Q: Why do I need to use ICC profiles?

Answer:

The print drivers for all printers are designed to work with the manufacturers' own inks and papers. If either or both ink and paper are altered then the settings within the print driver will be wrong. For instance, if you use Fotonic inks without any colour management your print will be extremely magenta. Using small gamut without the appropriate colour management will produce some interesting results - which probably will not be what you wanted if you were planning to produce neutral black and white images! To take account of the change of ink and paper, Lyson uses ICC colour profiles to modify the way the print driver works. The colour profile not only modifies the colour balance of the print, but also the amount of ink the printer lays down. This is important, as different papers take different amounts of ink. There are two forms of colour profile - generic and custom. Custom profiles are written for a specific printer by a colour management specialist. A generic profile is one that is written to work on all printers of a certain type, for example an Epson 1290. The potential downfall of generic profiles is that they cannot take into account the inherent differences between 1290 printers. This is an area into which Lyson has been doing a great deal of research. For some time now Lyson has published generic ICC profiles on their website for free download. Whilst these work very well for most people, it would be fair to say that others have been a little less complimentary about them. The main problem lies in the variation of printers. If your printer is closely matched to the printer on which the profile was written then there will be no problems. If it isn't then the colour you get may not be entirely satisfactory! However, help is at hand. New generic profiles are being published on the Lyson website for customers to use free of charge. They get round most of the problems some people have had with some of the previous generic profiles. The new profiles are for Fotonic and Small Gamut inks for the following printers: Epson 1290, 1160, 2100, 890 and the Canon S9000. Others will follow.

Q: What are ICC profiles?

Answer:

ICC stands for International Color Consortium. ICC profiles are small files that reside on your computer system that provide a description of a device's capabilities. These devices can include digital cameras, monitors, printers and scanners. When you install device software, ICC profiles will usually be automatically included. You can also download profiles for many devices off the Internet. In the case of printers, the profile you use will be different for every paper/ink combination you use. Lyson provide profiles for each of their ink & paper types. See the Technical section of their site for access to these.

Q: How do I set up Photoshop and my computer to handle profiles?

Answer:

You need to read up on colour management. We have a basic document to get you started in the Resources free downloads pages.

Q: How do I install profiles on Windows XP?

Answer:

After downloading and unzipping the appropriate profile for the ink/printer and paper that you will be using. Open up the folder that contains the profile, right click the .icc file and then select "Install Profile" from the options. Windows XP will then move the file to the appropriate folder. If you prefer to do it yourself - copy or drag the file to the following folder ........ > C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\drivers\color

Q: How do I install profiles for Mac OS?

Answer:

For Mac users we recommend OS 9.2/ OSX with ColorSync version 3.04 or later. If your system uses ColorSync 3.0 then you should download the upgrade from the Apple Website (www.apple.com). Users of OS 8.6 or earlier should use ColorSync 2.6.1. Users of version 2.5 or 2.6 can upgrade using the free download from Apple. The profiles you download from the web site will be compressed - so first you need to unpack them using stuffit. To install - Drag and drop the profiles into the “ColorSync Profiles” folder found in the “System” folder on your Hard Drive. (OSX-Hard Drive-Library-ColorSync-Profiles)

Q: Photoshop cannot see the ICC profile I have installed, what should I do?

Answer:

Cause: The profile has not been decoded before installing.
What to do: Use Winzip for PCs or StuffIt! Expander for the Mac to decode the downloaded document before installation.

Mac System Cause: The profile is installed in the wrong folder. There may be more than one colorsync folder on your computer and Photoshop may be looking in the wrong one.
What to do: Write down the profiles that Photoshop does see in the “Print Space” down list in under FILE-PRINT. Look on your hard disk for the ColorSync folder that contains these profiles and copy your new profiles to this folder.

PC System Cause: The ICC Profile requires a .icc or .icm suffix on the MS-DOS file name. For example, if you have received a profile for an Epson 1290 with Fotonic ink on Fine Art paper your profile name should be “Epson1290FotonicFineArt.icm” (right-click on the profile, come down to properties, select, and look at MS-DOS name). If your profile does not have the .icm your computer will not recognise it as a profile and neither will Photoshop.
What to do: Rename your profile, adding the .icm suffix. The file icon should change to a profile-type triangle icon.

PC System Cause: The profile has been installed in the wrong folder.
What to do: Follow the correct path to the “color” folder that stores all the active colour profiles.

PC System Cause: Photoshop was running when the profile was installed.
What to do: Restart Photoshop.

Q: What do I do if Photoshop sees the profile as a different name?

Answer:

Cause: The profile has a hidden “tag” that is read by Photoshop and other ICC aware applications. If your profile was re-named in the operating system rather than re-tagged then it will appear in Photoshop under a different name.
What to do: Contact your distributor and verify that a profile for your printer is available. Ask them to send the correct profile. Follow the correct path to the “color” folder that stores all the active colour profiles.

Q: I cannot find the "No Colour Adjustment" setting in my print driver. What do I do?

Answer:

Epson printers: This option either appears as a separate option under the sRGB and ICM options or can be found as an option in the Colour Adjustment pop-up menu along with “Photo-Realistic” and “Vivid”. Consult your printer manual for further details. Ensure you have the most up-to-date version of your driver.
Canon Printers: On the new Photo printers for the PC drivers this option is available when the “Manual” colour adjustment is selected, and the Print Type option set to “none”. Consult the PDF instruction document included with the printer profile for more specific information.

Q: What do I do if my prints look wrong with my new ink?

Answer:

This is the most common complaint and the problem for which there are the most number of possible reasons...

Cause 1:

The colour management has not been activated in Photoshop 6/7. Due to changes in the way the colour management systems work between versions 5 and 6 it became possible to import images into Photoshop that had no embedded profile, without being warned about the missing profile. The file looks correct on the screen but when the file was printed with the output profile selected correctly and the driver settings selected correctly the print still had a distinctive colour cast. This was not seen when using Epson inks because the Photoshop colour management was not being used and all the colour corrections were being handled by the print driver.

What to do:
Activate the colour management options in Photoshop as described on page 7. Re-open your image file. Assign the current working RGB space to the image when the “Missing Profile” message appears. The image may well appear radically different with a similar cast to the original print outs. Correct for the cast and reprint the file. The print out should look like the corrected image on your monitor.

Cause 2:

This can be down to the information in the image file. Because of the large margin of error when using Epson inks together with an Epson print driver, many users would be achieving reasonable results even when their image files were not correctly colour balanced.
The ICC profiles are designed to accurately reproduce the information in your image file. This is why it is important to have a well-calibrated monitor.

What to do:
Check the calibration of your system by printing a test pattern that contains neutral RGB grey scales. Use the “Info Palette” in Photoshop to check that these greys are neutral. The Red, Green and Blue values should be equal.
If the print out of this test file is correct you will need to look at the settings of your monitor as it may be displaying colour inaccurately.

Your existing image files will need to be re-balanced. Check that the “Display using monitor compensation” box and the “Preview” box is ticked in Photoshop 5 (FILE-COLOR SETTINGS-RGB SETUP). For Mac users, the monitor profile used by Photoshop 6/7 is selected in the Mac OS. Go to your Colorsync control panel and select your monitor profile as your “System” or “Display” profile (See notes for Mac users on the previous pages). If the print out is still incorrect, re-check all your Photoshop settings, comparing them to the recommendations in the PDF instruction document included with the profile. Also look at the causes below.

Cause / Solution 3:

The “No Colour Adjustment” option has not been properly selected. Remember this is always given as a specific option in your print driver. Simply leaving the Cyan, Magenta and Yellow sliders in their centre position is not the same as selecting this option. Ensure this driver option is selected before printing.

Cause / Solution 4:

The media selection in the print driver is wrong. Each profile has been written for a specific media setting. For example, Lyson Professional Gloss paper on an Epson 1200 requires the “Photo Quality Gloss Film” setting otherwise the colour balance of the print will be incorrect. Check the PDF instruction document included with the printer profile for the correct media settings.

Mac System Cause / Solution 5:

The ICC printer profile has been selected in Colorsync and also in the “Print Space” dialogue box. This is applying the colour correction twice resulting in an incorrect colour balance. Always ensure that you only select the printer profile once, in the print space option when in FILE-PRINT. Do not select the profile in the ColorSync section of the print driver as well as in FILE-PRINT.

Q: My printer colour output has changed over time. What do I do?

Answer:

Cause:
The latest generation of high resolution printers can operate with nozzles mis-firing and the print out will not show the usual banding (thin white lines in the print). Instead the colour balance is affected as there will not be the correct amount of colour going down.
What to do:
Perform a nozzle check (through the “Utilities” menu of your print driver). Carry out a head clean if necessary.

Q: Do I need a profile for Quad Black ink?

Answer:

Yes, But... The generic profiles available for download are very likely to be all you need. Because there are no colour issues with Quad Black inks there will be no issues with colour casts so you will find that you can get great monochrome results straight away. A custom profile will help to obtain perfect tonal range if you are intent on obtaining the absolute ultimate result.