I like to print to some non-standard sized papers I will now need to spend some time rebuilding those presets. Which is why I wouldn't immediately recommend a Printer Subsystem reset…it can cause unnecessary work.
 
An attempt to find out things...

x6ae7a.jpg


Almost all the photos I print, anytime, is through photoshop.
The checkpoint is next to (randomly selected?-not by me) the current one.

Do you see any cause of the problem?
Can you suggest the right profile for me?
(it is impossible to test 'n' print with all of them!)
 
cool11 said:
An attempt to find out things...

Image

Almost all the photos I print, anytime, is through photoshop.
The checkpoint is next to (randomly selected?-not by me) the current one.

Do you see any cause of the problem?
Can you suggest the right profile for me?
(it is impossible to test 'n' print with all of them!)
Click to expand...

Where are you finding this dialogue in Photoshop?
 
This shot is taken when you start to create a new image (command-n).
You select dimensions, etc
 
cool11 said:
This shot is taken when you start to create a new image (command-n).
You select dimensions, etc
Click to expand...

Ah, OK... I didn't immediately recognize it and couldn't find something similar in the printing dialogues. Most of my work in Photoshop involves photographs already taken, so I don't actually create any 'new' images there.

I'd just leave it as you found it... or even bump it up to Adobe RGB 1998. Unless you know what you are doing, I wouldn't set it to the other choices.

As I said before, the Colour Management is found in print dialogues. Depending on what printer you have and what version of Photoshop the dialogues can look different... but it's there. What are the results to the suggestions I made earlier?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back