Aperture printing problem with newest version

[khenke]

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. Prints are 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. Did the same with Pixelmator. Used the Colorsync color management to select my ICC profile and is worked as expected. Tried the same with Aperture using Colorsync and again the colors are muddy. If I had to describe the results, I would say the ICC profile is not being applied in Aperture.
So it clearly appears an issue with Aperture. Additionally, in my estimation earlier prints done a few months ago didn't have an issue.

[RobSaecker]

Can't say I'm seeing that, though I haven't tried to print anything with lots of bright colors recently.

You've double checked settings in the Aperture print dialog and the print driver dialog?

[Kenneth Sky]

I've had the same results using my HP B9180 and had to switch to LR4 for printing.

[khenke]

Yea, I have checked printed, checked printed, etc. So, I don't believe there is any issue with settings. Particularly, since I used the same setting for Imagenest and Pixelmator. Since first posting I also printed from Qimage with good results as well. I absolutely love Aperture's DAM features. But the rest is starting to wear old.

[RobSaecker]

Just ran some tests: AP3.4 vs. PSE8 vs. Pixelmator. There are differences between Aperture and PSE, but they're subtle. And I can't find any way to make PSE use Color Sync profiles, it seems to be limited to the built-in profiles.

Aperture and Pixelmator show significant differences when Px is using the proper paper profile, but they look almost identical using AdobeRGB in Px. So yeah, it looks like Ap is using AdobeRGB even when you have something else specified in the print dialog.

I'm wondering if this might be fixed by trashing Aperture prefs and/or the Aperture cache, if anyone else feels like testing.

Uh oh, now I've done it. I changed the color profile in the Ap print dialog, hit print and save for the print preset to force Ap prefs to update, but canceled in the printer dialog because I didn't want to use another sheet of paper. That dumped me back into the Ap print dialog, but both the cancel and print buttons just beep at me, nothing happens. And you can't do anything else in Ap until you get rid the print dialog. Sigh…

Update: deleting prefs and cache hasn't helped. But the profile I had been using was still selected in the Ap print dialog, so apparently that's stored somewhere else. Doesn't look like it's in any of the printer prefs, so I don't know what to try next, other than send feedback to Apple.

[DennisAnderson]

Hi,

Are you selecting an appropriate profile as well as ColorSync? I guess it could be you are double profiling and/or asking for the color data to be applied twice... This way it would not print good result.

-Dennis

[RobSaecker]

Are you selecting an appropriate profile as well as ColorSync? I guess it could be you are double profiling and/or asking for the color data to be applied twice... This way it would not print good result.

-Dennis

Nothing has changed in my printing workflow from what worked properly in earlier versions.