Color management issues in PDFs destined for desktop printing

[sarahl12794970]

I'm having an issue with color management and exporting PDFs in InDesign. I've watched David Blatner's tutorials on color management and print PDFs, but still can't figure out what's going wrong with my documents / workflow.

I am creating pdfs to be printed on desktop printers. I create my images in Photoshop as sRGB jpegs, which I place into InDesign. The color settings in my Indesign documents are:

Working Spaces

RGB: sRGB

CMYK: Coated FOGRA39

Color Management Policies

RGB: Preserve Embedded Profiles

CMYK: Preserve Numbers (Ignore Linked Profiles)

Image Color Settings: sRGB

When I print the document directly from InDesign the colors are more saturated than they appear on screen, but the print looks good, with nice bright colors.

When I create my PDF, I export using a modified High Quality Print setting, with the following settings:

Compatibility: Acrobat 6

Color Conversion: Convert to destination

Destination: Working RGB - sRGB

Profile Inclusion Policy: Include Destination Profile

When I print the resulting PDF, the colors are duller and less saturated than when I print directly from InDesign. However, if I change the Profile Inclusion Policy to "Don't Include Profiles" and export, the colors in the PDF change significantly on screen - they become much more saturated, and the resulting print is the same as when I print directly from InDesign.

Can someone explain why changing the Profile Inclusion Policy has such an effect on the color in the PDF? As far as I'm aware I have everything set up in sRGB, so why is this color shift happening? I prefer the print results from "Don't Include Profiles", but I'd like to understand what's going on and if there's a problem with my workflow. Thanks!

[rob day · Accepted solution]

However, if I change the Profile Inclusion Policy to "Don't Include Profiles" and export, the colors in the PDF change significantly on screen - they become much more saturated, and the resulting print is the same as when I print directly from InDesign.

If you are viewing the PDF in AcrobatPro, check its Prefs>Color Management>RGB Working space, the working space would probably handle the screen preview of RGB color with no profile.

Also, this may or may not be related, but make sure your Transparency Blend Space is set to RGB—if you have any transparency on the spread the blend space would affect the color, and the default is CMYK.

[sarahl12794970]

Thanks so much, Rob! That's where the problem was! Color Management was set to Adobe RGB in Acrobat Pro. Changing it to sRGB fixed things and now the PDF prints exactly the same as the direct print from InDesign. My next question is if Adobe RGB is the default setting for Acrobat Pro? As this is something only the end user can control I'm wondering if I should make it clear that this may be an issue if they print from Pro. I notice there are no color management settings in Acrobat Reader, and the PDF colors view and print as they should.

[Test Screen Name]

Because anything could happen with untagged colour there is really no good reason to use it. You should get the same results for any specific embedded RGB profile. If not, there maybe a problem with a device profile.

[rob day]

As this is something only the end user can control I'm wondering if I should make it clear that this may be an issue if they print from Pro. I notice there are no color management settings in Acrobat Reader, and the PDF colors view and print as they should.

That's the reason you have to include the source (sRGB profile)—AcrobatPro is only falling back to its working RGB profile because you did not embed the source profile in the PDF. I think it is probably a coincidence that you are happier with the version without the profile.

You appear to be consistently editing your images in the sRGB space and including the sRGB profile on export so any color problems really need to be addressed from the print driver—maybe the destination profile is not right?

Also, this might not matter if the problem is with the Printer Settings, but sRGB is never an ideal color space for editing in print workflows . It does not include a significant part of the blue/green spectrum that most CMYK printers are capable of printing. It's OK if you are designing for screens, but for print it will narrow the printer's color gamut capabilities.

[sarahl12794970]

I know there's a lot of debate about sRGB, but having watched David Blatner's lynda.com tutorials and asked around on other forums, sRGB seems to give the best results for desktop printers. Their drivers apparently expect it, given that most home printer users print images from the web or from mobiles. My own experimentation with using other colour profiles certainly bears this out. For commercial printing I definitely wouldn't use sRGB, but for home printing on low to mid-range printers it really does seem to give the best results. What I'm confused about is why embedding the sRGB colour profile into the PDF resulted in a different print result than printing directly from InDesign before I changed the Acrobat colour management settings. Surely if sRGB was embedded into the document, Acrobat should have ignored the Adobe RGB default?

[rob day]

Surely if sRGB was embedded into the document, Acrobat should have ignored the Adobe RGB default?

It does.

When you assign (rather than convert) to a different profile the image's displayed color appearance changes.

So here I've exported the same RGB image with no profile (left) and and with sRGB embedded (right). The image with no profile needs a source profile, but doesn't have one, so Acrobat assigns its current RGB working space, which could be anything:

With Acrobat's working space set to ProPhoto RGB

If I change the Acrobat working space to AdobeRGB, the image on the left with no profile changes, but the profiled sRGB image doesn't because it is being managed by it's embedded source profile:

With sRGB set as the working space the PDFs now match.

Changing an image's source profile assignment would change it's appearance on screen and in print, but an important concept of color management is the source profile should be different than the destination profile—sRGB and AdobeRGB are display profiles and not printer profiles. So you choose a single RGB display space to edit in and if the output color is wrong you look to change the printer's destination profile or print settings from the driver.

[sarahl12794970]

Thanks for the explanation Rob, I've clearly got a lot to learn still! 

[sarahl12794970]

There is one thing I still don't understand, Rob, and I apologize if I'm being dim! I have sRGB embedded in the document, yet the print results vary depending on the color management properties I have selected in Acrobat Pro. Choosing Adobe RGB or sRGB working spaces lead to completely different print results. How is this possible if sRGB is embedded into the document? When I examine the images in the pdf using the Object Inspector it shows that they are in sRGB regardless of the working space I've selected in Acrobat Pro, so shouldn't the printer receive that information? Why is Acrobat's working color space influencing the print results when there is an embedded profile?

[rob day]

It sounds like your printer's driver software doesn't honor embedded profiles.

That would be easy to test, try printing this PDF:

Dropbox - ProfileTest.pdf

Page one has two images with the same RGB values but different profile assignments. They have different appearances and should print differently.

Page two has an sRGB image along with a duplicate image converted to ProPhotoRGB. The images have the same appearance but different RGB values.

If the images on page 1 print the same, or the images on page 2 print differently, you know the driver doesn't correctly color manage images with embedded source profiles.

[sarahl12794970]

Thanks Rob. The images on page 1 printed differently and the images on page 2 printed the same (I tried with both Adobe RGB and sRGB selected in the color management settings of Acrobat Pro), so it seems the print driver does honor embedded profiles. I assume the issue of Acrobat's working color space influencing my PDF print results must be something that happens when I export from InDesign, but I'm at a loss to know what if I've chosen to embed the color profile at export.  

[rob day]

but I'm at a loss to know what if I've chosen to embed the color profile at export.

But you haven't embedded a profile right? That's why the AcrobatPro working space preference would have an affect—there's no profile, so Acrobat falls back to the working space. Maybe you can share the PDF that is being affected by the working space?

In my test PDF all 4 images have an embedded profile. The fact that the page two images print the same even though they have different RGB values tells me that the print driver is making a color managed conversion to the final printer profile. So I think the idea that sRGB will somehow produce better results is questionable.

I can't really help you with your printer software, but you might look at the driver's output settings—on OSX that would be in Print>Printer...>Printer Features