How I get perfect prints every time

Have you ever printed a photograph to have it look a lot different to what you saw on screen?

What about seeing differences between two screens?

It can drive you mad!

This is where colour management comes in. Hidden deep in the settings for your computer, monitor and printer are weird terms; ICC, relative colourmetric, perceptual, then there’s this weird gadget!

The i1 Display Monitor Calibrator

It all starts with your monitor.

The first thing you need to do is to confirm that your monitor is displaying colour as accurately as possible. Imagine that your computer is asking the monitor to display a certain colour - how can you be sure that it actually comes out right? Maybe the monitor makes it a little brighter, darker, more/less red, green or blue? How are you to ever know?

This is where a monitor calibrator and profiler comes in. A device like the one shown above measures the colour coming out of the monitor and sets the monitor settings such as the contrast and brightness correctly. Then it notes down the difference between what the computer asks for, and what the monitor displays. This is placed into a monitor profile - also known as an ICC profile. The computer then uses this file to adjust the colour signal it sends to the monitor so that it will display exactly what is in the image!

Now you know that your monitor is displaying your images perfectly, but what about the printer?

Every printer and paper is different.

Ever seen the sheer number of white paints at the hardware store? The same problem exists with paper!

Every different type of paper has a different shade of white and every printer uses different shades of inks. So just like our monitor, we need to know if the printer actually prints the colour we ask it to! This is where printer profiles are required.

Printer colour calibration profiles.

To make a printer profile you print out these ‘targets’ on each type of paper you want to use. Then you send them away to be scanned through a very expensive spectrophotometer - this piece of equipment determines the difference between what colour the computer asked for, and what the printer actually printer. It creates an ICC profile for the printer and paper combination that you can use to adjust the data sent to the printer so it prints the right colours.

Easy, right!

Well it does take some time and effort to setup but once you have this done you can get repeatable results across many devices. I have had a full colour managed setup for decades now so I can be sure that what I see on screen will come out in the print. Of course, there is a lot more to the subject of colour management but I’ll save that for a later post!

Rob.