(only TurboPrint Pro and TurboPrint Studio)
As the color spaces of your computer display and your printer are different (printers normally cannot reproduce as luminous colors as displays can) an exact reproduction of all colors is not possible. Therefore you need to make a compromise. It is up to you to decide how the colors of your document shall be transferred into printable colors. With some printer drivers not all rendering intents are available as they are not yet provided with new TurboPrint color profiles. If there are no TurboPrint profiles available for your printer you can generate an individual color profile - see chapter “ 10. Profiles - color profile administration ".
The following rendering intents are available:
Perception – Standard setting
The color space of the document is reduced to fit into the printer’s color space. All colors are shifted homogeneously in a way that the overall perception of the image colors will not be changed. As it is mostly the very intense colors that cannot be printed, color saturation and contrast will have to be reduced slightly. Thus the color balance of the printout will be correct.
Perception Photo – optimized for photographs
The color reproduction is optimized for digital photos. Contrast and color saturation are reduced as little as possible to achieve vivid and brilliant colors. As a consequence some details may be lost in very dark or very saturated parts of the image.
Perception Inksave - optimized for low ink consumption
Color reproduction is also optimized for digital photos, but some additional steps taken to reduce ink consumption. Ink consumption is decreased only to a certain extent to keep the image quality as high as possible. Additionally all colors are reproduced a bit “cooler” to save yellow ink and very intense colors are printed a bit less saturated.
With this setting you save on average about 20%-35% of ink without a noticeable loss in print quality. (even in comparison with the original printer driver of the printer manufacturer).
Saturation
The color reproduction is optimized for diagrams and charts but not suitable for digital images. The printer driver tries to achieve very luminous colors.
Colorimetric Absolute (TurboPrint Studio only)
This setting is designed especially for printing CMYK documents in prepress production. All colors that can be printed will be reproduced exactly. However colors that cannot be printed must be reduced in saturation. Depending on the paper used, details could be lost - especially in darker or very luminous parts of the image.
When printing standard RGB documents with this intent, only a small part of the colors can be reproduced exactly (RGB color spaces are bigger than CMYK spaces and especially many dark colors cannot be reproduced exactly). Thus this intent is not useful for printing RGB documents; RGB pictures appear too dark in this mode.
Colorimetric Relative (TurboPrint Studio only)
Same as above but in addition the white point of the document is adapted to the white point of the chosen paper. This intent should be used when printing with the „CMYK-Proof“ mode (see below).
No Correction (for printing color charts)
Color management is switched off, printed colors will not match document colors. This setting should only be chosen to print a profile chart when creating an ICC profile.
Specifies whether the printout is done in grayscale or in color. You can choose between the following options:
Grayscale
For printing grayscale documents with photos use this setting as the dithering quality is better than in the “grayscale fast” mode. Only black ink is used. The calculation of print jobs takes longer than in the ”fast” grayscale mode.
Grayscale Fast – default setting for B/W printers
This mode produces fast printouts without colors at a medium dithering quality. Use this mode with fast printers when printing larger documents.
Gray Photo
Recommended setting for high-quality black & white photos. Brighter shades of gray are printed by mixing primary colors, thus looking less grainy. On some printers also grey photo ink is used. This is the only „Gray“ mode where “Color / Grey Tone” settings take effect (e.g. to achieve a sepia color balance).
Color - RGB – default setting for color printers
This is the correct setting for printing most documents or photos in color. TurboPrint assumes that the colors of your document belong to an RGB color space (which you can specify with the “Color Space” control).
Note for professionals:
Documents that are already separated into the four standard colors “CMYK” for pre-press must be printed in “CMYK Proof” mode described below. This ensures that the colors will be processed correctly. TurboPrint cannot detect the color mode (CMYK or RGB) automatically. If you get major color deviations the reason may be that RGB mode was used with CMYK data.
Special color modes of „TurboPrint Studio“
TurboPrint Studio offers two additional color modes for printing „proofs“ in prepress production. These color modes are designed especially for printing PDF- and Postscript documents based on the CMYK color model.
CMYK Proof – only TurboPrint Studio
CMYK Proof (Mix Black) – only TurboPrint Studio
In “CMYK Proof” mode the black (“K”) color channel of the document is printed using black ink. Thus colors can reproduced more exactly.
In “CMYK Proof (Mix Black)” mode lighter shades of gray are printed by mixing primay colors. Thus shades of gray are looking less grainy.
When using CMYK color mode specify the CMYK color space with the "Color Space" control. TurboPrint cannot detect the color mode automatically.
Hint : If you get major color deviations, the reason may be that inappropriately CMYK-Proof mode was used with RGB data.
(only TurboPrint Pro and TurboPrint Studio)
This control specifies how the colors of a document will be interpreted. There exist different RGB and CMYK color spaces. Thus, to correctly interpret RGB or CMYK values TurboPrint needs to know to which color space they belong. There are different RGB and CMYK color models as they are referring to certain displays (RGB) or press colors (CMYK).
The following color models are available in TurboPrint – additional profiles can be added with the TurboPrint Toolbox:
sRGB (default setting for mode “Color”)
This is the most common RGB color space for digital photos on PCs and for digital cameras. (Gamma value approx. 2.2)
… Apple RGB
This color space is used with most Apple Macintosh computer displays. (Gamma value approx. 1.8 -> Pictures will be printed brighter than with sRGB)
If your documents are printed too dark with “sRGB” choose “AppleRGB”.
The following RGB color spaces are less common and should only be selected if your document is actually referring to the respective RGB color space.
… CIE RGB
… NTSC1953 – RGB standard of the US television system
… PAL – RGB standard of the European PAL TV system
… SMPTE-C
… WIDE RGB
Additional RGB color spaces can be added with the color profile administration menu by loading the appropriate ICC color profile (see chapter " 10. Profiles - color profile administration“.
(only TurboPrint Studio – available when printing documents in CMYK color mode)
The first three profiles are „generic“ profiles, which approximately reproduce the colors of printing presses of the corresponding region.
Additional ICC-profiles can be added with the color profile administration (e.g. a color profile provided by a printing house)
EURO (default setting in color mode „CMYK Proof“)
color space compatible to the European standard for offset printing
USA
color space compatible to the American standard for offset printing
JAPAN
color space compatible to the Japanese standard for offset printing
ISO Coated v2 (ECI)
European standard profile for offset printing - included with the kind permission of ECI, the European Color Initiative. The most current version and additional profiles are available on the web site www.eci.org.
This profile is a common standard in offset printing.
(only TurboPrint Pro / TurboPrint Studio)
Choose for which illumination the colors of your printouts shall be optimized.
Technical background:
Colors look different when illuminated with different lighting, an effect that is also known as color metamerism. The red colors of a photo look more intense when viewed in artificial lighting (e.g. a desk lamp) than when viewed in daylight. That’s why a photo may look correct in artificial light but pale when viewed in daylight - or vice versa, a picture that looks good in daylight may look reddish when viewed with a desk lamp. The intensity of this effect depends very much on the ink and is therefore not relevant for some printers.
This is also important for prepress simulation (proofing). Printouts with different printer models (and hence with different inks) can be nearly identical only at a certain type of illumination.
The illumination is specified by the color temperature. The settings range between D50 (good artificial light) and D80 (bluish daylight). The average daylight corresponds to D65.
Light with 5000K color temperature (D50) is the reference illumination for pre-press.
When printing digital photos better results are normally achieved with reference lighting set to D65 to D80 (warmer skin colors, prevention of blue color tones turning purple).
With ICC color profiles only measurement data for D50 light are available. If a different illumination is chosen an approximation will be used (chromatic adaption formula).
Change the color intensity with this slider:
Higher intensity => more vivid colors
lower intensity => less vivid colors
This setting is not effective with the rendering intents “Colorimetric Absolute” and
“Colorimetric Relative” as these intents exclude any color space modification.
Use this control to change the color or gray balance. This setting relates to the CIELab color system which describes a color by three components:
L = Brightness: 0 = black … 100 = white
A = color component 1: negative = green, positive = red
B = color component 2: negative = blue, positive = yellow
With the slider „A“ the color balance can be turned more greenish (negative values) or more reddish (positive values). Comparably the slider „B“ turns the color tuning more bluish (negative values) or yellowish (positive values).
The “Color/Grey Tone” setting is disabled when printing with the rendering intents “Colorimetric Absolute” or “Colorimetric Relative”.
Note:
Tuning the color balance slightly bluish (e.g. B = -5) does not only comply with our viewing habits (e.g. most types of paper have bluish optical brighteners) but as a side effect also reduces ink consumption (yellow is the color consumed most when printing photos). This may be a reason why many manufacturer's printer drivers print slightly bluish.