Color Printer Profiles

[always curious]

I'm trying to do the best job I can to get my final print to look like the monitor image monitor but am getting a bit confused I don't think I've got it right. I'm using CS3 with a Canon PIXMA 9500 printer and Ilford Galerie paper. I've got a download from Ilford that is hopefully the right profile. Where can I find out what are the right settings in photoshop and the Canon menus to best use the setup? Is anyone doing the with out there with the same printer?

Thanks and Happy Easter

[Medley]

An icc color profile combines specifications of the printer, ink, and paper to create a comprehensive profile. It is for this reason that you will seldom find a downloadable icc profile that works- there are literally millions of possible combinations!

So if you can't reliably find a color profile to download, then how do you get one? You create it. It all starts with a monitor calibration tool known as a colorimeter (and the included software!). These devices are better known by their brand names- Spyder2Pro and EyeOneDisplay2, for example. They are placed on your monitor and measure the light and color being emitted while the software displays about 30 shades each of red, green, blue, and gray. The software then compares the light and color read to known values, and adjusts the monitor to display them correctly.

But most of these devices contain software that will also allow you to print a "test" image . then you use the colorimeter to read the colors directly off the printed image, and create your profile based upon the ink, paper, and printer used. Then you need to find out where to store the icc profile so that your image editor can find it.

Once you get that done, you can open your image, find the icc profile, and tell the editor to use those colors ( making them the "known values" I referred to earlier ). In Photoshop (the only editor I have experience in) this is done by going to Edit> Convert to Profile and choosing the icc profile from the drop-down menu.

Now you've told PS to use the set of colors that your printer, ink, and paper will create. And because you've calibrated your monitor, you know that it's displaying the exact colors you will see in the print.

Using just the paper profile will take a few things into consideration- how much the ink "spreads" on the paper, and probably an adjustment for color tone (gamma).I think the biggest difference you'd see is that you could control sharpening much better. SO using just the paper profile is better than using no profile at all, but to match the colors exactly, you need to take everything into account.

Hope this helps.

- Joe U.

[drg]

There's a little more to profiling paper than what Joe (Medley) mentioned.

Yes, you need to profile your monitor, but profiling paper is another tool (or a very expensive one from Monaco that does it all) and it is a multi-day process. The test prints really need to stabilize for 24-48 hours before you can profile paper correctly. And then you make another print and wait again.

Most people who are not printing fine art or commercial quality images find that to start:

- Use a manufacturer of paper that matches your printer. In your case Canon Paper. This will minimize the variance in paper profile as it already is a know quantity to the software, printer, and ink.
- Do Profile your monitor and keep it calibrated on a regular basis.
- When changing to a new paper, try different profiles from different sources if you do not want to make your own. Be prepared to spend some money for a pro created profile if you go that route.

Consistency, consistency, consistency:
- View the final work under the same light for proofing.
- Run a small test print to clean out the jets.
- Do use new ink and always have spare ink on hand before doing anything important.
- Take notes for every parameter you change, change only one thing at time, and never change a parameter you do not know what it does!
- Be patient.

Soft Proof with a calibrated monitor in Adobe Photoshop on a system that fully supports it. Radius monitors for example were some of the first to achieve good preprint results for many of the Epson print.

Let us know how its going and there's a lot of tricks that various people may be able to help you with along the way. This however is one of those areas that to do it well, you have to do it for practice and be able to depend on your end results.

[always curious]

Thanks for all the comments -- they do help

The profile I'm trying to use is from Ilford and supposedly is tailored for the canon 9500 printer I'm using. It doesn't include the monitor of course. I'd like not to have to spend a lot of money so I don't want buy a spectrophotometer and software. Is there a cheap way to get the monitor calibrated?

What's the difference between converting to the profile and assigning the profile in photoshop? Which should I be doing?

[Medley]

Photoshop ships with (or, at least it used to) software called Adobe Gamma. This is touted as a profiling tool, but many have found it to be of dubious use at best. As near as I can tell, the best results are achieved from running the software 3 or 4 times in succession. Even then, the results I've heard about have been mixed. Some say it does a decent job, others that the result was worse than what they originally started with.

I decided to go the expensive route, but it might be worth a shot in your case.

drg: Thank you for the info. As you may have guessed, I send all my work out to be printed, and use the profiles they provide. Still, the day may come when I decide to do my own paper profiles.

- Joe U.

[drg]

Thanks for all the comments -- they do help

The profile I'm trying to use is from Ilford and supposedly is tailored for the canon 9500 printer I'm using. It doesn't include the monitor of course. I'd like not to have to spend a lot of money so I don't want buy a spectrophotometer and software. Is there a cheap way to get the monitor calibrated?

What's the difference between converting to the profile and assigning the profile in photoshop? Which should I be doing?

There are monitior calibration tools that do a good job for around $100 or less(i.e. Huey Pantone). The problem is you have to keep doing it on a regular basis. At minimum with much use of your monitor (LCD or CRT) once a week should work.

The Ilford paper profile should work quite well with a good photo for most uses. But don't tweak the image file beyond cropping or resizing. Once you start with even White Balance adjusments, it can go bad quickly with out a base for comparison. Try just printing what looks like a good image (good exposure, focus, deisred DOF, etc) without making any adjustments. Then make several adjustments one at a time to an otherwise unaltered image. Make a copy of the original photo and put it in a different folder/directory/etc so you can always start over. Take each image that has one adjustment and reduce them in size so you can print a 'proof' sheet with 4,5, 6 or more images on the same sheet of paper. Include as one of the proof the unaltered (except size) original as one for side by side comparison.

That's one way to see what changes will give you without a lot of playing with monitors and lighting, but it can get just as expensive in ink and paper figuring out what you need to do exactly.

In regard to your assignment vs conversion of the profile question:

- Is this option coming up in a 'printer' dialogue or,
- Is this coming up in a Color Management dialogue/option?

If this comes up in the printer dialogue, check your Color Management options to make sure you are not trying to have both the printer and the software manage color. It will be funky at best and maybe striped (or something else extremley bad).

Assignment means you are attaching the profile to the image (as in a layer) and conversion means you are converting the 'working' image to that profile for its baseline for future use.

I'd recommend you only 'assign' the profile. Conversion can mess up your entire image. Another reason for copies!

If the question/option comes up elsewhere, I'm going to have to look it up.