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 What is printer profiling, and why do you need to do it? Well, a ‘profile’ is like a map - offering the computer (and suitably enabled graphics software) a route to getting a particular colour from the printer... or indeed knowing that a particular colour can not be reproduced by a printer, and then knowing what to do about it!
Profiling your printer is the second step in the chain to enable ‘What you see is what you print’ - the first being Monitor Calibration and Profiling. Not only do different models of printer have different abilities to print colour, but even two of the same model printer will print differently! So this is why you need to profile our printer - because it probably does not perform in the same way to some other printer off the production line. Please note that when we talk about Profiles here, we are really referring to ICC / ICM profiles (and the tools to build them). This kind of profile tells the colour management system on your computer how to adjust your image so it prints correctly, but in addition communicates with the system to control what you can see on-screen (e.g. you can view a ‘soft proof’ on screen of how your image will look in print). To get the very best from ICC profiles, you will need an application like Adobe Photoshop that knows how to use them for screen display and soft-proofing and for passing data correctly to your printer driver. Some popular image editing applications like PaintShopPro v7 do not currently do this (though our understanding is that later versions of PSP may suppoirt ICC profiles). Here is our ‘Product Tree’ for Printer profiling products (and indeed, ones we don’t sell!): | Level | Product | Description | | Introductory | Canned Profile from Epson / other printer m’fer. | What you get with the printer driver supplied with the printer! These are normally quite a good starting point... especially when using OEM inks and media. But, they do tend to experience some colour casts. If you are using third party inks or papers, you can try different media types; but you may feel you need to improve the profile to get a better match between monitor preview and print. Whilst Epson and some manufacturers do now supply some proper ICC / ICM profiles, mostly the ‘profiles’ we are talking about here are Paper and Media settings in their print driver that control how ink is put onto the page. Furthermore, when manufacturers supply profiles in this way, they often only implement the half of the profile that converts to print reasonably well. The part of the profile that is used to provide accurate screen displays in soft-proofing are often very inaccurate. | | Introductory | Various ‘printer calibration’ products | We do not sell a product like this, as they are not ‘profiling tools’. They typically involve you printing a test sheet provided, and visually comparing it with a supplied sheet or 18% grey sample or similar. These tools rely on your visual acuity, and assume that a printer will have a colour cast that is equal across the range of greys (which is typically not the case). These systems do not typically produce proper ICC / ICM printer profiles; they offer guidance on how to fudge your image or printer driver so that it produces somewhat more accurate results. | | Better | Generic Profiles | In general, it is realised that the printer you have in your home or office may not print in exactly the same way as any other printer of the same model. Thus, a ‘canned profile’ for a specific ink / paper / printer combination may not be the optimal profile. For OEM inks these may or may not provide an advantage, for third party inks different in colour to the OEM inks, they may be a better starting point than nothing at all. | | Better | ColorVision Profiler PLUS (formerly available as Profiler RGB and Profiler CMYK packages)  | The ColorVision Profiler PLUS software package profiles your printer by you printing a standard sample page. Once printed, you use your own flatbed scanner to scan the print, and then run the software to create a printer profile from the file. The benefits of this system are that you can profile any printer / paper / ink combination that you choose to without additional charge... though the limiting factor seems to be the scanner you use. Again, this is an area where your own perceptions and expectations are going to be important, and the scanner seems to be a key limiting factor. If your scanner is half-decent then you should be able to create some very workable profiles, and this is our experience... but some users state that substantial tweaking can be necessary. Profiler Plus can also be limited by the scanner in other ways though. The Pros and Cons of Profiler Plus article may be of interest to you. | | Better Still | ColorVision PrintFIX  | PrintFIX is a hardware / software combination from ColorVision. It works in a similar way to Profiler Plus above, but instead of relying on a scanner to feedback information about how the colours printed, the hardware USB PrintFix scanning device is used. Whilst PrintFIX must support the printer you are profiling, and is optimised for OEM inks (and therefore should work with third-party inks similar in colour to OEM inks). This will be a time and cost effective solution for many people. | | Best | Specific Profile for your printer | There are companies (including us!) around that will provide you with a test swatch, that you print with specific settings, and then send the print to them. They send the profile back to you, which is specifically for your printer. Clearly, this is an excellent option as all suppliers of this service should be using excellent quality profiling equipment and software, and you do not need to learn the actual ways to use the profiling tools. Obviously, the disadvantage seems to be that the service will could cost £100 (or more) per printer / ink / paper profile (Our printer profiling service is much more reasonably priced!). Certainly an option worth considering, if you have selected a small number of printer / ink / paper combinations. | | Best | ColorVision Profiler Pro with Spectro Patch Reader or Spectrocam  | Profiler Pro takes the profiling software to the next stage, but it does really require a proper Colorimeter or Spectrophotometer to work at its best. This package allows for additional controls over the generation of the profiles, control over items used by RIPs e.g. Dot gain, UCR, GCR etc., and also allows for the use of three differently sized print targets to allow for daily profiling requirements through to those required by exacting users. With the increased number of swatches that can be printed by tools like this, you may like to consider the additional effort required in measuring the profiles - the Spectro that you use to do this could have a large impact on the time it takes. The Spectro-patch reader from ColorVision is a reasonably priced colorimeter for measuring printed patches, though it can be quite a slow process. The Spectrocam is a professional level product for fast and accurate measurement of colour. The software supplied with the system allows for fast and convenient ‘scanning’ of printed colour-swatches for profile building. In other words, whilst the operation is manual, it’s made just about as easy as possible by the accessories and software provided. The software that features as part of the system is not designed to build printer profiles, but in fact to help produce colour swatch data in a format usable by a profile building tool | | Best | Gretag Macbeth i1 Photo Bundles | Gretag Macbeth is a world-leader in Colour Management, and their tools have recently been repackaged and repriced to offer excellent value for money. The suite of tools they offer are oriented around the i1 Spectrophotometer; a high-end device capable of measuring colours on-screen and from a print. The software capabilities varies by bundle; but you can expect some level of screen and printer profiling from all of their latest packages. The nice thing about the new i1 packages is that when you buy into them, you are getting some of the best possible hardware. Yes, it is an investment, but the suite allows you to upgrade various software elements over time, as your colour-management demands increase! Therefore, although the tools are at the more expensive end of our range, they really do offer excellent value-for-money for anyone who wants to take control of their colour, and expects to continue learning and improving over time. | | Best | Other profiling tools | Of course, there are other more specialised tools available. We use Gretag Macbeth equipment and software for our profiling service that costs many thousands of pounds. You’d need to be making a lot of profiles to justify this sort of expense however! Please ask us if you would like quotes on any higher-end tools. | There is no ‘silver bullet’ to control Color Management in a simple and straightforward way. It seems that moving up the level of advancement on the colour management ‘ladder’ does not necessarily mean reduced effort... it probably means you are more particular about your colour requirements, and therefore at any level you should expect to carry out some tweaking of profiles. These are tools to help you get your colours right, not tools that will do the job for you! 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.
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