Printer manages colours

[aqualarue]

<p>Ok, I am in a mental pickle here. I have had a colour managed workflow and calibrated monitor in place for a number of years, but I guess I am so stuck in a certain kind of workflow that I never had a need to understand intricate details of colour management.<br>

I have a step wedge was handed to me in gray gamma 1.8; I copied it and assigned a 2.2 to this copy. This is for contact printing and so ABW will be used to print this, so no need to set anything in the first drop down menu printer driver except for rendering intent, printer automatically assumes control.<br>

Now I want to copy this same step wedge one and assign an adobeRGB profile to it so that I can determine how much highlight mid-tone and dark-tone RGB and K values shift from what is given on my monitor display with regard to a specific paper (Ilford gallerie paper). This will then be handed to the printer and "Printer Manages Colours" will be set. I will then scan this with no adjustments in the scanner and making sure that the curves etc are all Linear. Back into photoshop CS3 and the resulting tones analysed with RGB and K values.<br>

Is my method above in the right direction? When Printer manages Colours, it takes no notice of the profile handed to it, in this instance, I was baffled: Hey, what am I doing, if it ignores the profile handed to it How does it interpret the gray values, it will take no notice of the fact that it is a 2.2; so you can see my confusion. Printer handles colours seemed such a logical concept until I had a need to think about it. </p>

[Charles_Webster]

<p>Printer manages colors is not a good choice if you want or need a properly color-managed system. As you discovered, the printer driver takes no notice of the paper/ink profiles.<br>

You need to turn off color management in the printer, and allow Photoshop to manage the color during printing, with appropriate paper/ink profiles installed in the right place so PS can find them.<br>

<Chas><br /><br /></p>

[aqualarue]

<p>Hi Chas, yes, this was a silly question actually, I've been doing just that for years, but I was getting my brain waves twisted today because I am using the same step wedge to profile the printer with the sunshine outside (yes believe it or not profiling the epson to synchronise with the weather forecast! - for UV contact printing) and then thinking Oh, I might as well do the same for my ilford galerie paper and make a special curve for that digital side of things, forgetting of course that I need to stick to the Photoshop manages the colours in this case. Duh, kicked myself.</p>