Calibrate Your Display screen to Get the Most from Your Printer

Making use of a custom ICC profile along with your printer is one of the smartest actions you can take to improve your digital printing workflow, particularly if you happen to be a skilled photographer - or possibly just an enthusiast who understands the benefit of achieving the most precise color possible from your printer. But getting accurately printed color goes hand-in-hand with seeing accurate color on your display monitor. Before it is possible to experience the full power of effectively utilizing a profile together with your printer, you should first calibrate and profile your display monitor. You may be able to print perfectly accurate color from your printer with great consistency, but it is not going to appear correct to your eye if you persist in using a display which has not been precisely calibrated and profiled.

A monitor profile permits ICC-aware software programs - like Photoshop - to accurately display your image's color via your monitor. To achieve an identical appearance in print, the existing color data has to be translated to the legitimate output values for your printer, and whatever combination of paper and ink you decide to use. The function of your printer profile is to accurately translate the appearance of ink that is laid down on the paper. Canned or generic profiles from printer or paper manufacturers may convey mostly passable results, but they will not always accurately represent the behavior of your particular printer. I am a strong advocate for getting rid of those canned profiles in favor of using a custom printer profile, which is a much better alternative. In my opinion, the appropriate integration of a custom printer profile into your digital printing workflow is a critical step in matching your monitor with your printed output.

Usually, your display is able to reproduce a larger range of colors (wider gamut) than your printer. This is becoming even more true today, given the rapid transition from legacy CRT monitors to state-of-the-art LCD displays. Consequently, it is just about impossible to adjust a printed image to make it look like your display; but rather, we strive to make the output from your display resemble the print instead. Achieving this involves sending the image through the printer profile, then back through the monitor profile, so you will see a simulation of your printed image on your computer's display. This is generally known as "soft proofing." This functionality is available in a number of common third-party applications, like Photoshop, Qimage, Aperture, and others. Pretty ingenious! Soft proofing allows you to simulate your printer's output on your monitor and helps you to realize the very best monitor to printer color matching.

Calibrating your display is possibly the easiest and least expensive part of developing a strong color management system. If you haven't accomplished this step already, it is something you should try to do either before - or at the same time as - profiling your printer. Making use of a printer profile will only squander your time if you lack the ability to match your monitor's output to your printer. You will find some very good display calibration devices and software packages available online. Listed here are just a few: Spyder3 by DataColor (a variety of versions and price points), also various versions of Pantone Huey, and X-Rite's i1 (Eye-One) Display software. All of these systems come with a precision colorimeter device for accurate monitor calibrations, and software that will help you create a custom monitor profile. The software packages listed here are major players in this arena, and all provide very good results at a reasonable price. But there are certainly others you may want to check out. All of these systems provide in depth information about the display settings you will need to use so as to view images on your monitor with unyielding color accuracy.