Elements 12 Colour Printing problems: I have just bought PSE 12, and am finding that when I print the colour is dreadful. Fortunately, I can still run PSE 10. So I took an image and...

photosarah Loc: East Sussex, UK

I have just bought PSE 12, and am finding that when I print the colour is dreadful. Fortunately, I can still run PSE 10. So I took an image and printed it using PSE 10 and then, using the same image and exactly the same presets, printed it again using PSE 12. The PSE 12 image is much blacker and darker. I spent an hour yesterday afternoon in a "live chat" session with Adobe, and allowed them access to my screen, but the gentleman I was talking with could not find what was wrong. He says there is no colour output difference between PSE 10 and PSE 12. My printer is working perfectly and is colour calibrated with my computer - and in any case, the PSE 10 image is correct colourwise. Has anybody else who has PSE 12 had the same problem or can anybody shed any light (sorry!) on the problem I am having? I'd be grateful for any help.

Morning Star Loc: West coast, North of the 49th N.

The only thing I can think off, is that you let PSE 10 control the colour output instead of the printer, but that in PSE 12, the printer controls the colour output.
In PSE 12: File -> Print
In the Print dialog box, on the bottom edge, select "More Options", then in the next pop-up, select "Colour Management", then select the button "Colour Handling" and make sure it is set to "Photoshop Elements manages colours."

Unless you understand "Rendering intent" I'd leave that one alone :)

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

(On edit: Morningstar beat me to the enter button!)

Frequently when people write about this sort of problem there is a conflict between the printer driver and photo software.

Printers want to control the color management by default. Software such as PSE or Lightroom want to control it by default. If they both try to do it at the same time, the colors will be off. You have to force the printer driver to not do color management if you want PSE to do it. Or, if you want the printer driver to do it, you have to force PSE to stop managing the color.

A third choice is to output a .tiff (or some other lossless format) from PSE and use the photo software that came with the printer to do the color work.

Good luck!

the chuckster Loc: Ironton, Ohio

Use the color space equivalent to your camera's canon defaults to SRGB. Just a thought...

Frapha Loc: Tulsa, Oklahoma

photosarah wrote:

I have just bought PSE 12, and am finding that whe... (show quote)

How long since you color-calibrated your monitor and/or printer?

photosarah Loc: East Sussex, UK

Morning Star wrote:

The only thing I can think off, is that you let PS... (show quote)

Thank you, Morning Star. I checked very carefully with both prints that "Photoshop Elements Manages Colours". This is something that I check every time I print. But thanks for your reply.

photosarah Loc: East Sussex, UK

bsprague wrote:

(On edit: Morningstar beat me to the enter button... (show quote)

Hi bsprague, I have replied to Morning Star, and I think the same answer would apply to your reply to my request. Thanks for the suggestion.

photosarah Loc: East Sussex, UK

Frapha wrote:

How long since you color-calibrated your monitor and/or printer?

Hi Frapha Probably not more than a month ago, but prompted by you, I thought it a good idea to do it again. So I have just done a recalibration and then printed the same image using PSE 12 and it is still coming out with the red almost black and much darker. Of course, I cannot post copies of the PSE 10 image and the PSE 12 image, because the darker copy is not saved on my computer: it just prints out much darker than the saved copy, which prints out OK through PSE 10.

photosarah Loc: East Sussex, UK

chucklavender wrote:

Use the color space equivalent to your camera's canon defaults to SRGB. Just a thought...

Chucklavender, I'm not sure what you mean, but in Colour Management it shows that it is using sRGB. Thanks.

Searcher Loc: Kent, England

This could be worth a try:

Printer Dialogue > More Options > Colour Management > Printer Profile (Remember what this box says before you move on - you may wish to put it back again.)

Run down the list and choose "Grey Gamma 1.8"

If the gamma was preset on 2.2 which most are for Windows, the print should print lighter. If it makes the print worse or makes no difference, put the printer profile back where it was.

photosarah Loc: East Sussex, UK

Searcher wrote:

This could be worth a try:

Printer Dialogue > More Options > Colour Management > Printer Profile (Remember what this box says before you move on - you may wish to put it back again.)

Run down the list and choose "Grey Gamma 1.8"

If the gamma was preset on 2.2 which most are for Windows, the print should print lighter. If it makes the print worse or makes no difference, put the printer profile back where it was.

Hello Mike I use Marrutt inks, and have my printer profiled to use their paper and inks. So I didn't think that trying Grey Gamma would work, as it would mess up the Marrutt
profile. But I gave it a go anyway just to see if that might work, and the image has printed dark green and white (like a B/W only green/white). It looks horrible! Thanks for trying though.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Avoid using the printing function in any editing software and just use Qimage Ultimate for printer control. It will simplify your life and improve the output quality over any other method other than using a RIP (raster image processor). The application is "color profile aware" so that you can load screen profiles, and printer profiles for your various papers and inks and perform a softproof using ink colors to get a close approximation of how the print will look. Best use of your time and money when printing on your own equipment.

Here is a review, which highlights its deep sharpening feature that performs sharpening without the halos that are common when you crank it up in post processing

http://www.ronmartblog.com/2013/04/qimage-2013-complex-print-layout-made.html

BillH Loc: Lancaster County PA

I was using pse9 switched to 12at Christmas. Have not done a lot of printing since but have had no problem. I also use 2 printers Epson 1430 and canon pixma pro 100. Both print fine.

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

Morning Star wrote:

The only thing I can think off, is that you let PS... (show quote)

Please do not forget, when you do this (let photoshop handle color management), to set >Color Management< to >OFF<!

robertperry Loc: Sacramento, Ca.

Is PSE set to 8 bit or 16 bit? I had a similar problem before realizing PSE was set to 8 bitt. Changed it to 16 bit and printed correctly.