Re: Inadequate ColorSync support.
Re: Inadequate ColorSync support.
- Subject: Re: Inadequate ColorSync support.
- From: John Fieber <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 17:29:30 -0500
On Nov 19, 2003, at 2:34 PM, Armand Rosenberg wrote:
Sounds like you are confused as to how to apply printer profiles in
PS. I don't recall at what version the printer profiles started
working right (it was long ago) but as of v.7 "convert to profile"
works fine for printing under both 9 and X.
Is this different in any way then specifying the printer profile in the
"print space" setting of the print-with-preview dialog?
There is always room for improvement, but to say or imply that
printing is currently broken in PS on the Mac is entirely inaccurate.
Look at Pete Carter's original posting. He pointed out that the PS
printing method you describe (convert to output profile, select "no
color management" in the driver) is the only reliably way to print. I
don't think I said anything to refute that. I certainly didn't intend
to. But just because there is a way to print accurately doesn't mean
there are not some problems. In trying to figure out some puzzing
behaviors, I've spent a bunch of time digging into the MacOS X printing
system and was just sharing some of what I'd found.
Also to be clear, the topic has to do specifically with Inkjet printers
using Tioga style drivers.
What I see as broken is:
(a) The design of the MacOS X printing system has a pretty clear vision
of color management in printing: the application passes off CORRECTLY
tagged PDF spool files. The print system and the driver then negotiate
rasterization and color management. The system does NOT have appear to
have a provision for applications that want complete control of their
own color management.
(b) Many Tioga drivers implement a hack they call "no color management"
to solve problem (a), but it isn't reliable.
(c) Photoshop relies exclusively on hack (b) for printing. Because it
refuses to correctly tag the raster data, a failure of (b) or the
absence of (b) in a particular printer driver guarantee incorrect
output in ALL cases.
(d) But hack (b) requires data being tagged as Generic RGB, which will
usually be an incorrect tagging.
(e) There is no officially sanctioned way for the user to *reliably*
control any aspects of the conversion, namely profile selection. You
can twiddle things with the ColorSync utility, but the driver has the
final say. From reading this list, there appear to be a number of
drivers that foil users attempts in this way.
(f) Assorted other "ColorSync" aware applications I've tried are
generating incorrectly tagged PDF files as well which leads me to
believe that Apple has really not made it clear to developers how color
management in MacOS X printing works. Specifically, a "What you have
to do in your (Carbon | Cocoa) application to get correct colors when
printing". I've seen both Carbon and Cocoa applications get it wrong.
(g) Printer manufacturers may just be stubborn about relinquishing
total control for fear that it will generate a support load. Witness
Canon's "ColorSync isn't supported" response to my queries.
The result of these problems is user interface confusion that creates
lots of opportunities for error. These are the second tier problems I
see:
(h) The driver option for "no color management" is misleading because
it simply doesn't have that effect except in very particular
circumstances that are far from obvious, even to a sophisticated user.
(i) For applications providing their own color management, there are
two interfaces for configuring color management and only particular
combinations of settings work. The two interfaces need to be mutually
exclusive in the user interface. If the application is doing the color
management, the option shouldn't even be available in the driver.
(j) It should be quite simple for an application like Photoshop to
either take over all printing color management, or do it Apple style.
All it would take is correct tagging of the PDF data. As it stands in
PS7, only Photoshop color management works, provided the driver
co-conspires to evade conversion in the PDF rasterizer.
So, in summary, I think the lack of a way for an application to bypass
print system color management and the resulting "no color adjustment"
hack is a substantial problems that generates a variety of other
problems. There is a need for some applications to do their own stuff.
So, in addition to adding an officially sanctioned ColorSync bypass
method for applications, which disables the interface elements in the
Print panel/panes, I think this would make plenty of people happy:
(k) A more standard print panel the user to select a per-job
parameters. It would have a drop down menu with something like:
Auto (driver decides)
None (disable color management, REALLY)
list of installed profiles
...
"Other..."
An option to select rendering intent would be the icing on the cake. I
got excited about the new "ColorSync" panel in the print dialog in
Panther, but I'm still puzzling through how it works...it doesn't seem
to work like I thought it might.
-john
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