Print Colours not true in All Programs on My MacBook Pro

Kurt -- great - thanks

However based on reports on these forums and experience I believe that using Adobe RGB with iPhoto will produce darker than expected prints (unexpectably darker) - maybe that is because iPhoto is a color managed system and tries to compensate for sRGB and when it is doing Adobe RGB over compensates - I have no idea - just an observation

LN

I do understand to a degree what you are saying. I am very aware of the paper differentials.

Yup. I noticed you mentioned that you've worked in desktop publishing, but I figured it was better to be verbose than to try and assume what you already did, or didn't know.

If I can get my Book Pro in to a Tech, there is one in the city nearest me now. Can they do this calibration ?

No, they won't have that sort of thing. They'll just point you to the System Preferences. Profiling the monitor is something that should be done once a month anyway to keep it within the same initial profiling result.

I tried printing it with using the Adobe Manages the Colors option and I get a blank page {LOL}

That's weird. Can't test with Elements or iPhoto, though. Photoshop is the only image editor I use. For cataloguing, I use Media Pro. Partly because I've used it for years (through its multiple sales to other companies), and it's the only image catalogue software I've tried that can read CMYK images. Neither Lightroom, iPhoto or Aperture will import them.

That could very well be. It may, as you said, be intended to work correctly with only the one RGB color space. Anything else throws it off. That's especially easy to believe with iPhoto since Apple would try (as they always do) to simplify to the utmost. The OS defaults to sRGB, so iPhoto follows.

Calibrate? I clicked on open profile didn't change anything that file is beyond me.

Any profiles in that list are completed, not a starting point for a new one. The ones above the line are those in the /Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Displays/ folder. One of them is always the provided profile for your monitor, which is pulled from the panel itself. In your case, that should be Color LCD. I imagine you created the other two.

Open Profile should open the selected profile in the ColorSync Utility so you can examine it. Much of it is color space coordinates as they relate to L*A*B*.

Calibrate is completely independent of the profiles listed. You are starting a new profile creation when you click that button. You've likely noticed when you do that, the monitor snaps to a particular brightness level and color. All profiling works the same way. The goal is to capture the output of a device without any controls. You're measuring color the way it's produced from a raw state. That applies to any device to which profiles apply; monitors, printers, scanners, digital cameras, digital projectors, etc.

For a monitor, the raw state is a combination of the monitor's current settings, and an uncontrolled video card. As explained earlier, for Apple, that means a monitor that is (hopefully) producing a 6500K white point and a default illumination. Probably 120 lumens. Part of the profiling process is information stored in the video cards's LUT (Look Up Table). This is cleared when you enter calibration mode so the card is outputting raw color to the monitor. The software included with the i1 Display Pro (or any other monitor profiling software) does the same thing. The LUT is actually pretty complicated. Lot's on it here and here. Way over my head, too.

Which of these would represent the 5500K you spoke of?

None. You'd have to go into Advanced to set that white point. The "D" simply stands for Daylight. Which is a wide open term since the color temperature of daylight white is different depending on elevation, time of day, cloudy vs. sunny, and other factors. But for consistency, it's the measured white point at noon in full sunlight.

In the choices above, D50 is an abbreviation for 5000K, D65 is 6500K. 9300K is maximum white, which is extremely bright and blue. Who uses that one? The broadcast industry. Ever possible wavelength of visible color is sent to your TV. You use the controls on your set to tone it down to what you consider normal color. Native is whatever the current white point is for your monitor. Meaning, if the profile currently in use has a 5200K white point, the software will read that from the profile and assume that's what you want to continue to use. That's the normal meaning of "Native" when profiling monitors. Though for Apple, they could mean the default for the panel detected, which would normally also be 6500K. I haven't played with it to see which would happen.

So anyway, if you do want to use a 5500K white point, you have to use Advanced so you can move the slider to that value.

No harm in trying any of this. As you said, you can always go back into the System Preferences and choose the monitor profile you were using. The only thing lost is a bit of time.

I am going to lose my wide formatting in exchange they are sending me a better model printer which I am told has better colour management and better print quality. I'll live with out the wide format for better quality.

A lot of folks gripe about Epson, but I've always been very happy with their products. The 4900 isn't cheap, but has an incredible range of color, besides being able to handle up to 17"x22" cut sheet stock, and 17" roll paper. At $2000, it's likely far more than you'd care to spend.

For far less, at $650 with the current $150 rebate, the R3000 has the same print head and 11 ink system as the 4900, and can handle 13"x19" cut sheet stock. The R2880 can handle the same size paper and is currently $525 with rebate.

I see it as a highly skilled creative puzzle solving.

That is actually a very good description. 🙂

I'll let you all know what happens. Thanks to all of you for playing 20 questions with this old gal.

You are quite welcome.

My purples are purple my pinks pink etc. The red is even a reasonable facsimile of red.😝 Everything is still slightly dark but no longer muddy.

That's an excellent start. 🙂 If you had the hardware and software to create your own printer profiles, you could get it much better than using the supplied profiles. But that stuff is really expensive. Makes the price of the monitor device I mentioned practically free in comparison.

However, the supplied printer profiles might be very accurate, and it just comes back to the monitor not having a real profile created with a hardware/software solution. Until you've done it, it's almost hard to believe how big a difference that makes in the accuracy of your screen to print.

Claity CKMY: The CKMY test I did was in Pages.

Not really. 🙂 Even if you place CMYK images in Pages, it converts them internally to RGB. Everything Pages does, including printing, is RGB.

Sounds like you're getting much better results now, though. Yay!

Excellent dialogue, boys and girls!! What I'm taking away from this is Kurt Lang's statement to the effect that all other things being equal, a change in paper brand will likely show some differences in color on the print. I ran out of glossy printer paper a couple of days ago and ran to the office supply store and grabbed the closest thing I could find to what I had been using. The result of just that one change was prints that had a definite red cast to them. I spent an entire afternoon trying to get past that problem - wish I'd known that the change in brand could have been my problem. Much easier to correct that than to replace all the hair I pulled out :). Thanks again for all the wisdom.

What likely happened is that most default settings assume plain paper. Glossy paper doesn't use as much ink because it literally sits on top. The profile and settings passed to the printer tell it to use less ink.

Plain paper requires even less ink because the ink wicks into the paper and spreads. So by accidentally using the defaults, you, in essence, told the printer to use less ink than a glossy setting would. Hence, not as much ink = less weight, so the second print didn't come out as dark.

Does the print driver for the printer have a color management section that you can experiment with?

For iPhoto you must use RGB color profiles - not CYMK

Since it is a system wide issue not an iPhoto issue your probably will bet best results in the forum for your ahrdware

LN