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kennedy · Sep 6, 2003, 05:05 AM

One of my users (that I converted from PC to a Mac nut) has asked me:

"Why do the colors I see in Photoshop not at all match the colors I get when I print?? I thought Macs were supposed to be better at getting the colors right than the PC, not worse?"

He has a few different Photoshop docs intended for printing up signs. On-screen, they look just the way he wants them, and they look the same on his Mac's screen as his PC's screen. When he prints it at home from his PC, the colors come out reasonably close to on-screen. When he prints it from his PowerBook, to his home printer or our HP printers or our Lexmark printers, the colors come out way different. For example, a distinctly navy color comes out royal blue; a yellow and beige pattern comes out flat yellow.

Any ideas what's going on? I am not a Photoshop user and have no idea what to suggest. Thanks.

proton · Sep 6, 2003, 07:04 AM

He'll need to check his colour correction settings. You need to set a profile for your screen and your printer to allow Photoshop and ColorSync to accurately match colours with your output. It's really something you have to read up on in the Photoshop help as there are so many options, but if they're incorrectly set they'll just cause the wrong corrections to be made.

- proton

sushiism · Sep 6, 2003, 07:05 AM

prolly got his colour profiles messed up, entirely his fault not macos' because it is indeed much better than windows with colours seen as that doesnt even have something like colorsync yet

KidRed · Sep 6, 2003, 09:34 AM

Yep calibrations are off. Also, what's the printer messing up compared to the printer doing it right? Some printers just plain suck. He needs to calibrate the screen to photoshop to the printer. My old HP used to add some greens to tans, took me forever to calibrate.

Zimphire · Sep 6, 2003, 02:07 PM

It's 10x easier to get colors to match in a Mac vs a PC.

XPs built in color management system sux0rs.

You have to buy a pricey 3rd party application to get the ease of use and accuracy of Colorsync.

kennedy · Sep 6, 2003, 02:56 PM

Okay, so please bear with this Photoshop neophyte...

I need to tell him to run ColorSync in Photoshop to set his color calibrations properly?

Does he need to set two sets of calibrations... one for the screen and one for the printer? Or I guess, one set for each printer he uses?

Is Photoshop Help all he needs to walk him through this... or do you guys have pointers to something better that I could refer him to?

(He's plenty sharp and Mac literate... but doesn't have a lot of time... so a clear how-to would be great.)

Thanks!

alien · Sep 6, 2003, 04:42 PM

Color Management on the Mac is very powerful, but it doesn't work by itself.

I think that if this guy is really serious about getting the colors right, he should buy "Real World Color Management" by Fraser et al.

The first thing he could do is profile his screen, I'd recommend the SuperCal software for this, but of course there are hardware based tools as well.

If the screen hasn't got a proper profile, you can't really trust what you're seeing. So he might well think the colors look "right" on the Mac, but they're really way off - which is then reflected in the print.

Synotic · Sep 6, 2003, 05:02 PM

Originally posted by alien:
I think that if this guy is really serious about getting the colors right, he should buy "Real World Color Management" by Fraser et al.

I am guessing this will explain to me the difference between RGB, LAB, CMYK... Why my save to web PNGs are always lighter... That sort of thing?

step · Sep 6, 2003, 07:18 PM

this will fix you right up:

http://www.computer-darkroom.com/photoshop_6/ps6_1.htm

just follow his tutorial

train_900 · Sep 7, 2003, 05:43 PM

In Color issues I just trust all my Pantone books. I get several books along the time. I just Check the color all the time, with the color picker of photoshop. Be carefully with the K color. In some case use the cyan to darker an area, and other times is better the K.
all depend. Take Any printed work and try to find their pantone reference. You will learn a lot.

If you get familiar with the Pantone color guide, you are in better position to calibrate your monitor and your printer.

Don Pickett · Sep 7, 2003, 10:50 PM

Even with a perfectly calibrated monitor, you are not going to be able to see light shades of cyan and yellow. What a well-calibrated monitor will gave you, which is critical, is correct gray balance.

Watch your info palette and invest in a good proofing system.