Color Management & Printing

[Rubix13]

I'm attempting to print a document from InDesign on my Epson 1280 printer and I'm wondering how (or if it's possible) to print the document as it looks while color management is enabled?

Currently my prints look muddled and much darker, exactly how they look in InDesign if the color management is not enabled. When I enable color management (Working Space: RGB = Adobe RGB 1998 CMYK = U.S. Web Coated (Swap) V2) the colors are vibrant and exactly how I want them to look as I designed them. I always keep all my documents consistantly RGB, which is my document profile.

Basically these are all the settings I used to use on my old computer to this printer and I would get identical screen matches on my print outs. All variables that I'm aware of are consistant. I have a company computer now, and I don't know what the set up differences are, but something is not right.

I'm sorry if I'm not providing enough information and I'd appreciate it if someone would be willing to help if I could get you more facts.

Thank you.

 

[jmgalvin]

Depends on what you're working on.

If you're on OSX the monitor has to be calibrated via system prefs and/or 3rd party calibration like a Spyder. For instance, Apple provides a bunch of different RGB types in prefs - including Adobe 1998 - but also sRGB, Apple, monitor native if an Apple monitor, and quite a few more.

On Windows, you usually need Adobe Gamma and set things up from there with Gamma and/or a third party stuff.

 

[Rubix13]

I'm using OSX and I just remembered that this morning. My Powerbook was set to Color LCD instead of Adobe RGB (1998). Even though the appearance of the display did not change (undetectable to my eye at least), would this make the difference in my print out now that my Display profile will match my document profile?

Thanks for the help

 

[jmgalvin]

If the colors on the screen are matching the print output and the print output is correct youshold be fine.

About the only way to guage the accuracy, without a third party calibator, is to print a doc with some big squares of cyan, magenta, yellow, black, red, green, blue as spots and compare the output visually to the Pantones.