Has anyone noticed a change in the print quality from the latest version of Aperture? In particular I am printing a fall color image with a lot of yellows. It is coming out “muddy” and not crisp. For comparison, I downloaded a demo version of Imagenest. Images are coming out of Imagenest very close to the monitor representation. So it clearly appears an issue with Aperture. Additionally, it my estimation earlier prints done a few months ago didn't have an issue.
Ken,
Lots has changed in the last few months making it hard to isolate when comparing to prints that old. The first thing I’d look at is if the printer drivers are up to date.
Not to discount that it could be an Aperture problem, but let’s make sure that it can’t be fixed by updating drivers or anything else.
@PhotoJoseph
— Have you signed up for the mailing list?
I don’t believe print drivers would be the issue since I am using those drivers across different software programs. Should all be the same I would assume.
Recently, I also printed out of Pixelmator and had good results. I used Colorsync for the color management. Turned around and did the same for Aperture. Again Aperture’s colors are off.
Although I am not a printing guru, it appears the ICC profile is not being applied in Aperture. That is still somewhat mingboggling since I definitely chose the right ICC profile via Colorsync.
Ken
Ken,
Unfortunately I can’t help much since I never print myself. Maybe try creating a new user account and a new library there, just to do a test print, and see what happens?
@PhotoJoseph
— Have you signed up for the mailing list?
Butch,
Yea, I have tried both ways in the Rendering box. Put the ICC profile and put no color management. Then, made the appropriate selections in the print dialog. I have use Aperture quite a bit for printing. Really not that complicated to make the correct selections. Thus, why I am making the comment something is wrong with Aperture.
Ken … while I do not consider myself a printing expert … I do a good bit of printing. I am a little confused when you say that you are selecting the appropriate profile … but you also select ColorSync … it could be you are double profiling and/or asking for the color data to be converted or applied twice …
First, if you are selecting a paper/printer profile under the Rendering section in the Aperture print dialog box … you should select “Off No Color Adjustment in the print driver dialog (This is highlighted by the alert referenced under the profile selection of the Aperture Print dialog that warns “! Turn off color management in the print driver”) … otherwise you are invoking color management to take place twice which can really confuse the issue and never offer pleasing results.
Secondly, I notice that Aperture seems to default to “Relative Colormetric” for Rendering Intent … I have found that “Perceptual” most often renders my prints more closely to that which I see on the monitor for most inkjet prints … YMMV …