James P. Jones || Photographer

I have spent the last hour or so printing out a dozen test prints for a client meeting that I am to have this afternoon. For this reason, I am going to be brief and to the point. I am having a color problem with Photoshop CS4.

I had heard from my uncle Bill who had upgraded a week before me that when he switched to CS4 his prints didn't look right. I didn't really think about it until I went to print out a draft comp for a client just now. I have removed the logo from the images.

Working from a monitor calibrated this morning I went to print out the draft comp for out client. The results were brown. I followed my usual process, the only exception being that I have just started to use CS4. I am printing an Adobe RGB image with almost everything in gamut (including the red swish). I printed 2 luster prints (approximating the ultimate format these will be used in). Brown. I think it could be the Epson profile for luster, so I switch to heavyweight matte. Print. Same thing. Switch to relative colorimetric as opposed to my usual perceptual. Brown. Turn off black point compensation. Same thing. Now, I haven't tried absolute colorimetric. But, I don't like using absolute colorimetric as it will squish the colors.

I did notice that in proofing, if I turned on "preserve numbers" then my screen showed the ugly brown as opposed to red. But, then switching over to perceptual or relative colorimetric all was well.

Finally I gave up and let the printer determine colors. I was beginning to think the printer couldn't do a hot red. But, bam. Hot red - much closer overall to the screen image. So, maybe it isn't the printer. I look for new Epson profiles to no avail.

Finally, I boot up the old CS2 Photoshop. Same settings, same profile, near perfect results. I don't know what it means except that CS4 is misbehaving for me or I am just not getting something in the new workflow.

I'm not posting the source image yet, but when I can I will. Trust me that image on the right is the closest by far.

UPDATE - let me know if this works for you; it worked for me. Many thanks to Gerald

Had exactly the same experience as you with Photoshop CS4. Called Adobe and tech support had many thoughts. However, one seemed to work.
Strangely enough, in the Systems Preferences PRINT AND FAX module, I reset the printer I was using as my default printer. Then, I went back to Photoshop and printed out exactly as before and the color management was correct this time.
Tech support at Adobe said someone else solved the same problem using this technique.
I will continue to test. In any case, there is definitely a bug here.
Gerald Van Kollenburg