Colour calibration

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Omega892
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Colour calibration

Unread post by Omega892 »

Thank you David for your advice in the thread where I first brought up this topic:

http://www.photoclubalpha.com/forum/vie ... 803#p34803

I have discovered another device that could help here Pantone Huey.

Whatever, the monitor colour profile cannot be the issue here as I have printed the same image from two systems, the image loaded into one across a Wi-Fi network and thus essentially identical versions.

The correct Lyson profiles were installed on both computers and selected in the respective Elements versions and printer driver.

Identical prints were output by Elements 6 (laptop) and Element 3 (desktop). It was when Elements 8 was used from the desktop that the print changed in colour rendering.

Has such a situation been known to arise between different versions of Photoshop products?

EDIT: Oops! Not in the best subject area, move if you like.
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David Kilpatrick
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Re: Colour calibration

Unread post by David Kilpatrick »

The Huey is very inaccurate - too few calibration steps. I have the Huey Pro but make little use of it, as the profiles it produces are not good enough. It is only used with laptops here, where the screens are not that accurate anyway, and the light measuring function can be useful.

From experience, different versions of PS/Elements can indeed change the printing parameters enough to upset colour management and you usually need to do a lot of tweaking to discover where the change has come in.

David
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Omega892
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Re: Colour calibration

Unread post by Omega892 »

David Kilpatrick wrote:From experience, different versions of PS/Elements can indeed change the printing parameters enough to upset colour management and you usually need to do a lot of tweaking to discover where the change has come in.

David
I have been doing some more investigation with this and it seems that PE8 causes the Epson Printer driver to not remain in the selected state.

The Lyson instructions are to select Color Controls (in the Media Settings section of the Main PD dialogue) > Custom and then change the Color Adjustment Mode setting from Epson Standard [sRGB] with Gamma 2.2.

And I have set Perceptual for Rendering Intent on both set-ups now but that has no impact on the issue I have.

Now with either route from the PE8 Print dialogue, via Page Set Up > Printer > Properties and making the necessary adjustments or via More Options > Color Management > Printer Preferences and doing like-wise if one immediately goes back down either route we find instead that Color Controls Off [No Color Adjustment] is now the case - this implies that the driver has been reverted for some reason and the colours do indeed seem to be as with Epson Standard [sRGB] selected at print.

To rule out the printer driver I tried the same image with Paintshop Pro and the driver retained the correct settings selected.

Unfortunately I removed PE 3 from the system prior to installing PE 8 and the printer driver. I could put a copy of PE 6 on the desktop instead of PE 8 but Adobe don't like two copies being run at the same time. Well I feel if their later offering is broken they owe me that much!

Thanks for the info on the Huey (helicopters were never meant to fly either).
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David Kilpatrick
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Re: Colour calibration

Unread post by David Kilpatrick »

The Photoshop print driver on the Mac changed similarly about three versions ago. At one time, once you had set up with everything, the driver would remember it all - every stage - for the next print. Then we lost this, and all the main settings like Colour Management on/off and the Paper Type etc were lost every time and had to be re-entered. With the latest Snow Leopard/CS4 combination, it's back to remembering every step correctly.

The Huey is very useful for laptops, or for a computer sited where the light is uncontrollable (at least the pro version is). Just stand it next to the screen and allow it to make real-time adjustments. It's also very useful in a hurry, because it takes such a simple set of fast readings. Some of the higher-end calibrators take 20 minutes to build a screen profile, and also ask you to have the screen running for 15 minutes without any dimming/screensavers before you start the process. Our Huey lives in the travelling kit where it can be used, if necessary, to produce a quick line up of any system. But it can't have any effect on your printing, as the printing setup does not actively involve a monitor profile - only a working colour space, and a printer profile.

David
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