Everything you say is correct - but unfortunately there is no way to use the ICC profile within Linux darktable. I spent many hours looking into this a couple of years ago.
I should add that I really haven’t noticed any colour issues by not using ICC.
I usually use the corresponding paper from TurboPrint. That is a matte, smooth pearl or glossy paper. But I try to use the paper supported for my printer (the Canon Pro 1000 driver comes with many supported papers).
The last option is that you can ask to have your paper profiled by TurboPrint (never done that) but I kind of remember that it was not too expansive.
Hello-
I just installed a trial of Turboprint on Fedora workstation to drive my Epson 8550. What I’ve found after playing around with it today is that you cannot use paper mfr’s icc’s with it, you can only choose similar media types. The option exists to have Turboprint make them for you. According to Turboprint, the icc targets need to be processed via the same driver and media settings to be valid.
I came to Turboprint after spending a day with Window10 printing to this printer using Epson’s Print Layout tool, which does allow using paper mfg’s icc’s. I tested with RedRiver papers and got very good results on their UltraGloss, UltraSatin, and Lustre.
The prints from the Linux/Turboprint profiles also looked good, and I had my best results printing jpgs from digiKam. I tried darkTable, had bad results, looked like the print’s came out at a very low quality setting, but it might have been a problem with settings in the Turboprint driver. GIMP wasn’t bad, just a little light.
All of the software on both the Windows side (Epson Print Layout), and in Linux had issues consistently remembering settings. It’s a long checklist of settings to double-check in order to get the best results.
When I did this in a production environment, we either used a RIP that could be set up with specific media/color/size specifications. If we were printing via an application (usually an Adobe CS application), we kept hard copies checklists and screen shots at all the workstations sending jobs.
I’ll probably use different paths for different projects, and keep some hard copies handy.
It’s amazing how so little has changed in printmaking over the past decade.
I recently used a fairly warm-white paper, and noticed that the ICC profile compensated by printing with a blueish tint. If instead I printed in the printer’s black-and-white mode without the ICC profile, it preserved the warm appearance.
This makes sense; the ICC profile normalizes all color to calibrated neutrality. But doing so of course negates some of the differences between papers.
I think I’ll experiment with ICC-less printing. After all, I’m not trying to reproduce an artwork with perfect color accuracy. Instead, I’m trying to make compelling images. In some sense, ICCs may actually limit my creative choices here instead of helping.