INTRODUCTION

Those of you that make your own custom profiles, may remember that several months ago I published aworkaroundto the issues plaguing folks that work with Epson printers, Apple computers and recent versions of Photoshop.

I must confess that at the time I discovered that there was another potential workaround using Preview instead of Photoshop to print profiling targets. I did not publish this alternate workaround, because Preview often had a bad habit of re-sizing my targets, which led to major problems when trying to read the targets using an automated spectrophotometer such as the X-Rite iSis XL.

Most people, myself included, need to print the profiling targets exactly as they are, with absolutely no changes in color or size.

You will understand the reason I mention this second turnaround as you read the rest of this article.

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THAT WAS THEN, AND THIS IS NOW

Since I published the article mentioned above, I have received a number of emails and heard numerous anecdotal stories from other photographers who claim to have similar problems with certain models of Canon printers.

While I cannot say with any certainty whether these reports are accurate or not, I can state with certainty that the same workaround should work with Canon printers.

As I mentioned in my prior article, I brought the issue to the attention of all three companies at the highest levels. I was told directly by top executives of two of the three companies that they would work on a solution to the issue.

The end result seems to be that we will have at least one solution available soon that will allow us to print accurate profiling targets with full confidence that the targets are “pure” and therefore will yield equally accurate profiles.

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ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS5 PRINT MODULE

There is a major change in the Photoshop CS 5 print module:

The option to print with no color management has been completely removed.

While I would have anticipated huge amounts of noise and distress about this, Photoshop users seem to be quite calm about it. Why this is so is a mystery to me.

The bottom line for Photoshop CS 5 users is that in order to print a file (such as a profiling target) with no color management, it is now mandatory to use the workaround described in my prior article.

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NEW SOLUTIONS ON THE HORIZON

The main purpose of this posting is to make our readers aware of the fact that Adobe has now officially announced that they are working on a new application that will allow users to print untagged images with no color management.

The exact release date has not been disclosed. All indications at the present time are that this new application will be a free download.

You can find out more about this, as well as the description of the two workarounds mentioned aboveat the Adobe site.

It also appears that there might be a second solution coming down the pike, but this is still uncertain and I am not at liberty to disclose any details.

June 2010

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Dr. Dubovoyis highly regarded as a technical expert in many aspects of printing technology and photography. As such, he is a regular writer of technical articles for PHOTO Techniques magazine and a lecturer at various workshops.

His photographs are included in a number of private collections, as well as the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Mexico City, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Monterey Art Museum, the Berkeley Art Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in Nanao Japan.