The first step in profiling your printer is to buy the tools suitable for the job, or download our instructions for our Printer Profiling Service! (Don’t forget we have bundles of Monitor and Printer Profiling tools!)

All the tools, e.g. ColorVision Spyder2 (and related bundles) or the Gretag Macbeth i1 equipment come with software that will take you through the process step-by-step. Though printer profiling tends to be a little bit more of a minefield than monitor profiling... as the sheer range of products and their capabilities varies widely.

Generally speaking, profiling your printer takes the following steps:

• Run the software, and print out some very specific colour ‘swatches’ using the printer, paper and ink that you are profiling;
• Measure the actual printed colours in some way - this varies quite widely from using your scanner with Profiler Plus software, measuring the individual colour patches using a spectrophotometer, right through to sending your printed patches to us for measurement (in which case, you just wait a day for us to do the hard work and send you a profile!);
• Run the software to take the colour-readings, and create a profile from them!

All done! The length of time it takes will depend upon the solution that you choose, how much you like to ‘tweak’ settings, and so on.

Printer profiles are normally fairly stable for that printer, though major printer refurbishments like changing the printhead may need a reprofile. Don’t forget though that you will probably want to get or make a profile for each paper that you use with any printer!

Please note that MWORDS has closed. We aim to retain these support pages in the hope that they may benefit our past customers, but regret that we can no longer offer further comment or support in relation to the information above.