Re: Printing with No Color Management (again)
Re: Printing with No Color Management (again)
- Subject: Re: Printing with No Color Management (again)
- From: Chris Murphy <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 11:45:51 -0600
The Mac OS X printing problem is something out of the twilight zone at this point. We do not have these problems on Windows (but there are other problems with Windows.) Epson, Canon, HP, Adobe have all had problems with Apple's printing architecture. And I also want to point out this is not a CUPS problem. While there is a technical solution possible, the actual problem as I see it is an ideological choice by Apple for color management to behave a certain way on Mac OS X, and then not adequately document how to reliably disable it. The system is fragile and prone to these printing problems - and I predict they will continue to happen, without warning, just as they have since this opt-out method of color management was implemented.
So the part of the issue that's Apple's "fault" if you want to call it that, is color management is opt-out on Mac OS X. It is opt-in on Windows, meaning a software developer has to explicitly ask for ICM/WCS to become involved for the OS to do conversions. Whereas on Mac OS, ColorSync will do conversions even if the end user does not choose a ColorSync option anywhere in the GUI, unless the software developer explicitly writes code to allow the possibility of disabling ColorSync (via a null transform). Doing this in the print path is non-trivial, an non-obvious because the SPI available for developers to do this is private. It's not documented. And therefore not well tested.
For things to work correctly on Mac OS, and get color management disabled as professionals require for either printing profile targets, or printing prematched images, requires every piece in the print pipeline to work exactly right. If it doesn't, the fallout is it triggers ColorSync to do conversions that no one would rationally want to have happen. It is not a fail-safe system. It is a fail-danger system, for professionals. For regular Joe user, sure it's more fail safe than Windows. But most regular Joe users do not prematch in applications, and do not choose ColorSync in the print driver - they use driver defaults.
If we play the blame game and point at Epson's drivers, which it is true that they intermittently have problems, we can still point back to the sand box that Apple created in the first place that makes this endeavor overly complicated for software developers who just can't follow instructions for one reason or another. (And those instructions may not be particularly lucid in the first place, or any other number of reasonable points of miscommunication). The sand box is Apple's play ground, they make the base rules and from that all other consequences follow. Again, Canon has had problems with this architecture and so has HP. HP has mostly if not entirely resolved those issues. Canon is maybe somewhere in the middle with a light at the end of the tunnel. And with Epson it's not quite as bad as flipping a coin. I have no way of predicting what the behavior will be upon a new driver being released - which actually is a lot better than it used to be.
But overall, I think eight years after the mechanism for Photoshop/Lightroom to automatically set a particular color mode in the print driver (the so called "off" mode or "no color management" mode or "application manages color" mode depending on your printer make/model) has made things a lot more inconsistent and unreliable. And it's really a WTF moment. I just don't get why anyone at Apple defends or is happy with the present scenario unless they're simply unaware of the immense amount of pain their professional customers are in, and think I am the only one bitching about the present insanity. *shrug*
I also don't think it's a viable workflow to stick with old operating systems and old applications for too long. We need a platform that works the way people who use it need it to work. Period. We can't hold back our access to bug fixes, security updates, and innovative features, just to avoid problems with printing. We need to insist that we get reliable printing, which for professionals means a reliable way of disabling ColorSync.
Chris Murphy
On Apr 13, 2011, at 9:19 PM, Scott Geffert wrote:
> Hi Ken,
>
> The problem you are experiencing is the tip of the iceberg. While the various workarounds will help somewhat, the very scary part is that you will have different behaviors with different OS versions, printer models, and versions of Photoshop. Generally the newer the OS and software the worse off you are. It's a sad situation because right as people are finally able to purchase new hardware after tough economic times they are greeted with the realization that Apple has all but abandoned color management.
> If you do some more tests with the various approaches (like measuring the differences in charts printed with "no color management") you will see that the results will be all over the map. Trying to match multiple devices is incredibly difficult given the mind-numbing variables.
> I blame Apple for it's "skunkworks" approach to software development, but I also blame Adobe for abandoning end user color management and shipping tools with inconsistent user interfaces for color and numeric readouts. Epson and others are simply trying to stay ahead of this ever-changing mess. LIke others have said, we were much better off eight years ago. I think it is clear that the days of Apple being the platform of choice for color are numbered. Between the color issues of the iPad and the mess created over ICC support under MacOS 10.6.x, It will take a lot of damage control to sort this out.
> You are an experienced power user, but imagine yourself as an individual freelance photographer that just purchased a brand new Mac printer, display and fancy new profiling software just to find that nothing works properly. One workaround is to go on eBay and purchase an older mac with 10.5.X and Adobe CS3. It costs less than a fancy color consultant and everything works just fine! Who needs updates that only waste time and energy?
>
> Scott
>
>
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