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Does changing the monitor's profile affect the print?


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It's my understanding that monitor profiles play no roll in the

printing color management chain. The monitor profile 'filters' how the

picture data is presented on the screen, but only the printer profile

'filters' the image as it's processed and sent to the printer.

 

Is that correct?

 

In other words, if I switch from a monitor profile using gamma 1.8 to a

profile using gamma 2.2 -- and don't change anything else -- my picture

will look somewhat darker on the screen, but I won't get a darker

print?

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Let me add my two cents with the disclaimer that I could be entirely wrong, but this is what works for me. It's my understanding that when using photoshop in an ICC-profile based workflow (I assume that's what we're talking about), photoshop takes the document and it's embedded profile, and converts the image to your monitor color space on the fly. As with any profile conversion (like RGB->CMYK) it's not perfect. The monitor color space cannot possibly display the entire gamut of colors contained within a typical wide-gamut working space, such as Adobe RGB, ColorMatch RGB, etc.. It makes sense to me that conversions between two color spaces with equal gamma settings would render more reliable results than conversions made between color spaces with unequal gamma settings. Gamma is just one setting that dictates the color gamut of a particular color space. The closer the gamut of your working space is to that of your monitor space, the more accurate the image will be on-screen, and subsequently, in print. It's been my experience that if your working space has a gamut of 2.2 (Adobe RGB 1998), setting your monitor to the same gamut yields more reliable results between monitor and print. Keep in mind that when you send an image to print, you are sending the data in the working color space, not the converted version you see on your screen.
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