Ariel:

the drivers disk should include a color profiles for your printer. In any case, you can download them from the manufacturer's webpage

I have checked out the websites of both, but couldn't find anything related to color profile.

Probably have to put a bet on my boss' memory on where he keeps all the disks.

Thanks a lot.

Matt Don:

 Here is a guide on how to do it.  Let me know if you have any questions.

Regards,
Matt

 

Match Adobe and Draw/Paint color on-screen with Printer Simulation on

The first step is to choose what profiles you want to use for you RGB and CMYK working color spaces, and the profiles for your peripherals (monitor, printer, etc). Make sure these are available in a known location on your hard-drive, or copy them to the OS's color folder.  Color profiles are usually stored in the locations listed below:

Windows XP / Vista  ->   Windows/System32/spool/drivers/Color
Mac OS (ColorSync 2.6 or later) - >   System Folder: ColorSync Profiles folder

**On the Mac, you may need to copy monitor profiles into a separate "Display" folder if there is one.

** Note ** If PhotoShop is on the same system, use the identical monitor profile in both Draw and Shop. If you are using the two apps on separate computers (or have different video cards, or monitors), you will need to create custom monitor profiles for each system in order to get the on-screen displays to match... even if the monitors are the same make and model the phosphors could be slightly different.
 
PhotoShop Color Setup (Illustrator is similar):
1. Set your monitor profile (PhotoShop uses the OS's device profiles).
PC version- Control Panel -> Display -> Settings tab -> click the Advanced button -> Color Management tab
-- Click the Add button so you can browse to where your desired Monitor profile is stored.
-- Click the Set as Default button
-- Click OK

Mac version - System Preferences -> Displays -> Color
-- If you have copied your profile to the correct folder you should be able to select it from this list

2. Set PhotoShop's color settings.
PhotoShop PC - Edit -> Color Settings
PhotoShop Mac - PhotoShop -> Color Settings

3. Enable the Advanced Mode checkbox.

4. Next you need to choose your RGB working space profile. Click on the RGB profile selection combo-box, scroll to the top of the list and select Load RGB. Now point to the location of your desired Internal RGB Profile (in this example I will use Adobe RGB since its installed into the OS color folder by default with Shop).

5. Next you need to choose your CMYK working space profile. Click on the CMYK profile selection combo-box, scroll to the top of the list and select Load CMYK. Now point to the location the CMYK printer Profile that you will be using for output (in this example I will use HP Indigo Ultrastream CMYK printer profile).

6. Turn off the Color management policies for RGB and CMYK. This way the color won't be converted from any embedded profiles when the file is opened and cause the colors to appear different.

7. Select the Adobe Color Engine.

8. Change the Rendering Intent to Perceptual.

9. Disable "Use Black Point Compensation" and "Use Dither" options, then click OK.
 
10. View -> Proof Setup, select Custom CMYK here.

11. View -> Enable Proof colors.

Draw/Paint Color Setup:
1. Start a new document.

2. Tools, Color Management.

3. Double click on the internal RGB icon (the RGB circles) and change the Rendering Intent to Perceptual.

4. Click on the profile selection combo-box for internal RGB (under the RGB circles) and select the same profile used in PhotoShop (Adobe RGB in my example). If it's not in the list already, use the Get Profile from disk feature to install it.

5. Click on the profile selection combo-box for Separations Printer profile (under the left printer icon) and select the same profile used for the CMYK working space in PhotoShop.  You may want to set your profile for the Composite Printer to be the same as the separations printer so there is no confusion as to which one is being used where.

6. Click on the profile selection combo-box for Monitor profile (under the monitor icon) and select the same profile used for the monitor driver's default profile.

7. Enable the arrows from the Internal RGB icon to the Separations Printer icon (or Composite printer if you like and if its using the same profile as Shop) to the Monitor icon.
**Note** when the arrow connection goes through the printer, it turns printer simulation on... essentially the same thing as Step 11 in the PhotoShop setup. If you want to turn printer simulation off, just have the arrow from Internal RGB to the Monitor icon enabled.

8. Click the + button at the bottom of the dialogue to save the style.

9. Click OK.

Note 1 -> It is recommended that you use the same color engine in both apps when possible.  The only CMM that is common between Shop and Corel is ICM (Microsoft's CMM), or the Adobe CMM if you installed it separately (www.adobe.com).  But if you use the Adobe CMM in Shop and Kodak in Draw, you will not see much of a difference and the printed output values are extremely close.

Note 2 -> As the title indicates, this setup is for printer simulations.. if you want to see the 2 apps matching without printer simulation, just turn off Proof colors in Shop, and in Draw or Paint enable the arrow from the Internal RGB icon to the Monitor icon. Important: For Draw keep in mind that it is using CMYK display by default.. so you will also need to change the blend mode for effects to RGB to see RGB colors on display.

Good tutorial, Matt. Most user need information like this (I believe that it must be included in the firsts pages of any CorelDRAW manual). But, anyway, I must add something: BEFORE to do this calibration, it's needed to calibrate the system. If the operating system is not calibrated, the results are unpredictable. It's like to close your eyes and play a lottery, sometimes you win, sometimes you loose.

You can use a special device for this (very expensive, of course) or try to do this visually. Of course, that's less exact. Ambient light, monitor temperature, and others factors change any calibration. However, it's no impossible. You can use a calibration software, such as Adobe Gamma (which come with Photoshop) or the calibration sofware included in the manufacturer's disk. Unfortunately, not all of this software is good, But at least, you can do a calibration.

A special value to see: Windows color settings use by default the 2,2 gamma, and you must change the gamma to 1,8 (Macintosh default), which is closest to the real colors value (1,79).The result will be more clear and bright colors, and greater accuracy when printing

Valdas Vilutis:

Matt Don:

<skip>

6. Turn off the Color management policies for RGB and CMYK. This way the color won't be converted from any embedded profiles when the file is opened and cause the colors to appear different.

<skip>

9. Disable "Use Black Point Compensation" and "Use Dither" options, then click OK.
 
<skip>

Hi Matt,

All is right except points above. For PhotoShop in point 6 Preserve Embedded profiles must be turned on always if user do not want to get troubles with colors. In Draw/Paint user must do additional special steps to overcome possible problems. Use Black Point Compensation is MUST in serious color work, especialy if rendering indent is set to Relative Colorimetric...

About custom CMYK profile - not sure that this is best (except if printing press is under hand with custom profile). In general now it is best to use one of the standard industry profile. In Europe this is standard ISO_Coated or ISO_Uncoated profile, in America probably one of the SWOP family profile. Any normal printhouse now keeps to industry standard and printing under these profiles.

BR,
Valdas

Hi Valdas,

I agree that with regular workflows you will need to preserve the embedded profiles.  For the sake of getting Michael's Draw output to match his Adobe PhotoShop output using the same image I suggested to turn it off to avoid confusion.  When Shop has this on, they can use the embedded profile was the working space profile without any color conversions.  Currently to do the same in Draw requires extracting the embedded profile and manually placing it as your working space profile, and then opening the image... this is the only way to avoid conversions.  Hopefully we can make this easier in a future version.

I also agree about the CMYK profile.  After seeing that Michaels printers are wide gamut large format (likely RGB output profile), it wouldn't make sense to use the profile for that printer as the CMYK working space.   Stick with one of the standard profiles that Valdas mentions above.  This should be set as the CMYK working space profile in Shop, and as the Separations Printer profile in Draw (this is our implied CMYK working space).

Regards,
Matt

Matt Don:

I agree that with regular workflows you will need to preserve the embedded profiles.  For the sake of getting Michael's Draw output to match his Adobe PhotoShop output using the same image I suggested to turn it off to avoid confusion.  When Shop has this on, they can use the embedded profile was the working space profile without any color conversions.  Currently to do the same in Draw requires extracting the embedded profile and manually placing it as your working space profile, and then opening the image... this is the only way to avoid conversions.  Hopefully we can make this easier in a future version.

After following the steps in your great tutorial, my initial issue is solved - display in both Photoshop and CorelDraw has no visual discrepency, although the printout is slightly different, I guess this has to do with the printer's profile.

As for the embedded profile, when opening in Photoshop, it will prompt you whether to use or discard the embedded profile. Perhaps CorelDraw should introduce a similar option (or I did not notice it?)

Matt Don:

Stick with one of the standard profiles that Valdas mentions above.  This should be set as the CMYK working space profile in Shop, and as the Separations Printer profile in Draw (this is our implied CMYK working space).

I choose Adobe RGB (1998) and U.S. - Web Coated (SWOP) v2, I guess these two shall work fine.

MichaelTadashi:

Matt Don:

 Custom CMYK printer profile would be the best way to go, but this would also be the more costly route.  You should be able to find a printer profile for your printer on the driver disks, or even online somewhere.  If not, you could just try out some of the printer profiles that are already installed on your system to see how they look... they probably won't be perfect, but you should be able to find one that gives acceptable results.

Costly means we have to buy it? I'm using Canon ImagePROGRAF W8400 and Konica Minolta Bizhub C252. I don't see any profile in the Windows folder that suggests anything related to them. The machines should come with certain software for the color management setting, shouldn't they?

Matt Don:

The Color management section of the Control Panel Display properties shows the monitor color profile's actual file name, in your case it sounds like the file name is SM540N.icm.  In Draw, we view the Model and Manufacturer tags from the color profile, so it may show up as Samsung SyncMaster 450 Monitor or something like this.  Depending on how the tags were written it may look quite different.  If you can e-mail me the actual color profile I can check the tags out and let you know what it will appear as in Draw... I could modify the tags for you as well so the name matches what you expect it to be.

In the drop down in Draw, there is an entry name "Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.", could this be the general profile it detects for the SM540N.icm?

 Hi Michael,

By costly, I mean you would either need to buy software and a spectrophotometer to create custom profiles yourself, or you could use a remote profiling service where you print a target file they send you, mail it to them and they create and send you a custom color profile.

I just downloaded the windows drivers for the Canon ImagePROGRAF W8400 and it installs color profiles for a variety of media types.  I found them in the c:\Windows\system32\spool\drivers\color folder.  All of the Canon color profiles start with the letters CNN.  E.g. CNN849GA.icc.  So you just need to select the color profile that matches your media (glossy, fine art, etc).

The Canon ImageProGRAF printer driver has color management options in the print settings.  So you need to decide if you want the printer driver to handle the color management, or the applications (Adobe and Draw), but do not do both or you will get unpredictable results.  If you want to do it in the applications, go to your print driver settings, choose Advanced settings -> Color Settings -> Matching and select OFF. 

If you want the driver to handle the color management,  change the mode to ICC Matching mode and choose the relevant color profiles in here.  Note that when you Print from PhotoShop you will need to go the the color management section in the Print Dialogue and choose "Printer Handles color".  In Draw, leave the color management settings as is, but in the Print dialogue, click on the Misc tab and de-select the "Apply ICC profile" checkbox.

 As for your monitor profile, "Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.", could be the SM540N.icm profile.  To find out for sure, select this profile in Draw as your monitor profile.  Once it is selected, hover your mouse cursor over the profile (just under the monitor icon) and a tooltip will appear that tells you the exact filename for the profile.  If it is the same profile you will see SM540N.icm appear.

Regards,
Matt

Ariel:

 

Good tutorial, Matt. Most user need information like this (I believe that it must be included in the firsts pages of any CorelDRAW manual). But, anyway, I must add something: BEFORE to do this calibration, it's needed to calibrate the system. If the operating system is not calibrated, the results are unpredictable. It's like to close your eyes and play a lottery, sometimes you win, sometimes you loose.

You can use a special device for this (very expensive, of course) or try to do this visually. Of course, that's less exact. Ambient light, monitor temperature, and others factors change any calibration. However, it's no impossible. You can use a calibration software, such as Adobe Gamma (which come with Photoshop) or the calibration sofware included in the manufacturer's disk. Unfortunately, not all of this software is good, But at least, you can do a calibration.

A special value to see: Windows color settings use by default the 2,2 gamma, and you must change the gamma to 1,8 (Macintosh default), which is closest to the real colors value (1,79).The result will be more clear and bright colors, and greater accuracy when printing

 

Good point Ariel!  Calibration is just as important as Characterization (profiling).  Everyones workflow is different so settings will not be exactly the same for everyone, but hopefully this guide can bring the output from Adobe and Draw much closer together.  It is definately possible, I've done it many times.

Matt

MichaelTadashi:

After following the steps in your great tutorial, my initial issue is solved - display in both Photoshop and CorelDraw has no visual discrepency, although the printout is slightly different, I guess this has to do with the printer's profile.

As for the embedded profile, when opening in Photoshop, it will prompt you whether to use or discard the embedded profile. Perhaps CorelDraw should introduce a similar option (or I did not notice it?)

Glad to hear you have them displaying the same!  Great news!

By default Draw will discard the embedded profile.  If you turn on the Arrows from the Doc icon to the RGB circles icon we will do a conversion from the embedded profile to whatever you have selected as your Internal RGB working space in Draw.  To match what Shop does with Use Embedded profile you have to go the manual route I mentioned above.  I agree it is not ideal and we should add a feature to make this easier on everyone.  It has been discussed many times... we'll see what happens.

MichaelTadashi:

I choose Adobe RGB (1998) and U.S. - Web Coated (SWOP) v2, I guess these two shall work fine.

Those should be great.

MichaelTadashi:

I choose Adobe RGB (1998) and U.S. - Web Coated (SWOP) v2, I guess these two shall work fine.

Matt Don:

By costly, I mean you would either need to buy software and a spectrophotometer to create custom profiles yourself, or you could use a remote profiling service where you print a target file they send you, mail it to them and they create and send you a custom color profile.

Creating a custom profile seems beyond my capability, so I guess better leave it with what's the best for now.

Matt Don:

I just downloaded the windows drivers for the Canon ImagePROGRAF W8400 and it installs color profiles for a variety of media types.  I found them in the c:\Windows\system32\spool\drivers\color folder.  All of the Canon color profiles start with the letters CNN.  E.g. CNN849GA.icc.  So you just need to select the color profile that matches your media (glossy, fine art, etc).

Ahh....actually those profiles are available, I didn't realize they are for the Canon printer...so I have to choose different profile everytime I start working on artwork for different media type?

Matt Don:

So you need to decide if you want the printer driver to handle the color management, or the applications (Adobe and Draw), but do not do both or you will get unpredictable results.

Which would be better? Here I have two applications and two printers (Canon and the Bizhub), sounds complicated.

Matt Don:

You can use a calibration software, such as Adobe Gamma (which come with Photoshop) or the calibration sofware included in the manufacturer's disk. Unfortunately, not all of this software is good, But at least, you can do a calibration.

I've tried to use Adobe Gamma to do the calibration. And the end of the calibration, a profile is created and to be saved, so I'll use that profile as the monitor profile and internal profile?

Matt Don:

By default Draw will discard the embedded profile.  If you turn on the Arrows from the Doc icon to the RGB circles icon we will do a conversion from the embedded profile to whatever you have selected as your Internal RGB working space in Draw.  To match what Shop does with Use Embedded profile you have to go the manual route I mentioned above.  I agree it is not ideal and we should add a feature to make this easier on everyone.  It has been discussed many times... we'll see what happens.

If both Photoshop and CorelDraw are using the same profiles, then would it be best to discard whatever embedded profile when working in either Shop or Draw? It sounds logical to me :-P

Matt Don:

Glad to hear you have them displaying the same!  Great news!

Thanks for helps from all of you!

Btw, I have a simple question - what are Composite Printer and Separation Printer?

Sorry for the late response!

MichaelTadashi:

Ahh....actually those profiles are available, I didn't realize they are for the Canon printer...so I have to choose different profile everytime I start working on artwork for different media type?

Correct.

MichaelTadashi:

Which would be better? Here I have two applications and two printers (Canon and the Bizhub), sounds complicated.

Personally, I prefer to turn off the color management in the printer drivers and handle it in the Applications.

MichaelTadashi:

I've tried to use Adobe Gamma to do the calibration. And the end of the calibration, a profile is created and to be saved, so I'll use that profile as the monitor profile and internal profile?

Use that as your Monitor profile in Draw, and set it in the color management section of the Windows Display settings (though Control Panel), since that is where Adobe will read it from.  Don't set it as your internal RGB profile.. thats a different beast.  I think you had decided earlier that you were going to use Adobe RGB for your internal RGB (working space) in both apps.

MichaelTadashi:

If both Photoshop and CorelDraw are using the same profiles, then would it be best to discard whatever embedded profile when working in either Shop or Draw? It sounds logical to me :-P.

If the embedded profile is the same as the profile that is set as your Working space, no conversion will happen anyway.  This is more for when you get files from other people who are using different working spaces than you are.  If you want to view the file as close as possible to what the owner of the file was viewing, you will need to use the same working space.  Shop will determine if the embedded profile is different than the currently set working space and let you switch it automatically.  Draw or Paint don't do this so you have to extract the profile and set it manually.

 Regards,
Matt

The unfortunate aspect of color between applications, be it for display or for print, is that if you want consistent color then there is no way around setting the individual applications and or hardware up to duplicate each others color management settings. At the risk of being self promoting there is no way to understand the intricate aspects of inter application color management without a guide, so here is a link to my book.  http://www.coreldrawpro.com/

CorelDRAW X3 and X4 differ from version 12 in that they now have a CMYK and an RGB mode of operation where older versions only operated in RGB mode for display.

An inexpensive resource for professional level color management is to join the Association of CorelDRAW Professionals, download all the previous issues of the magazine which have multiple articles written by me that cover the subject at hand and also if you're really serious about color buy the book.

90 pages of serious Corel color that really works, a tough read that will take some time but it is filled with processes that i use daily for professional and SOHO output.

Hi Matt, thanks for your reply.

Matt Don:

If you want to do it in the applications, go to your print driver settings, choose Advanced settings -> Color Settings -> Matching and select OFF. 

In the printer setting for the Konica Minolta BizHub C252, I couldn't find any option for color setting. Under the Advanced tab, there is an Document Options to enable/disable Advanced Printing Features. Is it the same? The setting you mentioned above is available for the Canon printer though.

Ariel:

I'm not sure about to use a web color profile for printing. I use the sRGB as internal and Euroscale Coated (if you live in the USA, you can use the Coated Fogra27 profile)

In the list under the Composite Printer, I can see all the profiles for the Canon W4000PG printer. But under the Separation Printer, these profiles do not present. In the previous posts, it was mentioned that the two must use the same profile. So does that means those Canon profiles are not meant for the Separation Printer?

Thanks.

MichaelTadashi:

Hi Matt, thanks for your reply.

In the printer setting for the Konica Minolta BizHub C252, I couldn't find any option for color setting. Under the Advanced tab, there is an Document Options to enable/disable Advanced Printing Features. Is it the same? The setting you mentioned above is available for the Canon printer though.

Printer drivers differ in this regard.  The settings may be in a completely different place or be named differently, or it is possible there is no color managment happening on the driver side.

MichaelTadashi:

In the list under the Composite Printer, I can see all the profiles for the Canon W4000PG printer. But under the Separation Printer, these profiles do not present. In the previous posts, it was mentioned that the two must use the same profile. So does that means those Canon profiles are not meant for the Separation Printer?

The Separation Printer profile selection combo-box will only display CMYK printer profiles.  The Canon profiles are seen as RGB output profiles so they will not display there.  The Separations printer profile has a dual purpose in Draw:

1 - It is the profile that will be used if Print Separations is enabled in the Print dialogue.

2 - It is used as the CMYK working space profile

So in your case you would set your Canon printer profile as the Composite printer profile, and set the Separations Printer profile to the same profile you use in Adobe as your CMYK working space profile (perhaps Euroscale coated as Ariel suggested).

Regards,
Matt

MichaelTadashi:

In the printer setting for the Konica Minolta BizHub C252

Most Biz Hubs printers are postscript is this the case with your printer?

Matt Don:

1 - It is the profile that will be used if Print Separations is enabled in the Print dialogue.

What does Print Separations means? I asked about the difference between Composite Printer and Separation Printer in an earlier post, maybe no one noticed that line :-/

David Milisock:

Most Biz Hubs printers are postscript is this the case with your printer?

In the main printing setting page under PostScript tab, there are options for Compatibility, Bitmaps, Fonts, PDF marks, etc.. In the Properties under Advanced tab, there are options for PosrScript Output Option, Send PostScript Error Handler, Mirrored Output, and PostScript Pass through.

I don't know anything about these PostScript thing.

Thanks.