Installing and Using Printer Profiles

This workshop will explain how to install and use your custom print profiles.
It would be beneficial to read the complete workshop before you attempt to follow the procedure. If you would like a print out to read, please follow the links at the end of this workshop

Step 1: If you have Photoshop open on your computer, close it down before you continue with this workshop.

Step 2: If you have received your print profile by email, firstly you need to save the ICC Profile attachment to a convenient location on your computer, where you will be able to locate it later in this workshop. If you have collected your print profile on a key/pen drive you will also need to transfer the ICC profile from your key/pen drive to a convenient location on your computer, where you will be able to locate it later in this workshop. For the purpose of this workshop my ICC profile name is “NCC001_R2400_Epson_Fuji_Prem_Gloss” (your profile name will differ slightly, but will start with the “NCC” prefix) which I have saved to a “Temporary Files” folder within “My Documents”.

Step 3: Open up “Windows Explorer”. A quick way of doing this is to click the right hand mouse button on the “Start” button in the bottom left hand corner of your computer screen. In the flyout menu box, left click on “Explore”. Now you are in the “Windows Explorer” section of your computer. You now need to locate the ICC profile you have just saved from email or transfer from a key/pen drive. My profile is located in a “Temporary Files” folder within “My Documents”.

Your Windows Explorer may be visually different to this view, this is due to the way your Windows system is set up.

Step 4: Next we need to install the ICC profile. To do this, click your right hand mouse button on the ICC profile name within Windows explorer. This will open up a flyout menu box. At the top of the menu box you will see “Install Profile”.

Step 5: With your left hand mouse button click on “Install Profile”. This will automatically install the ICC profile into the correct location on your computer. If no warning or failed install messages appear after clicking “Install Profile”, your profile has been installed correctly and will be made available to use for printing within Photoshop.
If the profile fails to install correctly more experienced users could manually transfer the profile into the following folder within Windows, C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\drivers\colour. If you are having problems and you are unable to install the profile, please contact one of your colour management club members.
The profile is now installed and ready to use.

Using Printer Profiles
At the start of the “How to get a print profile” workshop we changed our Photoshop colour settings to use “sRGB ICE61966-2.1” working space, so now occasionally when opening images in Photoshop we may be faced with an Embedded Profile Mismatch or Missing Profile warning. Various options are given, in general go for the “sRGB” colour option. Under no circumstances choose the “Don’t Colour Manage” option. This is only used for printing the profile targets.

Note: When we printed the target profile it was printed as a portrait. If you are printing landscape images I would recommend that you rotate the image into a portrait before printing, by going to Image/Rotate Canvas>90 CW. This will save a lot of confusion when using the custom settings.