Colour Profile when printing from Lightroom

[Graeme Brown]

For several years I've made PSD files in Lightroom which I have printed (Epson 38'') via Photoshop, with excellent results. This year I've been experimenting with printing direct from Lightroom. When you print direct from a DNG file there doesn't seem to be any indication of the colourspace that is being used to send the file to the printer, and the DNG files are untagged. I believe that Lightroom uses Prophoto internally, so is this what is being printed, or does it default to Adobe (or, even worse, sRGB)?

 

[Denis Pagé]

Your DNG in Lightroom is living in the MelissaRGB color space (Prophoto like). On the printer side, the color space is a function of the printer, the inks and the paper used and we frequently call it the Gamut of the printer/paper. To convert from one space to the other, it is a "Profile" that you use. This will act as a translator between the color spaces.

So, in the print driver you set the paper type, density and turn off color management. Then, in Lightroom you choose the profiled created for this driver setup. Otherwise, you use color management in the driver but set Lightroom to "Managed by Printer".

 

[Graeme Brown]

Thanks Denis, I was curious to know if Lightroom was using a lesser colour space for printing, good to know that it doesn't.

 

[Denis Pagé]

Some printers have a wider color gamut (think color space) than many monitors. Thus, it may happen that you get superb colors on print that you can't even see on you monitor.