Printing and ICC paper profiles

Software RawTherapee
1

Hi there, I purchased a Canon Pixma iP8760 A3+ printer (also known as iP8720, iP8750 etc in different markets). I’m using Rawtherapee on Linux Mint 19.2 x64, editing on a Dell U2711 calibrated monitor, and have installed the Canon Linux drivers from their website - the printer is working perfectly, and using Canon papers and selecting the same paper type when I print gives a very accurate reproduction of the colour and detail I see on-screen - excellent!

Canon papers however are much more expensive than other makers, so I bought a 25 pack of Ilford Smooth Pearl 310gsm photo paper, and tried printing using a Canon paper default that by description would seem similar - it came out perfectly sharp but the colours are quite a bit darker and more muted than I hoped for compared to the on-screen appearance - it would be nice to get the colours corrected to how they appear on my monitor.

So…I downloaded an ICC for the iP8760 with Smooth Pearl paper from the Ilford website, in the hope that can be installed and I can simply choose that paper type from the list before I print, but I cannot find anywhere to place the ICC file so it appears in my list of papers when I go to print something. Can anyone shed some light on what I might need to do to get the Canon print driver finding or using that ICC, or if it is at all possible? If it isn’t I’ll simply boot into Windows and print from there.

Best regards, Chris, New Zealand

2

Hi there, antipodean!

a) What operating system are you using?
b) What software do you use for printing?

Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden

3

Here is my setup…

OS: Linux Mint 19.2 x64 running on an AMD Phenom 2 X6 PC with 8GB RAM and NVidia GTX 970 gfx driving a calibrated Dell U2711 27" IPS monitor.

Cameras: Sony A99, Sony A7S, Sony A57 - all photos shot in max resolution ARW raw format and copied to my home folder for editing

Editing Software: I edit the ARW photos in Rawtherapee 5.6 and export the final images to 16-bit TIFF.

Printer Driver: I’ve installed the Canon iP8700 series IJ Printer driver v4.1. I’ve downloaded an ICC profile from the Ilford website for the exact printer/paper combo, and copied that to the colord ICC profile folder. Gnome-Color-Manager sees the ICC when I open the Color Profile Viewer. I also tried using CUPS/Gutenprint to drive the printer, but that appears to limit the printer to 600 dpi and have no specific paper/ICC support.

Printing: I simply open the TIFF files in Xviewer (default image viewer for Mint 19.2), click File > Print, and the options for different papers can be selected from the Page Setup tab in the print dialog - there are 16 different paper types available to choose from; Plain Paper, Photo Paper Plus Glossy II, Photo Paper Pro Platinum, Photo Paper Pro Luster, Photo Paper Plus Semi-Gloss, Glossy Photo Paper, Matte Photo Paper, Other Fine Art Paper, Envelope, Hagaki A, Ink Jet Hagaki, Hagaki K, Hagaki, High Resolution Paper, T-shirt Transfers, and Other Photo Paper. If I select one of the “Other…” profiles there are no further settings I can make other than that which I can make anyway. Some of the names are definitely Canon trademark paper names, others are not, but I cannot see the Ilford ICC.

Is it possible Canon have kinda crippled their Linux driver by embedding the paper profiles and not allowing for 3rd party ICC and papers etc? Their Windows/Mac drivers for the same printer allow the use of 3rd party ICC for non-Canon papers. I’ll contact someone at Canon for feedback, as that would be useless of Canon to allow 3rd-party paper support on Mac/Windows, but not Linux.

Regards,

Chris W.

4

The ICC profiles are likely just sitting in a folder somewhere. Can you search your filesystem for the .ICC extension and you may find it

5

Hi there, I’ve installed the ICC profile in /usr/share/color/icc/colord which is the only place I can find any ICC profiles that seem to be system wide - gnome-color-manager knows its there, and the color profile viewer allows me to view how the profile will alter image appearance.

It just looks like the Canon Linux driver ignores system wide ICC profiles, and has its own paper profiles embedded - doing a file search there are no files matching the paper type names unless they’ve named them non human readable and hidden them away in some obscure location. I’ve emailed Canon support for feedback.

Regards,

Chris W.

6

I worked at Epson for a long time and our icc profiles had some funny file names. That why I suggested searching only for the file extension and seeing if you can fish the location from the results.

7

Hi there, I did a search earlier, which is how I found the colord ICC folder. I also looked at the Canon printer driver archive - it consists of a shell script installer, 4 DEB files, and some locale UTF files - looking at the DEB files in Synaptic there are no ICC files.

Hopefully Canon can throw some light on this issue, but meanwhile the Canon Pro Luster paper type profile gives me pretty close results for the Ilford Smooth Pearl paper.

Regards,

Chris W

8

Hi @Chrisblobster

Since this is a RawTherapee-related question, I moved it to the RawTherapee category.

Place the printer-paper ICC profiles in the correct folder as explained here:
http://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/Preferences#Color_Management_Tab
http://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/Editor#Monitor_Profile_and_Soft-Proofing

9

Hi @Morgan_Hardwood, I believe this topic is not related to Rawtherapee. In Rawtherapee I adjust the image to my liking viewed on my calibrated monitor, then output a 16-bit TIFF, which I then print from a viewer since Rawtherapee does not yet include printing. The problem is that whatever I see onscreen once I’ve completed my edits, I cannot closely replicate when I print because I cannot use the printer/paper combo ICC profile to select the correct paper type when using the Canon printer and it’s native driver. That has nothing to do with Rawtherapee. In Windows I could open the TIFF and select the Ilford paper type because the Windows Canon driver allows using 3rd party ICC profiles - Canon have replied to my inquiry to say that they do not support troubleshooting their own Linux driver, due to the “scattered” nature of how each distro can provide printing support, but asked to read up trying the CUPS/Gutenprint driver which could use the ICC - I’m not keen on that however as the CUPS driver severely hobbles the output resolution of the printer, limiting it to 600dpi, not the 9600*2400 it is capable of. So if anything this is a driver issue not a Rawtherapee issue.

Regards, Chris W

10

Soft-proofing is not a driver-related problem, and you can and should do it in RawTherapee if you’re using RawTherapee to process your photos, which you are. My previous reply explains the solution.