How to use ICC Printer Profiles

This pages gives instructions for the correct use of printer profiles. Use these notes when installing and using your new custom profile from Image Science, or when using the Image Science Printing Service profiles.

If you're trying your new custom printer profile for the first time, we suggest you try the PDI printer test file first, this should reveal any obvious faults in the profile if there are any. If you get any pschadelic results, it means something has gone wrong (99.9% of the time it means there was a mistake made in the printing of the targets) - so give us a ring and we'll sort this out (there may be a small fee to cover re-reading a new set of targets if this is required). If you're not 100% sure about the output of your printer when using the profile, send us a print of the PDI file and we'll compare it to the hundreds of others we have and let you know how your results compare with what you should be getting.

Please note we provide these notes for convenience but we are always happy to speak to you if there's anything you don't understand or you just prefer speaking to someone over reading! Contact details here.

Instructions Available:

Saving your profile

Please note you do not 'open' your profile! You must save the .icc file from you email client and follow the instructions below to install the profile - do not double click the profile, or open it. Simply save the attachement from your email client and follow the installation instructions below.

Backup your profile!

The first thing you should do with your profle, especially if you received the profile via email, is backup your profile to reliable media. While we keep your profile here for around two weeks to give you time to test it, we generate so many gigabytes (actually terabytes!) each week we can't keep everything forever. So please don't rely on us to restore your profiles if your computer dies some sort of horrible death!

Renaming your new profile

(You can skip this step if you're happy with your profile's name).

We try and give your profiles a sensible name, but sometimes we don't have enough information, or the name we choose may not work for you for whatever reason. Unfortunately, profiles have both an internal name and an external name, so just renaming the file is not sufficient. You need to use a profile renaming tool to get the job done.

For Windows, Microsoft have released a control panel applet for the managment of ICC profiles. It can also rename profiles - simply start the utility and click on the profile tab, then right click on the profile you want to rename and away you go.

Windows Colour Control Applet Donwload

For Macs, the built in ColorSync utility can rename profiles.

Installing your new profile

  1. Install the profile by copying it on to your computer - you will need to find the colour profile directory on your computer.

    On Windows, you can right-click on a profile and choose 'install', or copy the file manually to:
    Windows 2000/XP : windows/system32/spool/drivers/color folder
    Windows 98, 98SE, ME : windows/system/color

    On Mac, copy the profile to:
    Mac OS 9.x: Systems Folder/ColorSync Profiles
    Mac OS/X: User Library/ColorSync/Profiles

    On the Mac, if you've installed your profile and you still can't see it, you might need to fix the tags in your profile using this utility. Just drop the .icc file onto it and then restart Photoshop, your profile should now appear.

  2. Re-start Photoshop if it is running (or whichever ICC compliant appplication you are using). Otherwise Photoshop won't see the new profile. The profile should now be available in your list of profiles. It will be named "IS_Printer_Paper" or similar.

Softproofing with a printer profile

Softproofing in Photoshop is very precise and effective. In basic form, will see a colour accurate soft-proof of your printers output. For most people, this is sufficiently accurate as to be useful and to give a very good perceptual indication of how the print will look under typical viewing conditions. This soft proof works only for colour, but does not attempt to simulate the actual print contrast. This in fact works well for evaluating your prints in typical real world home/office conditions (500 lux, diffuse non-direct lighting)

Step 5 below describes a technically more accurate type of soft-proof that works to give a simulation that is accurate in terms of both colour AND contrast, however for it to work effectively, your environment needs to be highly controlled - i.e. paint the walls the right neutral grey, install and measure D50 lighting, display image without white on screen etc. You also need to remember this soft proof aims to show you how your print will look under exhibition lighting - that is, under bright D50 spot lights. So it may not in fact be at all accurate for the real conditions in which you work and view your prints. It is very unusual for the average home/office environment to have lighting that resembles exhibition lighting - most wall lighting is diffuse and 500 lux or less, most exhibition lighting is point (i.e. spot) lighting and around 2000 lux - so very different!

Normal Soft Proofing - for Typical Print Viewing Conditions

  1. To create a soft proof setup that uses your new profile, choose 'View->Proof Setup'

  2. Choose the new profile as the 'Device to Simulate'. Make sure 'preserve color numbers' is NOT ticked. Rendering intent is usually perceptual or relative colormetric but you can of course proof for any rendering intent you like - remember to set the same intent in the print dialog box when you come to actually print though! (If you are proofing for having your prints done by us please note we will use the perceptual intent unless you instruct us otherwise).

    Do not check 'simulate paper color' or 'simulate black ink'. Black point compensation SHOULD be checked.

    soft proof


  3. If you want to save this proof set-up, click Save and give the proof setup a name. Then Click OK to turn on the Soft Proof.

  4. You can toggle proof colours on and off (and the gamut warning) by using the controls in the View menu.

Advanced Soft Proofing - Contrast AND Tone Soft-Proofing for Exhibition Lighting

  1. Go back into View->Proof Setup

  2. Set it up exactly as in step two above, but this time DO select 'simulate paper color' and 'simulate ink black'. Preserve RGB Numbers should still NOT be checked.

    Advanced Soft Proof

  3. To correctly use this proof, you must turn it on when no white is visible on your screen - at all! this mean, you must enter full screen mode in Photoshop (hit 'F' three times) and hide all the palettes (hit 'Tab'). You should see only your image against a plain background - ideally neutral grey (you can change the backgroun colour in Photoshop by using the paint bucket tool to fill the background!), with nothing else showing on screen:

    (C) Jason Edwards

  4. You can save this proof, and toggle it on and off with CTRL-Y

  5. Remember, particularly with very matte papers with weaker black levels, there is a vast difference between the contrat range of your monitor (typicallty 500:1 or more) and the contrast range of a matte print under exhibition spot lights (closer to 150:1) - and this will be reflected in the soft proof. It can be hard to get your eyes/head to take this on board though, and you may intially be a little surprised by the sudden drop in contrast.

Editing images with the soft-proof turned on

You can use any of Photoshop's tools to edit your file with the soft-proof turned on. This allows you to target your edits for the best possible result on a specific printer (we suggest you save an alternate copy of your file and keep your master file so that you can re-target this file to other output devices at a later date). You are working directly within the printer's palette so will be able to make the best decisions about your edits - however, some things may not be achievable simply because those colours are not achievable on your printer.

Making prints with your new profile

  1. Open a file.

    A good file to test your printer with can be downloaded here.

    Photoshop 5.5, 6, 7 and CS (For CS2 see below)

    Go to the 'Print With Preview' dialog box, and make sure that you set the Printer space to be your new profile. In the example below, the file is in Adobe RGB, and we have used the profile for Hahnemuehle paper for the Print Space. Typically, the rendering intent of 'Perceptual' is fine ('Relative Colorimetric' can also be used), and 'Use Black Point Compensation' must be ticked.

    Epson 4

    Photoshop CS 2

    Go to the 'Print With Preview' dialog box.. In the example below, the file is in Adobe RGB, and we have used the profile for Hahnemuehle paper for the Print Space.

    You must choose 'Let Photoshop Determine Colors'.

    Typically, the rendering intent of 'Perceptual' is fine ('Relative Colorimitric' can also be used, check the soft proof in Photoshop to see the differences), and 'Use Black Point Compensation' must be ticked.

    printing


  2. Now click 'Print one'. In the printer driver, make sure you set all the settings exactly the same as when you printed the targets (see above). If you saved the settings earlier when printing the targets, now is the time to re-load them.

  3. You should now have a print that matches your monitor (as closely as is possible) and maximises the quality of your printer.

Further notes on evaluating an ICC profile

Profiling really works, and works well. Of course like all complex things, occasionally something will go wrong. If you're having trouble with your profile, we ask that you read this section first, which should help you (and us) identify where the problem lies. If it doesn't answer your question or solve your problem, then contact us and we'll sort it out. The whole point of profiling is high quality, precise results, and we're not happy if you get anything less!

Please note we provide these notes for convenience but we are always happy to speak to you if there's anything you don't understand or you just prefer speaking to someone over reading! Contact details here.

First, Soft Proof with the profile using the PDI printer test file

Whether your problem is big (corrupted profile resulting in psychadelic colours) or small (you suspect the profile is causing a colour cast), the first step is to find out if the profile is causing your problem, or something else. The easy way to do this is to Soft Proof using the profile - this is showing you what the profile is actually doing to your file. If you can't see a problem in the soft proof, it is almost 100% certain the problem lies with your printer settings when making the print. Go back and double/triple check you are using all the same printer settings you used when making the targets. Its amazing how often people think they have the right settings but find some minor switch somewhere in the driver they forgot to change.

Really obvious faults will show up quickly in a soft proof, however more subtle issues are harder to asses, and it comes down to the quality of your screen and its calibration in many cases. However you can not judge a profile only on its soft proof - the accuracy of the soft proof depends a LOT on your working environment and equipment (room lighting, wall colour, screen quality etc), so you must definitely try real prints before drawing conclusions about your profile.

So how do you actually know your profile is working well?

Well, the first thing is probably to understand a little about what a profile is actually trying to achieve.

A profile is trying to give you the most accurate reflection of the colour numbers in your file as a print on paper. More technically, it is trying to create the best possible mapping between the gamut of your working space (which absolutely limits the colour achievable in a particular file) and the gamut of your output device (which is absolutely limited by the inkset/driver/chemistry of the system in question).

A profile is a solution to a complex multiple objective optimisation problem - that is, it is trying its best to satisfy many goals at once, and consequently some compromises are inevitably made. In mapping from your working space to your output device's capabilites, a profile is trying to achive such things as:

The corollary of this is that a profile is NOT trying or able to achieve certain things:

The best way to test a profile is to just use it for a while.

Print things like the ever popular PDI printer test file. Print some of your own work. Live with the profile for a while, and don't make snap judgements based on a single image. A profile is a complex thing and making judgements about one takes time and careful consideration - and of real prints, not just a soft proof! If a profile is seriously corrupt through some misadventure (almost always because the targets were incorrectly produced), this will be quickly visible in print outs - the PDI target covers a broad range of your printers gamut and is particularly good at showing obvious faults.

So how then do you know a profile is 'correct' or the best profile?

Well, there's really no such thing as 'the best' profile. It's always possible, for an individual image, that there is a profile better suited to that image - for example, there may be a profile that is less neutral but geared towards more saturated colour which works better for your yellow canary shots. What can be said is that a good profile is the best set of compromises for general photographic image reproduction.

If you print out the targets correctly, following the instructions precisely, you'll receive an accurate profile - our equipment is self diagnostic, and we use the very latest profile building software to produce the profiles - to date, in 4 years of making hundreds if not thousands of profiles, we have yet to have a single instance of a 'bad read' at our end (of course there is a first time for everything!)

But my screen still doesn't match my print!

Again, the goal of a profile is NOT to make a perfect screen to print match - it's simply not possible because the gamuts of the devices are not the same. A profile's goal is to give you the best ability to 'soft-proof' for your printer's output and to take best advantage of your printer's physical gamut - to give you the best possible prints.

The number one cause of this problem will be that your screen is inaccurate. If your screen is a real cheap'n'nasty screen, it simply won't be up to the job (cheap LCDs in particular). Assuming your screen is of decent quality it must be hardware calibrated for you to make any judgements with it. If you ring us and you say 'my profile isn't working' the first thing we need to know is what are you basing this judgement on? If you are basing this judgement on a bad monitor, or a monitor that is calibrated only with Adobe gamma (or worse yet, not at all) then we can pretty much guarantee you that your screen is the problem - we've made thousands of these things and we know the process works very well.

Also, screen calibrators like the original Spyder system from Colorvision, which do not allow you to set luminosity and/or ask you to make any judgements by eye during the calibration process, are simply not good at what they are supposed to do. (The new Spyder2 Pro is much improved, and there are many good options discussed here).

Experience has shown that 99% of all people who have problems using profiles (eg "my photos are too warm") solve those problems by using good quality hardware based screen calibration. It is in fact the screen which is out, not the printer profile, and these people are creating files with the colour cast in them in the first place. It is remarkable easy to introduce a colour cast into a file when working on an uncalibrated screen - and an accurate printer profile will show you the colour cast even if your monitor won't!

The number two cause of this problem is gamut difference between screens and printers. The simple fact is your monitor can display certain colours you will never be able to print, and indeed your printer can print colours you will never see on your screen. Photoshop's colour engine is remarkably good at overcoming this problem and soft proofing, when set up correctly, can be an uncannily accurate system. Combined with the gamut warning, it is very easy to see the problem areas in your print and you can adjust the image, while viewing with the proof colours, to make for a better print on that output device.\

That's great but my image still looks great on screen but not as a print!

Well, that's just the way it is sometimes! An emissive, on screen image is a fundamentally different thing to a reflected, on paper image and that is just a fact of life. We can improve the matching of tones between screen and print with good colour management, but we can't fundamentally change the nature of screens and paper - and learning to print images on paper with great luminous depth and 'glow' is a real skill - colour management is just one of the tools required.

Please note we provide these notes for convenience but we are always happy to speak to you if there's anything you don't understand or you just prefer speaking to someone over reading! Contact details here.

Using Black and White ICC profiles

All the notes above apply equally to black and white profiles, and we suggest you read them. But here's the short version specifically for using black and white profiles - either in Photoshop or in a RIP (the process is slightly different).

If printing using Photoshop:

If you're printing out of Photoshop (say through the new Advanced Black and White mode) - you proof and use the profile exactly as per the instructions above (step 7). Basically, you go to 'Print With Preview', set 'Let Photoshop Determine Colours', Choose the new profile as the output profile, use Perceptual Rendering Intent, BPC ticked, and then go through to the printer driver where you must use the same settings you used to print the original target.

If using another program to do you prints:

If, however, you are using something like QuadtoneRIP which has it's own GUI, then it's slightly more complicated, but not much. Soft proofing is set up as per the instructions in step 7 above (use Advanced Soft Proofing), but to actually make the print you must take an extra step first in Photoshop, which is to choose:

Edit -> Convert to Profile

Choose the new profile you've recieved, the perceptual intent, and make sure BPC is checked.

Now, save this file, and print this from the QuadtoneRIP GUI as normal (remembering you must use the same settings in QuadtoneRIP as you did when printing the original target file, or the profile won't work).

Using ICC Output Profiles with Photoshop Elements (V5)

First, Follow the instructions above to save, install, backup and possibly rename your profile.

Then, you should make sure that Photoshop Elements is set up to use colour management.

Start the Photoshop Elements V5 Editor and go to 'Edit->Colour Settings'

We suggest you set this as per this screen shot:

Elements Colour Management

To make a print with your new profile (we suggest using the PDI printer test file to start with), open the file.

Now, go to 'File->Print'.

You must tick the 'Show More Options' box, choose your new printer profile, and specify the rendering intent (we recommend you generally use 'Perceptual' but you may also want to try 'Relative Colorimetric'. If you want to know more about this, there are some extensive notes on rendering intents in the Digital Fine Print notes).

Elements Printing Using ICC Output Profiles

Now click 'Print', and go into the printer driver properties. Set these up exactly as you did when printing the target files or the profile won't work.

Hit 'Ok' and you should, with any luck, see an excellent print coming out of your printer.

If you have any trouble, please follow the troubleshooting guide above

Using ICC Profiles With Adobe Lightroom

Lightroom has very limited abilities with ICC profiles -

Printing with ICC Profiles in Adobe Lightroom

With each profile you want to use in Lightroom, you must first manually add it to the list of profiles. Your ICC profile must be installed in the correct place. If you've installed your profile in the correct place but you still can't see it in Lightroom following the instructions below, then get in touch - we have a tool that can fix a profile's name to make it visible in Lightroom.

Enabling your profile

As per the screen shot below, choose the 'Profile' control, and from the drop down choose 'Other...'

Lightroom - Choosing Profiles

You will see the following window appear:

Lightoom - Choosing Profiles Part 2

Simply tick all the ICC profiles you might want to print with, and click OK.

Now, under the same Profile control you will see the profiles you have chosen.

Print with your profile

To actually make a print with your profile, simply choose the appropriate profile, and choose a rendering intent (with our profiles, Perceptual is probably the best choice) and hit 'Print'. Then set the settings in the printer driver exactly as you set them when you printed your orignal profile target.

Lightroom - Using ICC Profiles

Ta da! You should have an excellent print!