What are printer profiles?

[tomg35]

As the question says - I was flipping through my printer settings and noticed that my model (canon ip8750) has several profiles.

I presume that this has something to do with photo printing but why are there several which are prefixed with my printer model and others that are not. What would be the circumstances for each profile and how would I know which one to use?



thanks

 

[jpegman]

See my previous comment https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4472911#forum-post-63721773 on learning color management (and printer profiles)

 

[NAwlins Contrarian]

What are printer profiles?

Printer profiles are like translation tables. The say what color a particular printer + ink + paper combination* will actually print, that is, what appears on the paper, when sent a specific set of given input values, and thereby allow software that uses them (like Lightroom or Qimage) to know what values to send to the printer to get the desired color.

It's more complicated than that. But they are one component of the system with which one can make prints that closely match what is seen on / expected by looking at the monitor.

*For inkjet printing.

 

[Simon Garrett]

As the question says - I was flipping through my printer settings and noticed that my model (canon ip8750) has several profiles.

I presume that this has something to do with photo printing but why are there several which are prefixed with my printer model and others that are not. What would be the circumstances for each profile and how would I know which one to use?

thanks

What the others say: a profile describes the colour characteristics of a device such as a monitor or printer, including the colour space, tonal response curve, white point (the colour of white).

Two things to remember:

1. Profiles are used by colour-managed programs. Lightroom, Photoshop, most photo editors, most browsers... are colour managed, but most Microsoft programs and browsers are not colour-managed (or at best partially colour-managed).
2. Most modern printers can be used with profiles, but not generally with default settings. By default, printers tend to apply their own idea of colour correction, which usually interferes with colour management. I don't know about Canon printers, but for Epson printers you need to find an option something like "Colour quality" or "Colour Management" and set it to something like "ICM" or "Colour management on" in order for the printer to use colour management. Or better: set the option to "Off" or "no correction" which allows the printing program to do the job (better, generally).

Unless both printing program and the printer driver are set for colour management, profiles are not used.

 

[Philip Eihuyar]

As the question says - I was flipping through my printer settings and noticed that my model (canon ip8750) has several profiles.

I presume that this has something to do with photo printing but why are there several which are prefixed with my printer model and others that are not. What would be the circumstances for each profile and how would I know which one to use?

thanks

You are correct that the profiles are meant in the printing process. There are many choices on the list Don't be confused by all on the list. just choose which paper you will print to, either stock paper from Canon , Epson, or a third party paper and then do the editing and printing to that choice. When you are editing a photo for printing in a editing program such as Photoshop/CS or in the example below, Affinity, you would choose the paper profile that your printer will print on. Here is how it looks in Affinity:



Note that this is the paper MOAB Slickrock Metalic and that I have clicked the 'Gamut Check' box. So, then what the image looks like at this point is:



Note the grayed out areas. These are not printable colors onto this paper with this printer although the monitor can display them. Further adjustment need to be made so that what the image on the monitor displays is what is printed out of printer onto this paper. Choosing a different paper will show less (or more) grayed out areas needing less adjustment. And different printers have greater (or less) ability to print a wider color range without adjustment. Here is good exlaination of this in a video:

Lastly, when you push 'PRINT' a dialog box will appear listing a list of papers in the media/quality section. You would choose the media that is a best match to your editing paper profile you edited to. If you are using a third party paper, you would go to the manufacturer website and it will give you which media is the best match to your printer (in fact which paper the icc profile was created on to match printer to paper)

 

[Michael Fryd]

As the question says - I was flipping through my printer settings and noticed that my model (canon ip8750) has several profiles.

I presume that this has something to do with photo printing but why are there several which are prefixed with my printer model and others that are not. What would be the circumstances for each profile and how would I know which one to use?

thanks

Short answer:

As a general rule you should use the printer profile that corresponds to your model printer, with the paper you have loaded. If you have different profiles for different resolutions, use the one that matches your selected resolution.

If you don't have a profile that matches your paper, then pick a profile for a similar paper. If the papers are very similar, you may get acceptable results. For instance if you are using Costco glossy photo paper on an Epson P800, and you don't have a profile for that combination, you may want to see if you get acceptable results using the profile for Epson's glossy photo paper on a P800.

Long answer:

On the surface it seems that it should be easy to print. If you want a particular color, you simply tell the printer how much of each of the various inks to use, and your desired color magically appears.

In the real world it isn't that simple. Consider a simply printer with four colors of ink, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and blacK. If we wanted to see an area of 50% grey on the paper, we might put down a pattern of black dots that covers 50% of the area. A simple pattern would be to simply make every other dot black, and leave the in-between dots white.

It turns out that this won't yield the desired result. When the ink hits the paper, it spreads a little bit as it is absorbed. Thus we need to cover less than half the dots, so they after the ink spreads we have 50% coverage. How much of a spread we see will depend on the paper being used, and selected printer resolution.

To make things even more complicated, many people would like to print in color. The exact shade of Cyan ink can vary between different brands and models of printer. Furthermore the spreading of the ink can vary by ink color.

A "printer profile" is essentially the "magic decoder" for a particular printer and paper combination. Look up a particular color in the profile, and it will tell you whether the printer can print that color, and if so, what numbers you need to send to the printer to get the color.

If you use the wrong profile, your colors may come out wrong. That doesn't mean your image will look bad. It simply means that the colors in the final print, may not be a close match to the colors specified in the file.

In a properly managed workflow, you should be able to print the same file on a variety of printers, and get the same colors in each print (assuming the printers are capable of printing all the colors in the file).

For those who absolutely need to maximize color accuracy, differences between individual printers, and different batches of paper can be significant. In that case you may want to create a custom profile for a specific printer with a specific batch of paper. For most situations, this level of attention is not needed.