Printing an Image from Photoshop: Photoshop vs. the Driver

When you print from Photoshop to an ink-jet or other high-quality printer, you will control part of the printing from within the Photoshop print dialog box and part from within the print driver dialog. You will want to be consistent with your print setups to achieve consistent high-quality results. Let’s run through an example:

1. Open an image in Photoshop CS3.
2. Choose File ➢Print. The Print dialog box appears. You will note that Photoshop CS3 uses a print-with-preview dialog as its default window.
3. The first step is to assign the printer to which you will be printing. Click the Printer menu at the top of the Print dialog box. Choose the printer you want to use, here Stylus Photo R2400. (If you will be printing multiple images to this printer, you might want to set this as your default printer in your printer utility.)
4. Click the menu in the upper-right corner of the Print dialog box and choose Color Management rather than Output. You would choose Output if you wanted to control commercial print output of this specific image from within Photoshop by setting printer marks and so forth from here. This is typically accomplished through a page layout document such as InDesign, where you are outputting multiple images and their accompanying type in a composite document.
5. Click the Document button located under the Print subtitle rather than Proof. You would select Proof if you wanted to print a proof of this image in order to simulate its appearance on another device.
6. Click the Color Handling menu and choose Photoshop Manages Color. Allowing Photoshop to manage the color will allow you to choose either a paper-specific profile (here) or a custom color profile if you have created one for your system. Note: If you choose Photoshop to manage the color, it is critical to deactivate the color management in the printer
driver (see steps 13 and 14).
7. Now click the Printer Profile menu. Choose the color management profile that most closely matches the output device to which you will be printing. This should be either a paper-specific profile (shown here) or a custom profile you have created by using profile creation software based on your printer, inks, and paper. Here I have selected SPR2400 Premium Luster, one of my favorite papers for printing larger-format images.
8. Now click the Rendering Intent menu. Choose Perceptual for most continuous tone images, because this will maintain the relative tonal value differences between colors as they are mapped from the RGB color gamut to the gamut of the printer/paper you have specified. Relative Colorimetric is another choice that some color management systems specify for continuous tone images. That option provides a more accurate numeric color match, but one not necessarily as visually pleasing, than the perceptual choice. The Relative Colorimetric choice is often used for proofing. For most continuous tone images, you will want to avoid Saturation (used for flat color images such as pie charts) and Absolute Colorimetric
(used in some proofing systems for precise color value matching).
9. Select the Black Point Compensation check box. This will map the black tonal values in your original image to black in the final print, thereby helping to maintain the original contrast in the image.
10. Click the Page Setup button. The Page Setup dialog box appears. From the Format For menu, select the printer you will be using. From the Paper Size menu, select the dimensions of the paper on which you will be printing: 8 × 10 in (Sheet Feeder – Borderless). Note: Borderless prints are often separate selections from bordered prints.
11. Select the Orientation and Scale for your print, and click OK to close this Print Setup dialog box.
12. Now back in the Print dialog box, in the Position section, you can position your image on the print page, and in the Scale Print Size area assign the scaling you would like to apply.
13. Click the Print button, and the Printer Specific Print dialog box appears. This is the dialog box you use to control the printer driver. This dialog will vary depending on your specific printer—in fact, it might vary greatly. However, there should always be two options available that you should pay close attention to: Print Setting and Color Management.
14. Click the third menu down and choose Color Management. Select the Off (No Color Adjustment) radio button. This is a critical setting to deactivate, because this will prevent any conflicts with the Color Management controls you activated in Photoshop. Again, your driver’s dialog box will probably look different from this one, and you’ll have
to hunt for these options.
15. Now select Print Settings from the same menu. Choose the paper on which you will be printing—here, Premium Luster. Choose the Print Mode (here, Color). You will typically have some print quality controls. Click the Print button to initiate the printing process.