Using color management when printing

Understanding when to use color management requires an understanding of how colors are represented in digital images. Photoshop Elements uses a grid of elements known as pixels to represent images. When you view an image on your monitor, pixels are displayed using red, green, and blue light. When you print an image on a desktop printer, pixels are reproduced using colored inks. The number of inks used in the printing process, as well the exact color value of each ink and the size of the dots printed, are determined by the printer manufacturer.

Because your monitor operates in a different color space than your printer, and different printers have different color spaces, the colors you see on your monitor can vary drastically from those in the printed image. Color management provides a solution to this dilemma. In a color-managed workflow, you use color profiles to ensure that the colors remain consistent. (See About color and computer graphics.)

Converting colors to a different color space usually involves an adjustment of the source or image colors to accommodate the gamut of the destination printer or output device color space. Different translation methods use different rules to determine how the source colors are adjusted; for example, colors that fall inside the destination gamut may remain unchanged, or they may be adjusted to preserve the original range of visual relationships as translated to a smaller destination gamut. These translation methods are known as rendering intents because each technique is optimized for a different intended use of color graphics.

To determine if you need to use color management when printing:

1 Print an image without color management.

2 Compare the colors in the printed image with those on your monitor. If the color fidelity is not acceptable, use color management.

To color-manage an image while printing:

1 Choose File > Print Preview, or click the Print Preview button () in the shortcuts bar.

2 Select Show More Options (located below the image preview area), and choose Color Management from the pop-up menu.

The Source Space section of the dialog box displays the image's color profile. (See Using color management.)

3 In the Print Space section of the dialog box, choose an option for Profile:

4 Under Print Space, for Intent, choose a rendering intent to use when converting colors to the destination profile space:

Perceptual Known as the Image intent in Adobe PageMaker and Illustrator 9, Perceptual aims to preserve the visual relationship between colors in a way that is perceived as natural to the human eye, although the color values themselves may change. This intent is most suitable for photographic images.

Saturation Known as the Graphics intent in Adobe PageMaker and Illustrator 8, Saturation aims to create vivid color at the expense of accurate color. It scales the source gamut to the destination gamut, but preserves relative saturation instead of hue, so when scaling to a smaller gamut, hues may shift. This rendering intent is suitable for business graphics, where the exact relationship between colors is not as important as having bright saturated colors.

Absolute Colorimetric Leaves colors that fall inside the destination gamut unchanged. This intent aims to maintain color accuracy at the expense of preserving relationships between colors. When translating to a smaller gamut, two colors that are distinct in the source space may be mapped to the same color in the destination space. Absolute Colorimetric can be more accurate if the image's color profile contains correct white point (extreme highlight) information. This rendering intent is suitable when you want to match the color of one substrate on another substrate, in addition to matching the non-black ink, and have all the colors give the most accurate match possible. One example would be when reproducing the appearance of a printed sheet of newsprint onto a sheet of bright white inkjet paper. The substrate of the bright white inkjet paper would be printed over with a dingy gray to simulate the actual newsprint appearance.

Relative Colorimetric This intent is identical to Absolute Colorimetric except for the following difference: Relative Colorimetric compares the white point of the source color space to that of the destination color space and shifts all colors accordingly. When used in the Absolute Colorimetric example given, the Relative Colorimetric rendering intent would match the colors and the black ink printed on the newsprint, but not the substrate color of the newsprint. So the substrate of the bright white inkjet paper would show through as bright white.

Printing > Using color management when printing