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I've been a longtime user of Photoshop, and I've been teaching others how to use the program to prepare and output their images for more than 15 years. Over the last few years, Photoshop's Print dialog box has evolved, and new features have been added, such as soft proofing, which is the ability to see a representation of what your photo might look like on the screen before printing a "hard proof," or print on paper or other material. In this article, I will cover a specific change that Adobe has made inside the Print dialog in Photoshop CS5, and I'll offer a step-by-step approach for navigating the new Print dialog box.

To be a bit more specific, I'll be covering the Print dialog box in Photoshop CS5 on the Mac–I'm currently using Snow Leopard (a.k.a Mac OS 10.6). The Windows version of Photoshop CS5 is a bit different when it comes to the way in which driver information is entered after making selections in the Print dialog, and that's a discussion for a possible future article.

The Change Described

When I made my first print using Photoshop CS5's new Print dialog box (accessible via File>Print), I was surprised to see that the "Print Settings…" button (circled in blue, above) in the middle of the screen was changed from the Photoshop CS3/CS4 option called "Page Setup…". When pressed, it now launches a new window that combines the features of both the "Page Setup.." button and the "Print…" button from the Print dialog in Photoshop CS3/CS4. The "Print…" button has been, and continues to be, in the lower-right corner of the Print dialog (circled in red, above). However, its role has changed. It now just tells the printer to start printing. If you are not aware of this change, there is a good chance that your prints will come out without the proper print settings, such as paper type, resolution, etc.

How to Deal with This Change

The best way I've found to get proper results is to follow this approach:

1. First select your printer in Photoshop CS5's Print dialog above the "Print Settings…" button (circled in blue, above).
2. Then set your Color Management settings in Photoshop CS5's Print dialog box. For example, choose "Photoshop Manages Colors" and select a Printer Profile and Rendering Intent as I show on the right side of the screen shot above under "Color Handling."
3. Then press "Print Settings..." and choose your printer again at the top of the new dialog box if it is not listed already.
4. Then choose your paper size and any related options that may appear next to specific paper sizes such as Rear Feed, Borderless, etc.
5. Next, choose the specific printer options you'd like to use. For example, "Printer Settings" is what Epson calls the section that contains resolution, paper type, color management info, etc. I also highly recommend saving the options you just set under the "Presets" section, preferably with a name that described the printer, paper and any other important settings.
6. Then Press "Save" in the bottom right corner of the dialog box.
7. Then Press "Print…" from inside Photoshop CS5's Print dialog box (circled in red, above), and enjoy the fruits of your labor!

Some Extra Info

There is another notable change in the Photoshop CS5 Print Dialog Box, and that can be found under "Color Management" (circled in green, above). Choosing "No Color Management" is no longer an option through Photoshop's CS5's Print dialog box. The main reason for turning off color management is to print targets for making custom output profiles, which often helps to improve the color accuracy and quality of a printer's output. Adobe has published a few workarounds for this issue here (I have been using Solution 3 (null transform) with very good results).