Digital BW, The Print

----- Original Message -----
From: <tfinan@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2003 2:33 PM
Subject: [Digital BW] Calibrating monitor to printer output?


> Can anyone either recommend a solution for calibrating my onscreen
> image with my printed output, or point me to online help or a manual
> workflow to get through it?
>
> I'm using a Sony 21" E540 monitor, Epson 2200, and Windows XP
> (Home).  The colors I'm getting from the Epson are beautiful,
> particularly on the glossy papers, but the color is way off what I'm
> seeing on the screen. I realize there will always be a discrepancy
> between the luminance of the screen and the color on printed paper,
> but I'd at least like to get it in the ball park.  Is this possible?
>
> BTW, I know someone who purchased the Colorvision Spyder system, but
> was not very happy with the results.

This is a two part process and what you are trying to do ideally is
calibrate both the monitor and the printer to the color space you are
working in. The first step is to calibrate your monitor and I have been
using Optical with a Sypder and it is very accurate allowing you to even
adjust the color temperature of the monitor.

Once the monitor is calibrated you have to calibrate the printer output.
This is done by creating a profile for each ink, print and paper combination
you want to use. You can purchase custom made profiles from various places,
a RIP with profiles or purchase your own profiling software. The rub with
buying your own software is that you will also need a way to accurately
measure the color output of the printer. Some of the low end programs let
you use a flatbed scanner to do this but the results are mixed. Seems to
work for some but not all. To accurately measure the printer output you need
a spectrophotometer and they start at about $700 but a decent one will cost
over a $1,000. When you purchase a custom profile they should be using
instruments that cost several thousand dollars.

In the end these printer profiles will only be good for color printing and
not very accurate for B&W work. Fortunately there is a simple and free
method of getting a pretty good B&W preview on screen using a the Custom Dot
Gain Curve and Soft Proof tools in Photoshop.

See the file "Matching Your Monitor view to Your Prints" in folder " Image
process" in the Files section of group's homepage for Tyler Boley's
instructions. You could also use a scanner or densitometer and calculate
Dot% values to use.

Martin Wesley