Calibrate Your Display to Get the Best from Your Printer

Utilizing a customized ICC profile with your printer is among the smartest measures you can consider to strengthen your digital printing workflow, particularly if you happen to be a photographer - or maybe just an avid hobbyist who realizes the value of obtaining the most precise color possible from your printer. But being able to see accurately printed color depends on the ability to see accurate color on your display monitor, as well. Before it is possible to enjoy the full power of effectively making use of a profile with your printer, you ought to calibrate and profile your display monitor. You can print perfectly true color from your printer with great consistency, but it is not going to appear correct to you as long as you continue to use a display that has not been precisely calibrated and profiled.

A monitor profile enables ICC-aware software programs - like Photoshop - to accurately present your image's color. To realize an equivalent appearance in print, the existing color data must be translated to the acceptable output values for your printer, and whatever combination of paper and ink you choose 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 offer you mostly passable results, but they may not always accurately represent the behavior of your individual printer. I am a powerful proponent of getting rid of those canned profiles in favor of using a custom printer profile instead. In my opinion, the suitable implementation of a custom printer profile into your digital printing workflow is an essential step in matching your display with your printed output.

Almost always, your display is capable of reproducing a larger range of colors (wider gamut) than your printer. This is much more true today, with the rapid switch from legacy CRT monitors to more modern LCD displays. As a result, it is just about impossible to adjust a printed image to look like your display; but rather, we strive to make your display look like the print instead. Achieving this requires that you send the image through the printer profile, and back through the monitor profile, so you can see an emulation of your printed image on your computer's display. This is referred to as "soft proofing. This feature is available in a number of popular third-party applications, like Photoshop, Qimage, Aperture, and others. Pretty neat! Soft proofing allows you to simulate your printer's output and helps you to obtain the proper screen to printer color matching.

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

Unhappy with your computer prints? Did you acquire a high-end printer, and it just does not deliver the great output you count on? Well... the problem is probably not your printer.

Rick Ashford is a photographer and also a skilled color management specialist whose online printer profiling services will help you jumpstart the quality and color accuracy of your printer's output. Visit Rick's website for more info, and to let him help you improve your printing.

http://profilesbyrick.com