A look at the G550 (and print for the G650/620 et al.)

[The Hat]

Maybe I am not explaining to you my dilemma adequately or am not understanding your answer sufficiently.

Jasus @stratman your starting to sound just like me, Keith is only new here and not use to your style of interrogation, he’s a man in his kitchen with his little printer explaining it the best he can, and if he’s not getting it through to you first time, then give it time, it will come to you..

It all sounded ok to me, but then I’m easy pleased, the floor is your again Sir..
P.S. not everyone dots the I’s and crosses the T’s on their first attempt.. That's why I hate Viideos..

 

[Keith Cooper]

OK, let me expand it further... ;-)


Think of the Mac airprint+printer system as a black box - actually it's a black box with some controls on it (media/quality)

You feed image data into it and a print is made.

I decide I don't like the way it is converting my data into an image.

I send it a test set of data (profiling target) I just make sure the application sending the data is not attempting any specific colour management (another potential variable) - what goes on in the black box matters not.

I measure the resulting test print

I feed this data into software (another black box!) and get an icc profile.

This profile defines (amongst other things) a way of getting as good a set of colours on my print as is possible using the black box system of my printer. There are of course all sorts of trade-offs involving what goes on inside the box, although I do have the media controls to change some of its internal processing, albeit once again in unknown ways.

I now print a photo from PS

From photoshop's POV it is managing colour normally using the profile to adjust what goes out to the printer black box.

In normal use (Win G550) the printer driver is set to a base state of 'no colour management' - this is what was used to create profiles for a win system.

In the Mac G550 case there is no 'no colour management' switch on the airprint/printer box - one less input for its black box, so we accept that the profile is just a profile for the Mac

For the Win PC driver+printer (another black box) we have the 'no colour management' switch on the box - this lets our profile work at a slightly 'deeper' level.

That said it's still treating the printer as RGB ... another black box inside our first one ;-)

Hopefully that helps? - you need to broaden your concepts of what profiles can do?

BTW this process would work (in theory) if I replaced the airprint/printer black box, with burning the file onto a CD, posting it off to a lab and waiting for the prints to arrive back in the post.

You can profile any such process - just whether it achieves anything of use is the point. For my Mac G550 profiles it does

 

[Keith Cooper]

Jasus @stratman your starting to sound just like me, Keith is only new here and not use to your style of interrogation, he’s a man in his kitchen with his little printer explaining it the best he can, and if he’s not getting it through to you first time, then give it time, it will come to you..

It all sounded ok to me, but then I’m easy pleased, the floor is your again Sir..
P.S. not everyone dots the I’s and crosses the T’s on their first attempt.. That's why I hate Viideos..

It's an interesting response, and as a result I'll be adding a longer clarification in the main written review.
I can see that I might be assuming too deep an understanding of what a profile is, and what it can do.

Yes, it's the inability to fine tune or update them that I dislike about videos, and why mine will always be secondary to the written articles. I almost never watch photography videos myself...

Oh and I looked at the video source footage - that edit came from the phone ringing and me waiting for it to be picked up elsewhere in the house

I try and do most videos (or segments) in one take and scripts are never going to happen - I do have a set of key points on a small whiteboard, but that is to make sure I cover stuff in a particular order and don't miss out sections.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I was reading somewhere ( sorry - I lost the link) in context with the newest announcements that Apple is enhacing/increasing the amount of automatic image 'enhancements'/adjustments like photo/contrast/color adjustments with much more intelligence as it was done in earlier days with some image enhancement options in the driver, and all this would happen in one of the above mentioned black boxes, and such image then is sent to the printer (with no regard to the printer and the actual paper used). Such image enhancements are typically based on actual image information - motive, persons etc and would vary from image to image. That's the risk I see that a profile in this case has just limited validity for color corrections.
But Keith is apparently able to create useful profiles nevertheless so my assumptions may not be correct to this extend but we don't know what is happening in the black boxes, and Apple won't tell the users.

 

[Keith Cooper]

I was reading somewhere ( sorry - I lost the link) in context with the newest announcements that Apple is enhacing/increasing the amount of automatic image 'enhancements'/adjustments like photo/contrast/color adjustments with much more intelligence as it was done in earlier days with some image enhancement options in the driver, and all this would happen in one of the above mentioned black boxes, and such image then is sent to the printer (with no regard to the printer and the actual paper used). Such image enhancements are typically based on actual image information - motive, persons etc and would vary from image to image. That's the risk I see that a profile in this case has just limited validity for color corrections.
But Keith is apparently able to create useful profiles nevertheless so my assumptions may not be correct to this extend but we don't know what is happening in the black boxes, and Apple won't tell the users.

Yes, I should add a caveat to my efforts in that I'm not using new kit or software to do this - My Mac still runs 10.14

Hopefully there are off switches on the new black boxes, but I wouldn't count on it.

 

[stratman]

Hopefully that helps? - you need to broaden your concepts of what profiles can do?

No, you didn't address my questions. In fact you dummy-downed even further muddying the waters more. Maybe I'm still not explaing myself clearly, so will try again.

• Selecting a custom ICC printer profile in Photoshop is color management.
• Letting Photoshop manage colors is color management.
• Selecting Relative Colorimetric in Photoshop is color management.
• Yet Airprint cannot turn off its native color management.
• How, then, are you not double profiling?

Obviously Photoshop IS performing color management duties, at least some duties. How else is your custom ICC profile being used?

So, we are left with the presumption that Airprint cannot have its color management functions turned off but an external app - Photoshop - can somehow supercede or, undesirably, double down on the printer's native color management.

If the printer's native color management is always "on" then how are you not double profiling when you select Photoshop to manage colors?

 

[stratman]

if he’s not getting it through to you first time, then give it time, it will come to you..

Unfortunately I am left at the same place as before.

What is it that is not coming to me?

 

[stratman]

we don't know what is happening in the black boxes, and Apple won't tell the users.

Is there an actual "black box" or is it just a figure of speech?

I would hope we/Kieth can make a reasoned guess whether Kieth was double profiling or not. If not double profiling then the assumption is a Mac "black box" can natively adjust its color management automatically without a toggle the user can manually turn on or off.

I don't know Mac world but I'd say that's pretty cool if true.

 

[Keith Cooper]

No, you didn't address my questions. In fact you dummy-downed even further

Quite deliberately

muddying the waters more.

Not my intention

Maybe I'm still not explaing myself clearly, so will try again.

• Selecting a custom ICC printer profile in Photoshop is color management.
• Letting Photoshop manage colors is color management.
• Selecting Relative Colorimetric in Photoshop is color management.
• Yet Airprint cannot turn off its native color management.
• How, then, are you not double profiling?

Obviously Photoshop IS performing color management duties, at least some duties. How else is your custom ICC profile being used?

So, we are left with the presumption that Airprint cannot have its color management functions turned off but an external app - Photoshop - can somehow supercede or, undesirably, double down on the printer's native color management.

If the printer's native color management is always "on" then how are you not double profiling when you select Photoshop to manage colors?

The whole point is that whether colour management is on or off in the airprint setup is completely irrelevant

If it makes it easier, think of my profile as just a fancy adjustment curve, which photoshop is applying when I select the profile. I'm using photoshop's 'PS manages colour' setting to implement this, but it is 'just' a correction...

Yes, it is a profile being applied on top of other colour management - there is nothing wrong with this IF that profile was built on top of other colour management. Double profiling is applying multiple profiles when they are not meant to be 'stacked' in this way. I would prefer to have a 'cleaner' Mac G550 driver to build my profiles on, but it is what it is.

'Normal' profiles are built on top of the RGB-> ink channel 'colour management' that goes on inside a driver, yet we comfortably ignore that (leaving aside RIP setup and linearisation)

My suggestion is to look at a really well written book like 'Real World Color Management' to see what profiles are, what they do and see the bigger view of colour management, as making the best of what black boxes are placed in front of you?

 

[Keith Cooper]

Is there an actual "black box" or is it just a figure of speech?

I would hope we/Kieth can make a reasoned guess whether Kieth was double profiling or not. If not double profiling then the assumption is a Mac "black box" can natively adjust its color management automatically without a toggle the user can manually turn on or off.

I don't know Mac world but I'd say that's pretty cool if true.

it is a profile on a profile, but not what is commonly called 'double profiling' which is problematic.