Printing and Colour Management

Here are my notes on Colour Management for using Peak Imaging as the print lab for my assignments.

Colour Space

• Peak Imaging's equipment is calibrated for sRGB (although its literature says that it can reproduce all other major colour spaces)
• Peak recommends that images sent to it for printing are saved with sRGB embedded (but do not embed printer and paper profile into image file as it will not print accurately)

Set up Photoshop's working colour space as sRGB

• Edit + Colour Settings
• Options to pick are (a) RGB working space = sRGBIEC61966-2.1, (b) Color Management Policies = Convert to Working RGB, (c) Set Conversion Options = Adobe (ACE) and Perceptual (or Relative Colorimetric)*

* Perceptual = seeks to keep the relationship between the colours as natural to the human eye as possible/ Relative Colorimetric = matches extreme highlights of the source colour space to the destination one and then shifts all colours accordingly.

Soft Proofing

• Displays on screen how the image's colours will print based on the choice of printer and paper
• Requires (a) an accurately calibrated monitor to work properly and (b) printer and paper profiles loaded 

Download profiles

• Download drivers for each type of paper
• Install drivers at C: WINDOWS\ System 32\ Spool\ Drivers\ Color

Set up Proof Conditions

• View + Proof Setup + Custom
• Options to pick are (a) Device to Simulate = printer/ paper choice (e.g. Peak Fuji Matt DPII), (b) Preserve RGB Numbers = uncheck, (c) Rendering Intent = Perceptual (but experiment particularly by trying Relative Colorimetric), (d) Black Point Compensation = checked (will more accurately show how the printer will render blacks), (e) Simulate Paper Colour = experiment on/off (shows difference between monitor display and print, (f) Simulate Black Ink = experiment on/off  (allows you to check shadow detail)
• Save settings using a useful name

Viewing Soft Proof

• View + Proof Colours
• Note image colours will change to the extent that it contains colours that the printer cannot reproduce (also the file name will also change in PS)

Image size

• Set resolution to 254 ppi
• Set file dimensions to the same as those of print (at this resolution)

Image format

• High quality JPEG has same print quality as TIFF