Printer profiles

bass_junkie83

bass_junkie83

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Apologies if this is a bit of a noob-esque question, but it's something i have never really got my head around.

Can anyone give me a brief explanation of printer/ICC profiles, what they are, how they are beneficial and how to use them?

Reason being is i am considering a change of what photo lab i use (See THIS thread), and one of their key selling points seems to be ICC profiles. And it's always nice to know exactly what someone is trying to sell you. :LOL:
 
I'm not the most techinical, however my understanding is that the profiles tweak your picture settings to the paper and printers the lab uses. Obviously this depends on how well your monitor is callibrated in the first place.
You then just use the labs profile for the type of paper you want them to print on as the basic setting in Photoshop or whatever you use for your processing.

If you've ever printed the same picture on different brands of paper you'll notice changes in the colouring so with the profiles you should get consistent results on different papers (glossy, fine art, satin etc) from the same lab.

Hope that makes sense and I'm sure someone will correct my non tech bits soon! :)
 
Printer profiles charecterise the Printer ink and paper. It defines what collies can be printed and those that cannot. A good printer driver will use the profile to map those out of range colours and modify the way it prints them depending on the rendering intent selected. For example "perceptual " will reduce all the colours to accommodate the out of range colours but keep them in the correct relationship as seen visually. Other rendering intents such as "colormetric" handle these out of range colours differently.

Profiles can also be used within Photoshop to soft proof the image. You can see on the screen how the image will look when printed using the profile.

This is a very rough and ready description of what profiles will do but I hope it helps
 
The version for Dummies (like me)

Paper and Ink are manufactured to a neutral standard. But of course this is impossible to acheive without a slight variation.

A printer profile is a set of instructions to the printer on how to lay down the different colours of ink to make the print look neutral with no colour cast.

This is a very basic explanation. If it help.
 
yep confuses the hell out of me as well...........

Now printed the same image on 4 different types of paper with 4 very different results - none of which look like what is displayed on my calibrated monitor!
 
I wondered if it was making a PDF.

For example you do a document in Word. You then have your PDF writer installed as a printer.

You then print to the PDF writer, rather than your normal printer e.g. inkjet etc and it makes a new file - the PDF.

So I thought you would print to the ICC profile and it would a .jpg for printing on that specific printer.
 
Lynton said:
yep confuses the hell out of me as well...........

Now printed the same image on 4 different types of paper with 4 very different results - none of which look like what is displayed on my calibrated monitor!
Click to expand...

Each paper has it's own characteristics. So if you print it without some sort on compensation then it will give results that differ from paper to paper. A paper/printer/ink profile describes ( for the software) these differences.

Now even though you are using a profiles printer system you can still get differences. :thinking:

What you see on your monitor is the representation of the image within the constraints of the monitors ability to display it. Now if you are using a paper that simply cannot render some or all of the colours to the same degree as the monitor it will look different. ( yeah it does get confusing). The reason is normally the PP software has no feed back from the printer so it has no idea of any printing limitations. It's a one way conversation. OK so how do you overcome this. Well with some apps such as Photoshop you have a function called "Soft Proofing". This enables you to apply the printer profile you are going to use to the image and see how it will print. You can then make adjustments to restore the image to it's original glory.

Rather than go into details, if you are interested just Google "Soft Proofing in Photoshop" for more details.
 
Thanks Chappers - will have a read.
 
The ICC (international colour consortiumn) many years back developed a system to predict how colour would print before the expense of printing (in 4 colour for magazines and the like)

There are two types of profile - output and working.

A working space relates what colour is seen for a given value of RGB - as the numbers don't mean anything without this... so 127R 127G 127B is a middle shade of gray and so on...

The purpose of the output profile is to map how the image transfers to paper (or screen) so that it compensates for the transfer, so that each defined colour prints as the correct colour. The differences can be caused by how the ink is absorbed into the paper - how the ink has been mixed, how the printhead put the ink through, even the relative humidy and temperature will have effects...

The same is true for your screen - you put a device on your screen to correct how bright and contrasty it is, and the colour temperature etc... This is one essental - as we will always think that the screen is right - and often people will take a perfectly exposed and balanced file from the camera and then mess it up. As a default your screen is too bright and too blue - so if your print come back too dark and yellow this is the cause.

Printer profiles can be downloaded from the paper manufactures website - and these will often be very good - but not perfect as they don't represent your printer but an average of your type of printer. If you make your own with a good bit of kit they will be more accurate.

If you send your work to a lab they will do all this hard work - so all you have to do is get your screen right.

Some labs, like One Vision, Colourworld, Loxley specify the working space your work should be sent in - normally sRGB as this space is closest to what photographic printers can print.

I run a small lab that uses the same production software and the way we have ours set up we can accept any working space - but if there is no profile we assume it to be sRGB

Other labs ask for you to embed their printer profiles as they don't use lab production software.

Now within Photoshop you can "soft proof" where you can see how your image will appear printed with a given output profile and printer - however with many larger labs who have a number of different kinds of printer you might not be able to do this as you won't know which printer will be used for your job.

Unless you have spent around £1000 for your monitor and calibrator - and as importantly have the correct working enviroment of brightness in the room, wall colour and correct tubes in your light fittings - you will not get an exact match every time.....

But it will be much closer!
 
snappingsam said:
Some labs, like One Vision, Colourworld, Loxley specify the working space your work should be sent in - normally sRGB as this space is closest to what photographic printers can print.

I run a small lab that uses the same production software and the way we have ours set up we can accept any working space - but if there is no profile we assume it to be sRGB
Click to expand...

I am really surprised that labs associate the sRGB colour space with printing.

With it having a fairly small gamut compared with AdobeRGB and ProPhoto

I thought sRGB was only used for displaying on a monitor or for web use.

My old printer only supported sRGB and the range of skin tones it printed was pants.
 
18%grey said:
I am really surprised that labs associate the sRGB colour space with printing.

With it having a fairly small gamut compared with AdobeRGB and ProPhoto
Click to expand...

The smaller the gamut, the less the printer has to do.
If the item to be printer was Prophoto, it might not be possible for the printer to output the image 'truthfully'
 
The space of silver hallide exposed by lazer falls between sRGB and ADOBE98 - there are a couple of tiny areas where sRGB is not covered by these printers as it not a perfect match. If you print onto Fuji Pearl you fully cover sRGB and get a bit closer to ADOBE98

You also have to remember that a screen can show a larger dynamic range than a print as it is back illuminated.... The top of the range 10-12 colour inkjets will fully cover ADOBE98 - but most monitors under £1500 can't show it..... if your monitor can't show it, and your printer cant print it, why use it? Again, if you do have an expensive monitor, and 12 colour inkjet, a good calibration system and work in 16 bit per channel and are copying flat artwork with a constrained dynamic range... you are probably not reading this anyway!

As for ProPhoto, it specifies colours you can't even see....
 
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