No Color Management is no more for making a print profile?

[W. Fisher]

Upgraded to a new Windows 11 laptop. Was using a calibrite Studio to make some print profiles, and the subsequent prints all were dark and contrasty and the shadows were all blocked up. If I printed using the Windows default for the printer the images looked fine.

So online at the calibrate site https://calibrite.com/us/calibrite-...checker-display-and-studio-technical-support/ I found "FAQ Scenario 6" and the info in it mentions #5 to not set the printer driver to "No Color Management" and leave it on sRGB or Epson sRGB in my case with the Epson printer.

I did turn of letting Windows 11 do some printer settings by itself too.

So something has changed in what I used to do by turning it OFF to make a profile as I used to do prior to Windows 11. Be careful!

 

[crenedecotret]

Upgraded to a new Windows 11 laptop. Was using a calibrite Studio to make some print profiles, and the subsequent prints all were dark and contrasty and the shadows were all blocked up. If I printed using the Windows default for the printer the images looked fine.

So online at the calibrate site https://calibrite.com/us/calibrite-...checker-display-and-studio-technical-support/ I found "FAQ Scenario 6" and the info in it mentions #5 to not set the printer driver to "No Color Management" and leave it on sRGB or Epson sRGB in my case with the Epson printer.

I did turn of letting Windows 11 do some printer settings by itself too.

So something has changed in what I used to do by turning it OFF to make a profile as I used to do prior to Windows 11. Be careful!

That does look strange but my understanding is that they only recommend it if the print looks bad using "no color management"

I might recall this incorrectly but I think the old scanner based profile prism gave similar recommendations in the earlier versions.

 

[W. Fisher]

That does look strange but my understanding is that they only recommend it if the print looks bad using "no color management"

I might recall this incorrectly but I think the old scanner based profile prism gave similar recommendations in the earlier versions.

More confusing is that in their ccStudio software, the Help section says to "Turn OFF Color Management," yet the FAQ Scenario says "Select Colour Controls and select printer standard or sRGB (instead of OFF No Colour adjustment that is normally recommended for printer profiling)."

So which is it?

Fwiw, I'm not showing any profile difference between it being on or off as both are bad profiles over the basic "Let the printer" decide as an option. Very crushed blacks and no shadow detail and colors are muted and dull from any profile made with it.

I do not know if Windows 11 double profiles someplace to the printer, or where to find out if it is doing something that affects profile making. Something is very messed up coming from my old Windows 10 laptop that produced excellent profiles to this high-end Windows 11 laptop using a Nvidia 5090 GPU. It has a lot of AI stuff in it too and I do not fully understand if that can influence it (CoPilot+, etc.) and why the default to "let the printer decide" and not use a home-brew profile is best.

One 50 sheet box down and all are bad. Big mystery to me.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I think it's pretty simple - you should print your images with a profile with the same printer/driver settings as you printed the patchsheets during the profiling process - so can actually both

- you print the patchsheet(s) with the driver setting color mgmt/adjustments on and print your images with this same setting or

- you print your patch sheet(s) with color mgmt off and do the same printing your images with that profile activated

I agree that the Calibrite FAQ is pretty irritating in this respect.

It is quite possible that such profiles differ one way or another - e.g. use a different black level or the overall gamut volume sizes are different. An icc-viewer like iccview let you overlap two profiles and you directly see the differences.

And there is another detail to observe - you need to use the same rendering intent when you want to compare prints from with different profiles.

And thre is another issue - profiles are frequently complained about that prints with them get too dark - this is a different issue than the problem above - it relates to the issue that the monitor brightness rather could be too high; it could be that a particular gamma setting is required to raise the image brightness ; such gamma adjustement could be done in the color mgmt settings in the driver or the software used for printing or in a photo editor prior to the print action.

 

[W. Fisher]

The profiles are so far off into the blacks that any rendering adjustment seems minimal.

I don't know if it is due to Windows 11 or the calibration hardware. What I may do is pull out the old Windows 10 laptop and plug the hardware into it and make a profile and see if it is any better - or like it was before Windows 11 showed up. Maybe copy that icc profile into the Windows 11 Windows>System32>spool>drivers>color folder and print one from it and see if it matches the Windows 10 computer or not. If it doesn't match, I think that would indicate that Windows 11 is at fault someplace and it's not the hardware or its software - unless either has issues with Windows 11 although they claim it is compataible for Windows 11. Don't know if the Nvidia 5090 card could be a part of the problem too?

Aside, I deleted the printer and driver and re-installed it. Oddly, Epson does not show a "Drivers only" for the 3880 printer for Windows 11, but there a minimal printer driver only for Windows 10. All the Epson software for the 3880 in Windows 11 is a lot of network and fluffware (e.g.. EpsonNet Config Utility, Printer Driver Security Support Tool, Firmware update version (???. Was warned not to try the fimrware update as it may kill off the ability to use 3rd party refill ink carts like I do.), Network firmware, legacy ICC profiles.) and not just the minimal driver only which may be buried in one of their fluffwares perhaps, so instead I loaded the Windows 10 driver into Windows 11, and got rid of some of the Epson Net-whatever fluffware and it got a little better. Seems it improves a bit more with each attempt to "Optimize the profile" with the calibrate software (Done it three times now and it gets a bit better each time, but the prints are still massively black with crushed shadows with an odd muted color in the highlights. That 3D colorspace it shows at the end of the profile making run looks very jagged with each run though it and not smooth at all. Any skin color looks a greenish/yellow tint and that really is telling that something is wrong someplace..

Two 50 sheet boxes od Epson Ultra Premium Luster paper down and no luck. Ugh!

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I'm not a W11 user (yet), I cannot confirm any profile generation problems/incompatibility at this time.
Please post one of your 'ugly' profiles

 

[pharmacist]

No problem at all here printing profiles with ccStudio and my i1Studio: I compared them with the once produced with the professional i1Pro2 and the profiles are practically identical. I am using Windows 11 too, so most likely PEBCAC.