Making use of a customized ICC profile together with your printer is one of the smartest actions that you can take to enhance your digital printing workflow, particularly if you happen to be a skilled photographer - or maybe just an enthusiast who values the importance of obtaining the most precise color possible out of your printer. But being able to see accurately printed color depends on the ability to see accurate color on your display monitor, as well. Before it is possible to enjoy the full power of properly making use of a profile together with your printer, you ought to calibrate and profile your display monitor. You may print perfectly accurate color from your printer with great consistency, but it will never appear accurate to you as long as you continue to use a display which has not been precisely calibrated and profiled.
A monitor profile allows ICC-aware applications - like Photoshop - to accurately present your image's color. To realize an identical appearance in print, the existing color data has to be translated into the suitable output values for your printer, and whatever combination of print media and ink you choose to use. The function of your printer profile is to accurately translate the appearance of ink that is laid down on the page. Canned or generic profiles from printer or paper manufacturers may convey mostly fair results, but they will not consistently and accurately represent the behavior of your specific printer. I am a powerful advocate for getting rid of those canned profiles in favor of using a custom printer profile, which is a much better alternative. In my opinion, the suitable integration of a custom printer profile into your digital printing workflow is a significant step in matching your display screen with your printed output.
Almost always, your display is able to reproduce a larger range of colors (wider gamut) than your printer. This fact is much more true today, together with the rapid switch from legacy CRT monitors to state-of-the-art LCD displays. Consequently, it is just about impossible to adjust a printed image to look like your display; but rather, we work to make your display resemble the print instead. Achieving this involves sending the image through the printer profile, and back through the monitor profile, so you can see an emulation of your printed image on your computer's display. This is referred to as "soft proofing. This functionality is available in a number of favorite third-party applications, like Photoshop, Qimage, Aperture, and others. Pretty ingenious! Soft proofing permits you to simulate your printer's output and helps you to realize the proper screen to printer color matching.
Calibrating your monitor is probably the easiest and least costly part of developing a valid color management system. If you haven't accomplished this step already, it is something you should do either before - or at the same time as - profiling your printer. Using a printer profile will only squander your time if you lack the capacity to match your monitor's output to your printer. You will find some excellent monitor calibration tools and software packages available online. Listed here are just a few: Spyder3 by DataColor (different versions and price levels), also various versions of Pantone Huey, and X-Rite's i1 (Eye-One) Display software. All of these products come with a precision colorimeter device for accurate monitor calibrations, and software that will help you build a custom monitor profile. The software packages listed here are major players in this niche, and all provide very good results at a reasonable price. But there undoubtedly are others you may want to consider. All of these systems provide thorough information about the display settings you should use so as to view images on your monitor with unmatched color accuracy.
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