Canon colour spaces: sRGB/Adobe RGB

[DaveReading]

I'm having trouble shifting my mindset from my previous couple of low-end HP printers to my shiny new Canon Pixma iP8750.

Specifically, I'm confused by the interaction between Photoshop and the respective printer drivers re colour spaces.

Photoshop offers the option of having either PS or the printer driver doing colour management. If the driver does it, then for the HP printers there is a "Color Management" dropdown menu offering sRGB/Adobe RGB to correspond to the colour space of the source image.

The corresponding driver for the Canon (if PS is still set to have the printer doing the colour management) has a "Color/Intensity" radio on the "Main" tab. Selecting "Manual" (rather than "Auto") activates a "Set" button, which brings up a tab dialogue. That in turn has a "Matching" tab with a "Color Correction" menu. Selecting "ICM" activates an "Input Profile" menu with only one choice: "Standard", which (according to the Help) corresponds to sRGB.

The Help goes on to say that "Adobe RGB" may also appear as an alternative to "Standard", but "is not displayed when input profiles of Adobe RGB are not installed".

So I have two dumb questions:

1. How and what do I need to install to go about making Adobe RGB available as an alternative to "Standard" (sRGB) in the Canon driver ?

2. When (as I usually do) I get Photoshop to do the colour management, do I set Color/Intensity in the driver to "Auto" (the default), or do I set it to "Manual" and then "Matching" to "None" ?

MTIA
Dave

 

[DaveReading]

A bit of googling came up with a possible answer to my first question.

https://canoncanada.custhelp.com/ap...70/~/windows-adobe-rgb-1998-installer-program

Looks legit - although not a Canon website, the .exe has a Canon Inc SHA1 signature dated April 2010.

Just need to work out the driver settings that will answer my second question.

 

[Artur5]

Question 1 : I believe you're mixing the concepts of color spaces and printer profiles, The driver properties work with printer profiles. Color spaces are directly managed by Photoshop in the 'adjust color', 'asign profile' and 'convert profile' tabs of the Edit menu. 'Standard' in the Canon driver doesn't means necessarily sRGB but the default color space embedded in that file, be it AdobeRGB 1998, sRGB or Prophoto.

Question 2 : color/intensity= Manual. Then matching= None

 

[DaveReading]

Question 1 : I believe you're mixing the concepts of color spaces and printer profiles, The driver properties work with printer profiles. Color spaces are directly managed by Photoshop in the 'adjust color', 'asign profile' and 'convert profile' tabs of the Edit menu. 'Standard' in the Canon driver doesn't means necessarily sRGB but the default color space embedded in that file, be it AdobeRGB 1998, sRGB or Prophoto.

Question 2 : color/intensity= Manual. Then matching= None

Thanks.

I don't think I'm confusing profiles and colour spaces - I'm specifically talking about printing without a printer profile (either PS set to "Let Printer Determine Colors", or a non-profile-aware application).

Re the "Standard" setting in the driver, the Canon help does explicitly state that Standard = sRGB:

The default installation of the driver only offers "Standard" as an input profile, implying that an image using the Adobe RGB colour space won't be colour-matched correctly when printing:

After applying the patch referred to in my previous post, Adobe RGB (1998) is now offered as an alternative Input Profile by the driver:

(Apologies for the resolution mismatch - screenshots from two different PCs)

So I think that's my Q1 out of the way, though I'll do a few test prints to check that my understanding is correct.

Re Q2, many thanks for confirming my suspicions about the settings - I should know by now to be wary when a driver defaults to an "Auto" setting.

 

[The Hat]

Specifically, I'm confused by the interaction between Photoshop and the respective printer drivers re colour spaces.

The way I see it, and you can take my advice with a grain of salt, is you need to let the printer handle all the colour settings itself and you just pick the correct Media setting that you wish to use, if you do this your prints will turn out as perfect as they can..

When you become accustom to this situation and get use to producing almost perfect prints, then in time you could experiment with your own setting to get other results better or worse..

Thinking you know how to handle colour management and knowing are two different things, because it can get away from you very quickly and you end up in no mans land..