LR 1.3 print problems

[Msolomon]

Have just updated LR to version 1.3 and have discovered some print problems. Prior to 1.3, was using 1.2 on an XP PC and had no problems creating prints that matched my calibrated monitor. Just upgraded to a new vista PC and at the same time installed LR 1.3. This required me to recalibrate my monitor, and load a vista version of my print driver (for an HP B918'). And the first (and all) prints I created had this strange color tint. My first inclination was that I was double booking color management, both within LR and the printer ... but I confirmed, the print driver is set to "application managed color", and the LR print module I select the appropriate icc profile for the paper being used. So I think I'm ok with this.

Checked the adobe LR forums and there are numerous threads talking about 1.3 and a magenta tint to prints. Believe this is what I am seeing, although most people are using MACs and the new Mac OS.

Does anyone have some guidance/opinion on this. By the way, to confirm that the problem was in LR and not somewhere else in my color management thread, I am able to print with good color fidelity using Photoshop CS3. Believe this validates that vista printer driver for the B918' and the calibrated monitor are ok.

Would appreciate any thoughts/recommendations/ideas. Thanks.

 

[DonRicklin]

Have you updated to 1.3 or 1.3.1? Nikon NEFs?

Please fill in your Signature with gear, system and OS info to better serve you along the way, even though this single post has most of that info. See How To Write Your Signature Specs for help in that.

Welcome to LR Forums.

Don

 

[Msolomon]

I upgraded to LR 1.3 when I bought my new vista pc. That is where the problem first arose. Today I updated to 1.3.1, hoping this would fix the problem. It did not.

 

[Msolomon]

Sorry Don ... yes ... I shot Nikon NEFs only. So i process them thru LR and print out thru the print module.

 

[DonRicklin]

Thanks for filling in the Sig.

There are a number of threads around Compressed NEFs in the User to User Adobe LR Forum. Are yours compressed? 1.3.1 didn't help?

Don

 

[Msolomon]

I do not compress my NEFs ... and I did see that thread as well. But I've hung my hat on the magenta tint threads ... even though most are MAC users using Epson printers. And as I said, when I print the LR edited image in CS3, no magenta tint.

 

[DonRicklin]

You only see the tint in an LR print, not on the screen? If on the screen, then make sure you don't have a corrupt Monitor profile by doing a temp swap out to another profile. This seems unlikely, though, if you are only seeing this in an actual print.

Looks like we need someone else to chime in.

Don

 

[Msolomon]

Only see this behavior in the print. On the monitor, it looks great. So I believe the monitor is calibrated properly ...

 

[DonRicklin]

If you were seeing this on the screen too, then even tough you have a properly calibrated monitor the profile would likely be corrupt.

It has been said elsewhere, by a colleague of mine, that a magenta tint like this is a sign of double color Management.

If you list exactly how you have set-up things in LR and the Print Driver maybe someone here will catch the culprit.



Don

 

[Msolomon]

Ok ... here goes. Within LR, in print module, under the color management section of the print job tab, use the profile associated with the paper I am using. Other options at this point include manage by printer, but I do not use that. So the paper is selected. Then, in the print driver for the HP B918', my choices under color management are "application managed colors", or selecting either Adobe RGB or sRGB. So for the print driver, I set it to application managed colors. Believe this is the proper setting for setting up LR as the driver/controller for color management. This is how I successfully set up printing in my old XP PC using version 1.2.

Is there something that I'm missing? Is there something in LR preferences that I could be messing up?

One other question. When I first discovered this 1.3 problem, uninstalled 1.3 and installed 1.2. Was hoping that if it was a 1.3 problem, this would fix it as 1.2 worked fine ... and the adobe user forums did not indicate anyone was having problems with 1.2. This did not work for me. Think even though I uninstalled 1.3, settings or something were still in place when I installed 1.2 ... cause the problem reappeared in 1.2. Any clues how to really do a clean uninstall of 1.3 ... so I can fairly test this theory?

Thanks.

 

[Msolomon]

Just a quick note that I discovered the problem. It was not related to LR at all. I was double booking color management, but it had to do with what I would call a bug in the HP printer driver. When I set up the print in LR, using the HP B918' driver, I set the color management setting to application managed colors. This is the correct response for the workflow. However, today, when jerking around some, I went into the printers folder and did a properties on the HP B918'. When I went into print preferences, got to the same color management section and it was set to sRBG and not application managed colors. I flipped the setting off sRGB and made it application managed colors, and wouldn't you know it LR printing now works, without the magenta tint. Not sure why what I was doing did not work, as I set the print driver every time I printed in LR, but apparently the printing preference for the printer got in the way. Dumb luck, or just hardheadedness, led me to the fix. So thanks for all the advice.

 

[DonRicklin]

Glad you got it sorted. Especially as it did seem to be a double color management situation.

Thanks for reporting back.

Don

 

[Msolomon]

Thanks for all the help, Don. Next time I chat with HP I'm going to ask the question why did I have to set the printing preferences to application managed colors, when for the individual print I set the driver to that setting.

 

[Tidobear]

I'm having a similar problem with Lightroom. When I print from CS3 everything looks as it should, but when I try to use Lightroom everything is coming out with a distinct cold cast (cyan) to it. My monitor's properly calibrated, and I'm letting the printer manage the printing - I'm using a Canon Pixima IP5'''. If it matters, I'm using a Canon 5D, shooting RAW with sRGB. Any help from anyone would be appreciated!

 

[lowolf]

vista driver issues

your settings for Lr are kept here
Hold down the windows flag key (windows logo) on key and press R
Flag R then in the run type this
%appdata%\adobe
locate Lightroom, Right click it and choose Cut then pasts this folder to your desktop or documents

Now real issue is that most of the print drivers for vista are not quite ready yet many are beta
this is known issue with vista and certain printers

Can you print the image from vista its self
Test this export an image a jpg and set color space to Srgb and then print this one from windows

let me know the results if you would

Ok ... here goes. Within LR, in print module, under the color management section of the print job tab, use the profile associated with the paper I am using. Other options at this point include manage by printer, but I do not use that. So the paper is selected. Then, in the print driver for the HP B918', my choices under color management are "application managed colors", or selecting either Adobe RGB or sRGB. So for the print driver, I set it to application managed colors. Believe this is the proper setting for setting up LR as the driver/controller for color management. This is how I successfully set up printing in my old XP PC using version 1.2.

Is there something that I'm missing? Is there something in LR preferences that I could be messing up?

One other question. When I first discovered this 1.3 problem, uninstalled 1.3 and installed 1.2. Was hoping that if it was a 1.3 problem, this would fix it as 1.2 worked fine ... and the adobe user forums did not indicate anyone was having problems with 1.2. This did not work for me. Think even though I uninstalled 1.3, settings or something were still in place when I installed 1.2 ... cause the problem reappeared in 1.2. Any clues how to really do a clean uninstall of 1.3 ... so I can fairly test this theory?

Thanks.

 

[Cheryl]

I sure wish this could get resolved. I am having the same problem with no fix yet.

 

[Svein]

I doubt this is a beta printerdriver problem

I sincerely doubt this is a beta printerdriver problem. Seriously. (Although it may be a beta print library problem on some of those Mini-operating-systems HP seems to ship as drivers nowadays)

I'm having printing colour problems aswell. The problem seems to be "too much black", which in printers that mix CMY to make black, can give an interesting colour hue (not all inks mix in equal amounts to create black).

My printer (Phaser 618'N for draftprinting, having access to an 856'N for final prints, and for 6x4 a Canon Selphy 6''). All of them exhibit the same problem. Too much black. On the Phasers this is visible as dark colours (appx 2EV too dark colours). On the Selphy it gives a Purplish hint. Printing from other applications (Such as Photoshop CS3)print in the "OK" to "great" range.

This printing-problem is evident on the following platforms:

Windows XP Pro 32bit, Lenovo/IBM (Thinkpad) oem-install
--(Too much of generally any colour, ends up with a dark picture and orange tones,No printer profiles show up in Lightroom print dialog, must choose "Managed by Printer". No profiles in "Other".)
Vista Business 32Bit, Lenovo/IBM (Thinkpad) oem-install
--(Too Dark)
Vista Ultimate 32Bit, manual install, Lenovo customizations for drivers
--(Too Dark. Problem is the same when printing to a Ricoh Aficio MPC25'', No printer profiles show up in Lightroom print dialog, must choose "Managed by Printer". No profiles in "Other".)
Vista Business 64Bit, Lenovo/IBM (Thinkpad) oem-install
--(Too Dark. Not verified on Phaser 618', No printer profiles show up in Lightroom print dialog, must choose "Managed by Printer". No profiles in "Other".)
Vista Ultimate 64Bit, manual install, Lenovo customizations for drivers
--(Too Dark. Tested direct printing. Tested printing via CUPS. Problem isolated to Lightroom. No printer profiles show up in Lightroom print dialog, must choose "Managed by Printer". No profiles in "Other".)
Source files are:

-Nikon Compressed-Nefs (Nikon D8', ACR 3.6)
-Nikon JPGs (Nikon P51'')
-Fujifilm RAF

Since this means it's basically cross-platform (32-64bit vista, 32bit xp, and atleast three file formats), I think we can nail this down to the print module localized in Lightroom (especially since other programs don't exhibit this problem).

Now, the really fun part, is that if I use the "stock" .icm's for my monitor, I get the same problems, comparably to the screen. Lightroom has no complains about this profile.

However Photoshop CS3 raises the "colour profile defective" dialog (which is correct, the original icm files from IBM/Lenovo are for XP, not Vista). This problem vanishes when I use the Spyder 3 generated profile, though. However the printing problem remains "the same".

Problem remains same on:
Lightroom 1.2
Lightroom 1.3
Lightroom 1.3.1

Lightroom system info (on this machine atleast) is:
Lightroom version: 1.3.1 [4'327']
Operating system: Windows Vista (Build 6''')
Version: 6.' [6''']
Application architecture: x86
System architecture: x64
Physical processor count: 2
Built-in memory: 4'93.5 MB
Processor speed: 1.7 Ghz
Real memory available to Lightroom: 1228.8 MB
Real memory used by Lightroom: 255.5 MB (2'.7%)
Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 232.9 MB
Memory cache size: 238 MB
Serial Number: 116'444997'2176899611927
Application folder: C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.3
Library Path: C:\Users\svein\Pictures\Lightroom\Lightroom Catalog.lrcat


Hope this is atleast somewhat helpful in locating the rogue routine library (no, I don't envy you this debug job!)

//Svein

 

[Svein]

Minor update:
I've now tried the 618' using the PCL driver (with included ICC profile): The colours are a LOT cleaner, and the ICC profile shows up in Lightroom's print environment. The print was made with "ICC by application" set, and I printed the same picture using both the Postscript driver (ICC by printer), and PCL driver (ICC by host application). There is a noticable difference, with the Postscript driver noticably grayer (added black?) in all colors.

Looking at the specific ICC profiles, it seems that the one included with the PCL driver is an RGB profile, and the one for the Postscript driver (separate download from Xerox) being an CMYK profile.

I've now come to the conclusion that the problem is related to the CMYK/RGB color profiles, since Lightroom simply cannot list CMYK profiles in its print module. Can anybody test and verify/refute this find, that Lightroom has problems with CMYK color profiles?

//Svein

 

[Svein]

Secondary minor update: PS driver with ICM turned off, and PCL icc module loaded into Lightroom produces even better (clearer) colors. On same printer (Xerox 618'N).

This is most definitely an ICC problem, and I'm even more confident that the problem lies with Lightrooms (lack of) handling of CMYK profiles.

//Svein