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Ps CS4 Printer Dialog Changes

Ps CS4 Printer Dialog Changes

2008-11-15 by kingdex3434

I'm Mac, Intel, 10.5.5

Is anyone grappling with the fact that in CS4 it is not possible to select "No Color 
Management" when printing grayscale files? And, even though "No Color Management" is 
available when printing RGB files it is not possible to print "black & white" RGB files to ABW if 
"No Color Management" is selected. It seems that the only time "No Color Management" is 
available is printing an RGB file and selecting the "Color" print mode in the basic printer 
settings box and using any of the color mode drop down choices including "Off - No color 
management"

A practical problem I'm having as a result is making grayscale, ABW profiles for my Epson 
printers (9800/7800):

Typically I'd use an untagged, grayscale target image to make a black & white profile (for 
ABW, not QTR) and then select "No Color Management" and then print using ABW. Since 
Photoshop CS4 won't allow me to chose "No Color Management" with a grayscale file I'm left 
with only two choices: "Printer Manages Color" or "Photoshop Manages Color." Intuitively 
neither choice seems a good one but, since letting Photoshop manage color is the wrong 
choice, it seems letting the printer manage color wins by default.

Regards
kd

Re: [Digital BW] Ps CS4 Printer Dialog Changes

2008-11-15 by amadou diallo

In 10.5 Apple has pulled back support for "No CM" so your best bet for
profiling targets is to use Printer Manages color and then make sure
the print driver is set to CM off. When set to Printer manages color,
PS just passes along embedded profile and rendering intent info. PS
does no conversion on its own, it just makes profile and rendering
intent info available to the print driver. Whether the driver receives
that info correctly and/or knows what to do with it depends on the
particular print driver. But for most current drivers Printer Manages
color should provide identical results as No CM; with the appropriate
driver settings.

On Sat, Nov 15, 2008 at 12:21 PM, kingdex3434 <kingdex3434@...> wrote:
> I'm Mac, Intel, 10.5.5
>
> Is anyone grappling with the fact that in CS4 it is not possible to select
> "No Color
> Management" when printing grayscale files? And, even though "No Color
> Management" is
> available when printing RGB files it is not possible to print "black &
> white" RGB files to ABW if
> "No Color Management" is selected. It seems that the only time "No Color
> Management" is
> available is printing an RGB file and selecting the "Color" print mode in
> the basic printer
> settings box and using any of the color mode drop down choices including
> "Off - No color
> management"
>
> A practical problem I'm having as a result is making grayscale, ABW profiles
> for my Epson
> printers (9800/7800):
>
> Typically I'd use an untagged, grayscale target image to make a black &
> white profile (for
> ABW, not QTR) and then select "No Color Management" and then print using
> ABW. Since
> Photoshop CS4 won't allow me to chose "No Color Management" with a grayscale
> file I'm left
> with only two choices: "Printer Manages Color" or "Photoshop Manages Color."
> Intuitively
> neither choice seems a good one but, since letting Photoshop manage color is
> the wrong
> choice, it seems letting the printer manage color wins by default.
>
> Regards
> kd
>
> 



-- 
amadou diallo
Author, Mastering Digital Black and White
www.masteringdigitalbwbook.com

Re: [Digital BW] Ps CS4 Printer Dialog Changes

2008-11-16 by kingdex3434

Amadou Diallo

Thought I'd post this here so we can all learn:

One last clarification from your post if you have time. You wrote:

". . . so your best bet for profiling targets is to use Printer Manages color and then make sure 
the print driver is set to CM off. . ."

I assume then you do not print using ABW. Just keep print mode to "Color" and "Color Mode" 
to NCM. Is this correct?

Regards,
kingdex

Re: [Digital BW] Ps CS4 Printer Dialog Changes

2008-11-16 by amadou diallo

>
> I assume then you do not print using ABW. Just keep print mode to "Color"
> and "Color Mode"
> to NCM. Is this correct?
>







Correct. For BW I either use a RIP with my 9600 or use the HP Z3100. If you
wanted to print a target using ABW set PS to Printer Manages Color and set
your driver to whatever ABW settings you were trying to profile.
-- 
amadou diallo
Author, Mastering Digital Black and White
www.masteringdigitalbwbook.com


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Re: Ps CS4 Printer Dialog Changes

2008-11-17 by Roy Harrington

This appears to be a strange introduction in CS4 (not Apple as far as I can tell).
It seems that Grayscale files in CS4 do not allow printing with No CM selected on
the Preview page.   This happens with both the Epson driver and QTR driver but
curiously not with the PDF driver and my laser printer driver.

I can see a few ways to get around this:  
1) You can select Photoshop Manages Color and select a print profile identical
to the document.  Since its untagged use the Grayscale working space in the
Color Settings..  You'll be getting a CM conversion but since source and dest
are the same no data will actually be changed.

2) Convert the target to RGB and then use it.  The main caveat here though is that
Photoshop uses CM when it changes Mode to RGB.  Even though the original file
is untagged it will be treated as grayscale working space and get converted to
RGB working space.  If they do not have the same internal curve the numbers will
be changed.  The easiest pair to use is GG 2.2 and Adobe RGB.  Set these in 
Color Settings... before converting.  Look at the histogram while you convert
to see the before and after.  They should be identical.
-- another way to do this is:  duplicate gray channel getting 3 identical channels,
then Mode > Multichannel and finally Mode > RGB.  This avoids the CM --
Now you can select No CM when printing.

3) The suggestion Printer Manages Color may also work but I don't know for
sure that the OS Colorsync CM wouldn't get in the act too.

4) Finally, a completely different approach is to print the target using Preview
instead of PS/CS4.   This "ought" to do the same thing but testing it would be
necessary.

Roy


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "kingdex3434" 
<kingdex3434@...> wrote:
>
> I'm Mac, Intel, 10.5.5
> 
> Is anyone grappling with the fact that in CS4 it is not possible to select "No Color 
> Management" when printing grayscale files? And, even though "No Color Management" is 
> available when printing RGB files it is not possible to print "black & white" RGB files to 
ABW if 
> "No Color Management" is selected. It seems that the only time "No Color Management" 
is 
> available is printing an RGB file and selecting the "Color" print mode in the basic printer 
> settings box and using any of the color mode drop down choices including "Off - No 
color 
> management"
> 
> A practical problem I'm having as a result is making grayscale, ABW profiles for my 
Epson 
> printers (9800/7800):
> 
> Typically I'd use an untagged, grayscale target image to make a black & white profile (for 
> ABW, not QTR) and then select "No Color Management" and then print using ABW. Since 
> Photoshop CS4 won't allow me to chose "No Color Management" with a grayscale file I'm 
left 
> with only two choices: "Printer Manages Color" or "Photoshop Manages Color." Intuitively 
> neither choice seems a good one but, since letting Photoshop manage color is the 
wrong 
Show quoted textHide quoted text
> choice, it seems letting the printer manage color wins by default.
> 
> Regards
> kd
>

Re: Ps CS4 Printer Dialog Changes

2008-11-17 by kingdex3434

> 3) The suggestion Printer Manages Color may also work but I don't know for
> sure that the OS Colorsync CM wouldn't get in the act too.

Roy,

Here is a bit of additional information I've picked up from a very reliable colleague. 
Thought you might like to comment:

The deeper explanation going on here has to do with printing interfaces on OS X changing 
over time. In the past, some printer drivers (notably Canon, with its older iPF series 
printers) did not interpret the image data appropriately and thus had incorrect driver 
settings that could not be reset by the user. Photoshop CS3 worked around some of these 
issues for specific drivers, but did not conform to Apple's OS X specifications for how to 
pass image data to the print driver, leading to problems elsewhere. With CS4, Adobe has 
taken the approach of conforming to Apple's latest print driver interface specifications, so 
CS4 now has the same behavior as LR with regards to printing on OS X.

However, many print drivers have not been updated to conform to the OS X printing 
interface, and thus some folks are experiencing printing issues, such as double color-
management. This is unfortunate, but it really needs to be addressed by the printer 
drivers.

Now, back to the ABW situation: I don't know if Epson has a glitch with the ABW driver 
under the latest OS X release. I have occasionally seen what you've seen: i.e., I hit "Print" in 
PS CS4 and nothing comes out. But then I mess around a little with the Epson printer 
driver configuration and then it works.

In particular, I found that if I had an older "saved setting" or preset within the Epson driver 
that I used to recall a particular ABW driver setting, then it would fail. So I deleted all my 
Epson driver presets and started again from scratch (manually selecting media type, color 
mode, ABW settings, paper config, etc.) Then I haven't had any trouble printing ABW 
images since.

Regards,
kingdex

Re: Ps CS4 Printer Dialog Changes

2008-11-18 by Roy Harrington

I've done some testing of various color management approaches and it is indeed confusing.

Here's what I've deduced using CS3 and CS4 with QTR drivers printing stepwedges.
CS3 with No Color Mgmt I consider the "correct" result.  The driver gets 21 evenly stepped values.  

With CS4, only Photoshop Manages Color with Print Profile = Working Gray Space gives
the identical results.  (assuming grayscale, untagged file).

Printer Manages Color makes a default conversion to Generic Gray Profile which is a gamma 1.8
profile.  If you happen to use GG 1.8 as a working space this conversion may not hurt but if
you use GG 2.2 it'll darken the print.   I think this has been true in PS for several versions.

To make things more complicated OS X 10.5 has a new print dialog pane called Color Matching
which allows you to select Colorsync vs driver based mode and ICC profiles.  I don't know
how this will affect things -- I'd leave it alone.

No Color Management is selectable with an RGB file but I just got blank pages with this option.
-- QTR definitely received a blank page from the system.  This is probably related to your
ABW printing not working.

Note that the CS4 documentation specifically states to use No CM for making custom ICC profiles.

-----

I'd be curious if your colleague has any more detailed info about Apple and/or Adobe color
management.   (Does "CS4 now has the same behavior as LR" mean that CS4 broke NoCM so
that it matches LR which lacks the feature?  :) )

Roy


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "kingdex3434" <kingdex3434@...> wrote:
Show quoted textHide quoted text
>
> 
> > 3) The suggestion Printer Manages Color may also work but I don't know for
> > sure that the OS Colorsync CM wouldn't get in the act too.
> 
> Roy,
> 
> Here is a bit of additional information I've picked up from a very reliable colleague. 
> Thought you might like to comment:
> 
> The deeper explanation going on here has to do with printing interfaces on OS X changing 
> over time. In the past, some printer drivers (notably Canon, with its older iPF series 
> printers) did not interpret the image data appropriately and thus had incorrect driver 
> settings that could not be reset by the user. Photoshop CS3 worked around some of these 
> issues for specific drivers, but did not conform to Apple's OS X specifications for how to 
> pass image data to the print driver, leading to problems elsewhere. With CS4, Adobe has 
> taken the approach of conforming to Apple's latest print driver interface specifications, so 
> CS4 now has the same behavior as LR with regards to printing on OS X.
> 
> However, many print drivers have not been updated to conform to the OS X printing 
> interface, and thus some folks are experiencing printing issues, such as double color-
> management. This is unfortunate, but it really needs to be addressed by the printer 
> drivers.
> 
> Now, back to the ABW situation: I don't know if Epson has a glitch with the ABW driver 
> under the latest OS X release. I have occasionally seen what you've seen: i.e., I hit "Print" in 
> PS CS4 and nothing comes out. But then I mess around a little with the Epson printer 
> driver configuration and then it works.
> 
> In particular, I found that if I had an older "saved setting" or preset within the Epson driver 
> that I used to recall a particular ABW driver setting, then it would fail. So I deleted all my 
> Epson driver presets and started again from scratch (manually selecting media type, color 
> mode, ABW settings, paper config, etc.) Then I haven't had any trouble printing ABW 
> images since.
> 
> Regards,
> kingdex
>

Re: [Digital BW] Re: Ps CS4 Printer Dialog Changes

2008-11-18 by Steve Kale

Sounds like this should be raised in the PS forums where Chris Cox  
will pick it up.   (I raised the colour mgt issues of Bridge there and  
they picked that up.)



On 18 Nov 2008, at 07:03, Roy Harrington wrote:

> I've done some testing of various color management approaches and it  
> is indeed confusing.
>
> Here's what I've deduced using CS3 and CS4 with QTR drivers printing  
> stepwedges.
> CS3 with No Color Mgmt I consider the "correct" result. The driver  
> gets 21 evenly stepped values.
>
> With CS4, only Photoshop Manages Color with Print Profile = Working  
> Gray Space gives
> the identical results. (assuming grayscale, untagged file).
>
> Printer Manages Color makes a default conversion to Generic Gray  
> Profile which is a gamma 1.8
> profile. If you happen to use GG 1.8 as a working space this  
> conversion may not hurt but if
> you use GG 2.2 it'll darken the print. I think this has been true in  
> PS for several versions.
>
> To make things more complicated OS X 10.5 has a new print dialog  
> pane called Color Matching
> which allows you to select Colorsync vs driver based mode and ICC  
> profiles. I don't know
> how this will affect things -- I'd leave it alone.
>
> No Color Management is selectable with an RGB file but I just got  
> blank pages with this option.
> -- QTR definitely received a blank page from the system. This is  
> probably related to your
> ABW printing not working.
>
> Note that the CS4 documentation specifically states to use No CM for  
> making custom ICC profiles.
>
> -----
>
> I'd be curious if your colleague has any more detailed info about  
> Apple and/or Adobe color
> management. (Does "CS4 now has the same behavior as LR" mean that  
> CS4 broke NoCM so
> that it matches LR which lacks the feature? :) )
>
> Roy
>
> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "kingdex3434"  
> <kingdex3434@...> wrote:
> >
> >
> > > 3) The suggestion Printer Manages Color may also work but I  
> don't know for
> > > sure that the OS Colorsync CM wouldn't get in the act too.
> >
> > Roy,
> >
> > Here is a bit of additional information I've picked up from a very  
> reliable colleague.
> > Thought you might like to comment:
> >
> > The deeper explanation going on here has to do with printing  
> interfaces on OS X changing
> > over time. In the past, some printer drivers (notably Canon, with  
> its older iPF series
> > printers) did not interpret the image data appropriately and thus  
> had incorrect driver
> > settings that could not be reset by the user. Photoshop CS3 worked  
> around some of these
> > issues for specific drivers, but did not conform to Apple's OS X  
> specifications for how to
> > pass image data to the print driver, leading to problems  
> elsewhere. With CS4, Adobe has
> > taken the approach of conforming to Apple's latest print driver  
> interface specifications, so
> > CS4 now has the same behavior as LR with regards to printing on OS  
> X.
> >
> > However, many print drivers have not been updated to conform to  
> the OS X printing
> > interface, and thus some folks are experiencing printing issues,  
> such as double color-
> > management. This is unfortunate, but it really needs to be  
> addressed by the printer
> > drivers.
> >
> > Now, back to the ABW situation: I don't know if Epson has a glitch  
> with the ABW driver
> > under the latest OS X release. I have occasionally seen what  
> you've seen: i.e., I hit "Print" in
> > PS CS4 and nothing comes out. But then I mess around a little with  
> the Epson printer
> > driver configuration and then it works.
> >
> > In particular, I found that if I had an older "saved setting" or  
> preset within the Epson driver
> > that I used to recall a particular ABW driver setting, then it  
> would fail. So I deleted all my
> > Epson driver presets and started again from scratch (manually  
> selecting media type, color
> > mode, ABW settings, paper config, etc.) Then I haven't had any  
> trouble printing ABW
> > images since.
> >
> > Regards,
> > kingdex
> >
>
>
> 



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Digital BW] Re: Ps CS4 Printer Dialog Changes

2008-11-19 by kingdex3434

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Steve Kale <stevekale@...> wrote:
>
> Sounds like this should be raised in the PS forums where Chris Cox  
> will pick it up.   (I raised the colour mgt issues of Bridge there and  
> they picked that up.)

I have a thread going in the Adobe Photoshop Mac Forum as well:
http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?13@@.59b7055a

kingdex

[Digital BW] Re: Ps CS4 Printer Dialog Changes

2008-11-26 by kingdex3434

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "kingdex3434" 
<kingdex3434@...> wrote:
>
> I have a thread going in the Adobe Photoshop Mac Forum as well:
> http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?13@@.59b7055a

A brief update post may be in order here:

The problem of ABW profiling and ABW workflow in CS4 is still unresolved. Specifically, 
PSCS4, LR2 and Mac Leopard are all presently having trouble living together. This 
manifests in particular when it comes to using ABW profiles for b&w output in LR2 or 
PSCS4. In CS4,  profiled printing using "Photoshop Manages Color" and the ABW driver do 
not produce expected results. Until this situation is resolved it is recommended that 
PSCS3; CS3 ABW profiles and  "Photoshop Manages Color" be used for accurate printing to 
the ABW driver.

The situation is maddening since it restricts controlled ABW printing as well as profiling in 
LR2 and PSCS4. The situation is being aggressively pursued with "The Big Three" Adobe, 
Apple & Epson. 

Regards,
kingdex

Re: [Digital BW] Re: Ps CS4 Printer Dialog Changes

2008-11-26 by Carl Schofield

You can add Canon to your list because there are also CM problems  
using the Mac iPF Canon drivers with LR2.1 and CS4.  Just look at the  
Canon iPF wiki for the gory details.
Show quoted textHide quoted text
On Nov 26, 2008, at 4:25 PM, kingdex3434 wrote:

> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "kingdex3434"
> <kingdex3434@...> wrote:
>>
>> I have a thread going in the Adobe Photoshop Mac Forum as well:
>> http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?13@@.59b7055a
>
> A brief update post may be in order here:
>
> The problem of ABW profiling and ABW workflow in CS4 is still  
> unresolved. Specifically,
> PSCS4, LR2 and Mac Leopard are all presently having trouble living  
> together. This
> manifests in particular when it comes to using ABW profiles for b&w  
> output in LR2 or
> PSCS4. In CS4,  profiled printing using "Photoshop Manages Color"  
> and the ABW driver do
> not produce expected results. Until this situation is resolved it is  
> recommended that
> PSCS3; CS3 ABW profiles and  "Photoshop Manages Color" be used for  
> accurate printing to
> the ABW driver.
>
> The situation is maddening since it restricts controlled ABW  
> printing as well as profiling in
> LR2 and PSCS4. The situation is being aggressively pursued with "The  
> Big Three" Adobe,
> Apple & Epson.
>
> Regards,
> kingdex

Re: Ps CS4 Printer Dialog Changes

2008-12-20 by kingdex3434

> The problem of ABW profiling and ABW workflow in CS4 is still unresolved.. . . 

Thought I'd chime in here since I started this pesky little thread: Hopefully those here printing b&w 
have been following this same thread in the Adobe forums as well (Adobe Product Forums>Adobe 
Photoshop>Photoshop Macintosh).

Eric Chan and I have been hammering this topic to death over there. And, Eric has found what seems to 
be an air-tight workaround for using ABW profiles and printing accurately in PCSC4 using ABW. This is 
how it works:

in CS4: 

- Edit -> Convert to Profile. Choose your custom B&W profile. Preview image should look ok. 

- Edit -> Assign Profile. Choose Generic RGB. Preview will look bogus. Ignore it. 

- Do File -> Print. Choose Printer Manages Colors. Rendering Intent doesn't matter. 

- Set ABW driver settings as desired. 

I might add on a very important note that, on Eric's recommendation, I'm printing my ABW targets 
using PSCS3 and building ABW profiles from those CS3 targets. I use these profiles when printing from 
CS4. This is a very important point! And, needless to say, prints are consistent with the soft proofs from 
those profiles. Speaking of which, if you soft proof from PSCS4 using the above mentioned profiles, 
make all your output adjustments and do your soft proofing BEFORE you do the Convert/Assign 
workaround. If you try to adjust your screen image after doing Convert/Assign it will screw up 
everything on output!! 

Eric's more detailed explanation as to why this works and what we can look forward to insofar as a fix is 
concerned can be found on the Adobe. Don't know if this will take you there or not but try it: 
http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?13@@.59b7055a/34

Hope this helps. And again, Many thanks to Eric's diligent work.

kingdex

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