Photoshop® CS4 Bible

23.4. Printing Using Color Management

There are three ways of approaching color management when it comes to printing and keeping the output consistent with what you're seeing on your screen. You can let your printer handle color management, in which case, Photoshop sends all the necessary information to the printer for accurate color conversion. As mentioned before, most modern inkjet printers supply accurate profiles for specific paper-ink combinations along with their drivers. This option is the most straightforward, although you have to remember to enable color management options in your printer driver. This process varies depending on the printer manufacturer, so consult your device's manual for more information.

In the second scenario, Photoshop performs color management using the supplied printer profiles to covert colors from your image's color space to the printer's gamut. This option relies on accurate ICC profiles, such as those supplied by a service bureau. When using this option, you have to make sure that the printer driver isn't also trying to manage color, because the resulting output can be unpredictable.

The third option is to print without color management, which is most often used only when generating test targets for use with calibration devices, or to send to service bureaus to produce custom ICC profiles.

The Print dialog box appears in Figure 23.9. If they're not already visible, access the color management options by choosing Color Management from the popup ...