Basic Understanding needed

General Color & Graphics Printer Calibration & Profiling
1

I am using Photoshop CS4/5 as my print engine with a Canon PixmaPro 9500 MkII printer and Red River Papers.

My monitor is calibrated with a Spyder 3 Pro.

My working space color profile is Adobe RGB (1998).

When I print using the Adobe RGB (1998) printer profile, everything seems fine. Soft proofing with the Canon print driver displays what is or will be printed.

However, when I use a printer/paper profile that matches the printer/paper being used, the color isn’t even close. Colors are extreme.

I’ve resigned to stick with Adobe RGB. The results are fine, just wondering why the printer/paper profiles behave as they do.

OK, let me start over. Things have changed, I’ve learned a bit more and the results are still the same.

The printer is a Canon PixmaPro 9500 MKII.
I use Photoshop CS4/5 as my print engine, and the Canon print driver on Windows XP SP3.
I select Photoshop to manage the colors and the printer profile is Canon IJ Color Printer Profile 2005. This is the default in the printer definition, but it is also selected as the printer profile.
All printer driver color manipulation/correction is off.
The monitor is calibrated with an XRite ColorMunki.
I have “preview before printing” checked and use this to softproof the print since it appears to be spot-on accurate.

Using the above mentioned printer profile and everything is fine. With a little tweaking of luminence in the driver setup manual adjustment I get exactly what I see on my monitor.
Other printer profiles change the color dramatically. For example, soft turquoise green becomes vivid lime green, soft brick red becomes vivid fire engine red. All this is according to the preview from the Canon print driver. Again, what I see on the preview is what I get as a final print.
If I softproof in Photoshop I see very subtle difference between profiles, as I would expect, but the Canon driver preview shows “color on steroids”. Even the other Canon supplied printer profiles whack-out the color. All the printer profiles I’ve created via ColorMunki do the same thing.

At this point I see no reason to go with anything other than the Canon generic printer profile, since it’s the only one that give me what I see on the monitor.

Is this a Canon characteristic? Is the Canon printer driver “printer profile adverse” or do I have a printer that isn’t responding correctly?

Something is wrong here and it’s frustrating not to have an understanding of what is really going on.

Does anyone have the same environment and do you have this happen to you?

Thanks for your time.

2

Is there a setting in the Canon driver to choose 'AdobeRGB (1998)? That’s not a printer profile. Where are you choosing that and where are you choosing your printer/paper profile you mentioned? You should be able to successfully (i.e. correct color as displayed on your profiled monitor) print a file with Adobe RGB working space from Photoshop by selecting ‘Let PS determine colors’ and choosing your printer/paper profile there along with a rendering intent (perceptual or rel color) - then making sure to disable ANY color management in the Canon driver.

3

Thanks for the info. With the Canon driver color management disabled I am able to get a closer representation of colors, but with Adobe RGB selected as my printer profile (I know it’s not a printer profile) I am able to get nearly exact color.
What I am doing appears to work, why it works and why the “printer profiles” don’t is a mystery.

4

But the printer profiles should work, so yes that is a mystery. I use Epson though (printing with PS managing colors) and it’s straightforward - PS does the transform to my custom printer/media profile and the output on my 9800 is dead-on to my monitor - so I’m not going to be much help with the Canon driver, sorry.

You didn’t mention - have you tried soft-proofing with your printer profile in PS? How does that look? Look at your printer profile in ColorThink or ColorSync if you can and see if there’s anything wonky with it (spikes, weird shape) - might be something going on with it.