W Robb wrote:
All I can tell you is how I work. My situation is perhaps a bit different from yours. I have a lot of experience dealing with colour theory that you may not have. All that is moot however.
Quite true I'm sure.
Calibrate your monitor using Adobe Gamma. Import an image file into Photoshop and make it look right on the screen. Print it and look at the print. Don't worry about if you get a match to the screen, that doesn't matter. The screen is not the print, and vice versa. Is the print to light, to dark, to red, etc. Decide how the print is wrong, and adjust the printer driver to oppose the colour/density problem. Don't worry if you get it wrong, in fact, try to deliberately overadjust, that way you will know you have gone far enough. Make another print and look at it. Is the colour cast/ density problem gone? Have you perhaps succeeded in over correcting? Now you have a couple of prints to look at, and you know how much of a correction you made, and how much change it created. You have just learned something about colour theory. Go back into the printer driver and make another correction, and make another print. By now, you should have a pretty good looking print in your hands, but you may want to make one or two more tweaks to make sure you have it right.
Save the adjusted driver setting as whatever paper you are using.
You have just successfully profiled that paper to your printer, using your inks, and in your situation. Not someone elses idea of what it should be. And you have learned something in the process that will serve you well down the road.
I admit I don't make a lot of inkjet prints, I can make em at work a whole lot cheaper and better, but.... a buddy of mine does a lot of inkjet prints, probably a dozen or more a week. He has this down to a fine science. He knows how to profile his printer to a new paper so that his second print out of the package is perfect, not the slightly off that you get (and get used to) by using a prepackaged profile that isn't taking your own equipment into account. Even if you buy profiles, you will probably still have to tweak them to get them right.
William Robb
Thanks Bill... I know part of my problem in the past hase been an uncalibrated monitor and probably the fact that the Epson 800 is, what 5 years old by now, and not a "photo" printer. It also probably doesn't help that I usually get around to doing this about 10:00 PM after several glassses of wine.
BTW, there is an excellent New Zealand Pinot Noir, Twin Islands (if not that then Twin Rivers), that I have grown fond of. It's a very fruity and easy to drink red for the summer. Try slightly cool. Yum.
Tom C.
