7.1
2013-09-23

Color Settings

Color Management compares the color space in which a color was created to the color space in which the same color will be outputted, and makes the necessary adjustments to represent the color as consistently as possible.

The Color Settings section applies only to this document. When changing these options, they are saved with your document and may change when opening or creating a new document.

PrintShop Mail Color Management is designed to accurately display the same on-screen color as the color on the printed output. When you install PrintShop Mail, the color space profiles (Adobe ICC Profiles) will be installed in "Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color\" . When staring PrintShop Mail, the application will load the profiles allowing you to define colors for the different objects placed in your document.

PrintShop Mail handles the Color Management at two levels:

  1. PrintShop Mail originated colors. The colors defined in PrintShop Mail for objects, like border color, fill color and text color.
  2. PrintShop Mail Embedded Color Management. The colors defined for certain image file types, like TIFF, EPS, JPG

PrintShop Mail does not change the Color Management of your image, if your image files have embedded color profiles, these colors will not be overruled by PrintShop Mail’s Color Management.

To enable Color Management:

From the Edit menu, select Preferences or press Ctrl+K and click on the Colors icon.

  1. Check the option “Enable color management”.
  2. In the working space section select your desired color profile.
  3. Click Apply.

When Color Management is enabled it is possible to change the working spaces profiles, which allows for colors to be adjusted.

The default working space color profiles settings are:

For example

Suppose you have a colored text box with the following CMYK values:

These values are an indication of the color intended to be printed, but because of the different monitors, printers, inks, types of paper these values may yield a different color on the printed output.

To avoid this, Color Management translates colors with the help of color profiles.

The colored object will change slightly depending on the chosen color profile, but in the Properties panel the CMYK values for that color will stay the same.

Rendering

Rendering is the process of converting one color space to another color space. The result of choosing a rendering intent depends on the content of documents and on the profiles used to specify color spaces. Some profiles produce identical results for different rendering intents. Differences between rendering intents are apparent only when you print a document or convert it to a different color space.

The following rendering intent options are available:

In a Color Management workflow, you can use the precision of color profiles to soft proof your document directly on the monitor. You can display an on-screen preview of how your document’s colors will look when reproduced on a particular output device. The reliability of the soft proof depends upon the quality of your monitor, the profiles of your monitor and output devices. To preview how the color will look when printed, select Print Preview and click ColorSoft proof.

Soft proof colors show the color profile defined in the Color Management.

This feature is enabled when Color Management is activated.

Color Management for on-screen preview is different from Color Management reproduced in a particular output device. You have more control over the appearance of the document on a particular output device than with on-screen preview, because your document may appear on a wide range of possible uncalibrated monitors and video display systems which limits control over the color consistency.

To control the color consistency it is possible to assign a color profile to the monitor. In a workflow such a profile would be provided by the monitor manufacturer or the profile would be created using specialized equipment that measures the monitor's color space.

To provide a practical means for color consistency, you can change the monitor color profile to match your output device. To do this:

Windows 2000 and Windows XP

  1. In the Control Panel, select Display.
  2. Click on the Setting tab.
  3. Click on Advanced
  4. Select the “Color Management” tab.
  5. Click on Add, to add the desired monitor color profile for your documents

You need to restart PrintShop Mail for the changes to take effect.

Windows Vista

  1. In the Control Panel, select Personalization.
  2. Select Display Settings from the list.
  3. Click on the Advanced Setting tab.
  4. Select the “Color Management” tab.
    Here you can add color profiles for each device on your system (monitor and printers).
  5. Click on the Advanced tab and from the drop down menus select the desired color profiles.