[scribus] Colors of Scribus documents on a ColorLaserjet

[Hal V. Engel]

On Friday 12 June 2009 06:00:44 am Gregory Pittman wrote:
> Frank Pieczynski wrote:
> > Hi *,
> > I need some help with printing.
> > Im using Scribus 1.3.3.12 on Linux, printing system is cups. The
> > printer is a HP ColorLaserJet with Postscript.
> >
> > If I print photo jpegs with scribus, the colors are looking very bad -
> > very pale. I tried with color management 'on' and 'off' (Document
> > settings). The ICC profile of the printer is the official one provided
> > by HP. 

These profiles are always device dependent.  The device includes the device 
drivers so the HP supplied profile like all printer profiles is specific to 
one driver which is likely the Windows driver.  Actually it is more correct to 
say the the profile is specific to one printer, driver, media and driver 
settings combination.

> > For the jepgs taken by a Panasonic Lumix I don't have one, so I
> > let the default.

And what is the default profile you are using?  And why don't you create a 
profile for this device so that you have a valid one?  It's not hard to do and 
only requires getting a profiling target and a little effort.

> >
> > Now the interesting part of the story:
> > If I print the same picture included in a kword document (office part
> > of KDE) on the same printer with the same printing system it is
> > looking MUCH better! So the printer is able to print better.
> >
> > But I like to use scribus, because kword gives less control over the
> > document. The postscripts code is much more bigger, so the printer
> > needs much longer to process such kword PS than a scribus PS.
> >
> > I guess kword is not supporting lcms, but shouldn't the result be the
> > same with color management 'off' in scribus?
> > What can I do to improve the output?
> >
> > May be this is related to the cups options (visible in printing
> > dialog, 'Options' button after the printer selection box). I let the
> > default there, but the same is valid for kword.
> >
> > Thanks for help and suggestions!
>
> Look at the Color tab in PDF Export that says, "Output intended for: "
> where your choices are Screen/Web or Printer.
> In many cases, you will want to use Screen/Web. The Printer setting is
> for when you send to a commercial printer.

Actually I would expect this to be for when you know the actual color space of 
the printer or the color space that the printing service expects the document 
to be in.  In cases where you don't have valid profiles, which is the case 
here, then Web (sRGB) output may be the best choice.

Hal