Can't get Dry Creek Printer Profile to register on Mac OS Sierra after install

[lukeb72569479]

Love costco but my pictures are printing out like original without Lightroom edits. I have spent hours trying to figure out to install dry creek into my computer and after finally getting it the photos still show up like the orginals on Costcos website. Anybody had this happen or know how to fix it?

thank you

[Benjamin Root]

What type of files are you uploading?

[lukeb72569479]

Tiff and jpg

On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 7:37 PM Benjamin Root <forums_noreply@adobe.com>

[Benjamin Root]

The edits should be baked into the image and cannot be reversed. Unless, of course, you have edited TIFF and JPEG files in Lightroom without exporting a copy with the edits. In that case, the edits will reside within Lightroom itself and no other program will show the edits.

[Jao vdL · Accepted solution]

The way to use the dry creek profiles is to copy them into your ~/Library/ColorSync/Profiles folder. You can then export your images to jpegs in that profile from Lightroom after you selected it in "other" in the profile popup in export. You do not want to use tiff as there is no visible gain in quality but generally you should use jpegs at 300 ppi and quality around 85. You also want to apply output sharpening for the type of print (glossy or matte). You generally want to use perceptual intent with these profiles. Now the hard part comes. The costco printers do not like the profiles actually included in the files. I've tested this extensively and you really want to strip the profile from the file at least with the machines they have at my local costco. Unfortunately Lightroom always includes the profile and you cannot force it to not embed it. This balloons your file size by 1 MB for every picture and at best it gets ignored by the printer or at worst it leads to incorrect color because it will correct the image back to sRGB and send that to be printed which leads to incorrect color (albeit probably not noticeably different by most people). You have to now strip the profile from the files. This can be done in Photoshop, by opening and hitting save as and unchecking "include profile". You can generate an action that automatically runs when exporting. Last but not least, turn off the color correction in costco's photo center.

Bottomline when printing to costco best option is to output to a image sized at 300ppi at the print size, output sharpened, and in the dry creek profile. You then need to strip that profile.

Second best option is to ignore all this and just output to sRGB at 300 ppi and output sharpened. It will be quite hard to see the difference for most people but it is the fastest and simplest option. Generally it will make your prints slightly more contrasty than on a correctly calibrated monitor but will be pretty close in color.

All this is moot if you don't calibrate your own display by the way. If you don't calibrate, don't bother with the dry creek profiles.