"Match Print Colors" in CS3

Eric - In your excellent article on printing, you state that you use CS2. In CS3, when you click on the "Print" option, there is an option on the left bottom of the dialog page that says: "Match Print Colors". The apparent default is to have this box checked. My question is, should this box be checked and why? When I uncheck this box with the dialog box still up, the image thumbnail changes considerably(gets much brighter). Thanks.

Hi Bill,

The "Match Print Colors" box only affects the preview in the Print box. In other words, when you check this box, the image shown in the little preview box will have its colors adjusted to give you an idea of what the image's colors and tones will look like when printed. If you uncheck this box, then you will still see an image in the preview, but its colors may be quite off. The actual printing of the image is not affected by the "Match Print Colors" box.

I have been told, however, that even though the Print box in CS3 is now properly color-managed so that when the "Match Print Colors" box is checked you can see a color-managed preview, there are bugs or deficiencies in Adobe's implementation, so that it isn't very accurate. I can't check this for myself because I don't have CS3, but in the meantime I would simply recommend that you use Photoshop's main soft-proofing feature (as described in my article) to give you the real preview. Then, in the CS3 Print box, ignore the colors that you see in the preview, regardless of whether you leave "Match Print Colors" on or off, and just use the preview to check image placement on the page.

Thanks Eric.