Best way to profile monitor and printer for use with Photoshop?

John Stovall writes …

I’m setting up a digital darkroom based on a 20 inch iMac with an Epson R1800 printer and an looking at the question of profiling my monitor and printer for use with Photoshop CS.

I’ve considered getting a Colorvision Spyder2PRO for calibration of the monitor but don’t see how this then plays with calibrating the printer.

The Sypder will give you a very good monitor ICC profile but the printer profiles are a different deal. The Epson printers come with fairly accurate ICC profiles for the Epson papers, so you don’t need to buy software/hardware to calibrate it unless you want to use 3rd party papers. Even then many of the better 3rd party vendors (Arches, Hahnemuhle, Moab, etc) provide profiles, though I’ve found these are often of poor quality. Best to get a really good test target and print it and see, that’s what I do when evaluating printer profiles.

In fact for some things it appears I need a scanner to
correctly calibrate the printer.

The cheapest printer profile solutions use scanners to get the color info from the printed target (Colorvision, Monaco etc do this) but I’ve never seen any of these make really good profiles. Most of them are pretty bad, a waste of time, ink and paper. The scanner is the weak link and I would urge you to skip this or risk wasting a couple hundred bucks (been there, done that, threw away the T-shirt).

I personally think the best relatively inexpensive printer profiling solution is the Gretag Macbeth Eye-One, which you can often find for around $1,000 bundled. It comes with a spectrophotometer that gives you much more accurate results than the consumer flatbed scanners and doubles as a monitor profiler. At one time (prior to the Sypder2) the Eye-One did a much better job on LCD monitors than the Sypder (which I have), though perhaps Colorvision has closed the gap with the newer Sypder. At any rate I think you can buy the Eye-One separately and calibrate your monitor and then if you need to calibrate printers you can upgrade to the option that includes printer profiling (check on this, I’m not certain and am too lazy to look it up).

At any rate, I’d pass on the scanner solutions (or more accurately I wish I *had* passed on the scanner solutions). You might find that the Epson profiles are plenty accurate enough, which will save you a lot of hassle.

Bill

What’s my best way to deal with color management in this environment using Photoshop and any suggested references I should be reading?

Couple of sites worth reading re: color management …

http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/13605.html basics of CM http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/10150.html?origin=s tory soft proofing, which is how many of us print

http://www.creativepro.com/story/review/19760.html … eye one review, the package I mentioned before was the Photo bundle

The book that talks in-depth about CM is probably "Real World Color Management" by Fraser, Bunting, Murphy. Maybe more than you want to know.

Books like the "Photoshop Artistry" series by Haynes/Crumpler and "Real World Photoshop" by Fraser and Blatner spend a chapter or so on CM, explaining the basics pretty well.

Also some good basic info on Ian Lyons’ site about setting up Photoshop for printing, calibrating your monitor and using soft proofing. You can probably Google this.

Bill

On 5 Apr 2005 11:14:53 -0700, "Bill Hilton"
wrote:

What’s my best way to deal with color management in this environment using Photoshop and any suggested references I should be reading?

Couple of sites worth reading re: color management …

http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/13605.html basics of CM http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/10150.html?origin=s tory soft proofing, which is how many of us print

http://www.creativepro.com/story/review/19760.html … eye one review, the package I mentioned before was the Photo bundle

The book that talks in-depth about CM is probably "Real World Color Management" by Fraser, Bunting, Murphy. Maybe more than you want to know.

Books like the "Photoshop Artistry" series by Haynes/Crumpler and "Real World Photoshop" by Fraser and Blatner spend a chapter or so on CM, explaining the basics pretty well.

Also some good basic info on Ian Lyons’ site about setting up Photoshop for printing, calibrating your monitor and using soft proofing. You can probably Google this.

Thanks this should keep me busy reading until my copy of CS2 ships and the R1800 gets here.

Bill:

You mention below getting a good test target to print and evaluate your printer profiles.

Could you pass along what target you are using. I too have spent the bucks to get a spectrophotometer (DTP-41) and
I get what I think are excellent profiles.

However, I’m always looking for better evaluation methods and I wonder what you are using for a printable target.

Peter Johnson

=======

On 5 Apr 2005 11:03:33 -0700, "Bill Hilton"
wrote:

John Stovall writes …

I’m setting up a digital darkroom based on a 20 inch iMac with an Epson R1800 printer and an looking at the question of profiling my monitor and printer for use with Photoshop CS.

I’ve considered getting a Colorvision Spyder2PRO for calibration of the monitor but don’t see how this then plays with calibrating the printer.

The Sypder will give you a very good monitor ICC profile but the printer profiles are a different deal. The Epson printers come with fairly accurate ICC profiles for the Epson papers, so you don’t need to buy software/hardware to calibrate it unless you want to use 3rd party papers. Even then many of the better 3rd party vendors (Arches, Hahnemuhle, Moab, etc) provide profiles, though I’ve found these are often of poor quality. Best to get a really good test target and print it and see, that’s what I do when evaluating printer profiles.

In fact for some things it appears I need a scanner to
correctly calibrate the printer.

The cheapest printer profile solutions use scanners to get the color info from the printed target (Colorvision, Monaco etc do this) but I’ve never seen any of these make really good profiles. Most of them are pretty bad, a waste of time, ink and paper. The scanner is the weak link and I would urge you to skip this or risk wasting a couple hundred bucks (been there, done that, threw away the T-shirt).

I personally think the best relatively inexpensive printer profiling solution is the Gretag Macbeth Eye-One, which you can often find for around $1,000 bundled. It comes with a spectrophotometer that gives you much more accurate results than the consumer flatbed scanners and doubles as a monitor profiler. At one time (prior to the Sypder2) the Eye-One did a much better job on LCD monitors than the Sypder (which I have), though perhaps Colorvision has closed the gap with the newer Sypder. At any rate I think you can buy the Eye-One separately and calibrate your monitor and then if you need to calibrate printers you can upgrade to the option that includes printer profiling (check on this, I’m not certain and am too lazy to look it up).

At any rate, I’d pass on the scanner solutions (or more accurately I wish I *had* passed on the scanner solutions). You might find that the Epson profiles are plenty accurate enough, which will save you a lot of hassle.

Bill

On 5 Apr 2005 11:03:33 -0700, "Bill Hilton"
wrote:

John Stovall writes …

I’m setting up a digital darkroom based on a 20 inch iMac with an Epson R1800 printer and an looking at the question of profiling my monitor and printer for use with Photoshop CS.

I’ve considered getting a Colorvision Spyder2PRO for calibration of the monitor but don’t see how this then plays with calibrating the printer.

The Sypder will give you a very good monitor ICC profile but the printer profiles are a different deal. The Epson printers come with fairly accurate ICC profiles for the Epson papers, so you don’t need to buy software/hardware to calibrate it unless you want to use 3rd party papers. Even then many of the better 3rd party vendors (Arches, Hahnemuhle, Moab, etc) provide profiles, though I’ve found these are often of poor quality. Best to get a really good test target and print it and see, that’s what I do when evaluating printer profiles.

In fact for some things it appears I need a scanner to
correctly calibrate the printer.

The cheapest printer profile solutions use scanners to get the color info from the printed target (Colorvision, Monaco etc do this) but I’ve never seen any of these make really good profiles. Most of them are pretty bad, a waste of time, ink and paper. The scanner is the weak link and I would urge you to skip this or risk wasting a couple hundred bucks (been there, done that, threw away the T-shirt).

Spent a week chasing my tail with it as well. Waste of time. Dont know what to do now tho. Have an HP Designjet which has its own cmyk rip and "color calibration"…. pretty confusing, images done in photoshop get placed into InDesign and then sent to the Hp and its "rip".

any suggestions for me?

Peter Johnson wrote …

You mention below getting a good test target to print
and evaluate your printer profiles.

Could you pass along what target you are using. … (snip) I’m always looking for better evaluation methods and
I wonder what you are using for a printable target.

The one I use is from Bill Atkinson, he gave them out at a 3 day advanced printing/Photoshop/LightJet 5000 class I took with him at Calypso Labs in Santa Clara. I doubt he’d mind sharing it since he spent thousands of hours making the Epson 9600/7600 profiles and gave them to Epson for free but I wouldn’t feel comfortable sending it out without Bill’s permission.

Here’s a jpeg of it (rotated 90 degrees and with his copyright added), you can probably create something similar with your own images. The one he gave us is about 5,350 x 3,960 pixels in Lab mode, the jpeg is no doubt suffering various mutilations and indignities during the mode conversion, downsampling and jpeg compression but you get the idea (I left a non-sRGB profile in it if you want to save it and open in Photoshop).

http://members.aol.com/bhilton665/atkinson_test_file.jpg

The black to white gradient at the bottom (assume it’s rotated back to vertical) is the first ‘tell’ if there are profile problems, often there’s a color cast in part of the gradient and you know you have no chance at cast-free color since it’s not properly grey-balanced. Some profiles I’ve tested didn’t have solid black or white points so the printed gradient kind of fizzles out at the end points. Often this was tracked down to using the Photo black ink on the Epson Ultrachrome printers on matte/fine art paper instead of the Matte black ink, for example. It’s not unusual to see abrupt shifts in the gradient instead of smooth transitions either. You can make a similar gradient for your own test pattern and it’s definitely worth-while.

The smaller color gradients also sometimes indicate abrupt jumps in tonality. One paper I tried from Moab did this with their supplied profile for an Epson 4000 and turns out they made the profile in saturation mode instead of rel col or perceptual, which explains why THAT profile sucked.

There are high key and low key images in the top part of the file but the ones I look at most (after seeing if the gradients are smooth … if they aren’t then the profile isn’t very good, I’ve found) are the two just above the copyright I added, the arch at Monument Valley and the aspens, since I have a lot of images from Utah, Arizona and Colorado with similar colors (I even shot the same arch) which I like to print. Often you see subtle differences in the reds, blues and yellows (especially yellows) in this part of the test print. Also the red tree with blue sky on the other side of the page looks quite different on different papers or profiles, depending on the gamut of the paper and profile accuracy. So it’s a good test file for me and the kinds of images I print.

Bill

On 5 Apr 2005 11:03:33 -0700, "Bill Hilton"
wrote:

I personally think the best relatively inexpensive printer profiling solution is the Gretag Macbeth Eye-One, which you can often find for around $1,000 bundled. It comes with a spectrophotometer that gives you much more accurate results than the consumer flatbed scanners and doubles as a monitor profiler. At one time (prior to the Sypder2) the Eye-One did a much better job on LCD monitors than the Sypder (which I have), though perhaps Colorvision has closed the gap with the newer Sypder. At any rate I think you can buy the Eye-One separately and calibrate your monitor and then if you need to calibrate printers you can upgrade to the option that includes printer profiling (check on this, I’m not certain and am too lazy to look it up).

And if you’re on a tight budget then get the Eye One for monitors only and use the canned printer profile. Then use soft proofing to make sure you’re getting the out put you want.

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

On 5 Apr 2005 14:04:25 -0700, "Bill Hilton"
wrote:

Peter Johnson wrote …

You mention below getting a good test target to print
and evaluate your printer profiles.

Could you pass along what target you are using. … (snip) I’m always looking for better evaluation methods and
I wonder what you are using for a printable target.

The one I use is from Bill Atkinson, he gave them out at a 3 day advanced printing/Photoshop/LightJet 5000 class I took with him at Calypso Labs in Santa Clara. I doubt he’d mind sharing it since he spent thousands of hours making the Epson 9600/7600 profiles and gave them to Epson for free but I wouldn’t feel comfortable sending it out without Bill’s permission.

Here’s a jpeg of it (rotated 90 degrees and with his copyright added), you can probably create something similar with your own images. The one he gave us is about 5,350 x 3,960 pixels in Lab mode, the jpeg is no doubt suffering various mutilations and indignities during the mode conversion, downsampling and jpeg compression but you get the idea (I left a non-sRGB profile in it if you want to save it and open in Photoshop).

http://members.aol.com/bhilton665/atkinson_test_file.jpg
The black to white gradient at the bottom (assume it’s rotated back to vertical) is the first ‘tell’ if there are profile problems, often there’s a color cast in part of the gradient and you know you have no chance at cast-free color since it’s not properly grey-balanced. Some profiles I’ve tested didn’t have solid black or white points so the printed gradient kind of fizzles out at the end points. Often this was tracked down to using the Photo black ink on the Epson Ultrachrome printers on matte/fine art paper instead of the Matte black ink, for example. It’s not unusual to see abrupt shifts in the gradient instead of smooth transitions either. You can make a similar gradient for your own test pattern and it’s definitely worth-while.

The smaller color gradients also sometimes indicate abrupt jumps in tonality. One paper I tried from Moab did this with their supplied profile for an Epson 4000 and turns out they made the profile in saturation mode instead of rel col or perceptual, which explains why THAT profile sucked.

There are high key and low key images in the top part of the file but the ones I look at most (after seeing if the gradients are smooth … if they aren’t then the profile isn’t very good, I’ve found) are the two just above the copyright I added, the arch at Monument Valley and the aspens, since I have a lot of images from Utah, Arizona and Colorado with similar colors (I even shot the same arch) which I like to print. Often you see subtle differences in the reds, blues and yellows (especially yellows) in this part of the test print. Also the red tree with blue sky on the other side of the page looks quite different on different papers or profiles, depending on the gamut of the paper and profile accuracy. So it’s a good test file for me and the kinds of images I print.

Bill

Bill:

Much thanks for the link and info. I have at least one of the images in my collection, the "photodisc" image (bottom right of your JPEG and perhaps another as well. I’ll try and contact Atkinson and see if I can pry one from him.

Again thanks

Peter

On Tue, 05 Apr 2005 22:59:30 GMT, Peter Johnson
wrote:

On 5 Apr 2005 14:04:25 -0700, "Bill Hilton"
wrote:

Peter Johnson wrote …

You mention below getting a good test target to print
and evaluate your printer profiles.

Could you pass along what target you are using. … (snip) I’m always looking for better evaluation methods and
I wonder what you are using for a printable target.

The one I use is from Bill Atkinson, he gave them out at a 3 day advanced printing/Photoshop/LightJet 5000 class I took with him at Calypso Labs in Santa Clara. I doubt he’d mind sharing it since he spent thousands of hours making the Epson 9600/7600 profiles and gave them to Epson for free but I wouldn’t feel comfortable sending it out without Bill’s permission.

Here’s a jpeg of it (rotated 90 degrees and with his copyright added), you can probably create something similar with your own images. The one he gave us is about 5,350 x 3,960 pixels in Lab mode, the jpeg is no doubt suffering various mutilations and indignities during the mode conversion, downsampling and jpeg compression but you get the idea (I left a non-sRGB profile in it if you want to save it and open in Photoshop).

http://members.aol.com/bhilton665/atkinson_test_file.jpg
The black to white gradient at the bottom (assume it’s rotated back to vertical) is the first ‘tell’ if there are profile problems, often there’s a color cast in part of the gradient and you know you have no chance at cast-free color since it’s not properly grey-balanced. Some profiles I’ve tested didn’t have solid black or white points so the printed gradient kind of fizzles out at the end points. Often this was tracked down to using the Photo black ink on the Epson Ultrachrome printers on matte/fine art paper instead of the Matte black ink, for example. It’s not unusual to see abrupt shifts in the gradient instead of smooth transitions either. You can make a similar gradient for your own test pattern and it’s definitely worth-while.

The smaller color gradients also sometimes indicate abrupt jumps in tonality. One paper I tried from Moab did this with their supplied profile for an Epson 4000 and turns out they made the profile in saturation mode instead of rel col or perceptual, which explains why THAT profile sucked.

There are high key and low key images in the top part of the file but the ones I look at most (after seeing if the gradients are smooth … if they aren’t then the profile isn’t very good, I’ve found) are the two just above the copyright I added, the arch at Monument Valley and the aspens, since I have a lot of images from Utah, Arizona and Colorado with similar colors (I even shot the same arch) which I like to print. Often you see subtle differences in the reds, blues and yellows (especially yellows) in this part of the test print. Also the red tree with blue sky on the other side of the page looks quite different on different papers or profiles, depending on the gamut of the paper and profile accuracy. So it’s a good test file for me and the kinds of images I print.

Bill

Bill:

Much thanks for the link and info. I have at least one of the images in my collection, the "photodisc" image (bottom right of your JPEG and perhaps another as well. I’ll try and contact Atkinson and see if I can pry one from him.

Again thanks

Peter

Bill:

Me again: I quick Google search revealed that Mr. Atkinson has this image posted and can be downlaoded without restrictions. (4140 x5220 all 26 Mbytes.) Again thanks for the lead.

Peter

Peter Johnson wrote …

I quick Google search revealed that Mr. Atkinson has
this image posted and can be downlaoded without restrictions.

Peter, do you have a link to this? I’ve had several people ask where they could obtain it. Thanks.

Bill

On 5 Apr 2005 17:53:48 -0700, "Bill Hilton"
wrote:

Peter Johnson wrote …

I quick Google search revealed that Mr. Atkinson has
this image posted and can be downlaoded without restrictions.

Peter, do you have a link to this? I’ve had several people ask where they could obtain it. Thanks.

This is it I think.

http://www.outbackphoto.com/profiling_service/profiling1.htm l

Go to:

2. Download targets

We use new enhanced targets from Bill Atkinson. (Readers who own an Eye-One can download the reference file and Bill’s readme here) ************************************************************ ***

"Americans have plenty of everything and the best of nothing."

John C. Keats
American Writer
1924-2000

John Stovall writes

This is it I think.

Peter Johnson

Apr 6, 2005

On 5 Apr 2005 17:53:48 -0700, "Bill Hilton"
wrote:

Peter Johnson wrote …

I quick Google search revealed that Mr. Atkinson has
this image posted and can be downlaoded without restrictions.

Peter, do you have a link to this? I’ve had several people ask where they could obtain it. Thanks.

Bill

Bill:

OK, link is

http://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/FileSharing.woa/43/wo/EMI t9YyuPp5O4IRk.1/0.2.1.2.22.27.97.3.35.0.1.1.1?user=billatkin son&fpath=Profile%20Test%20Images&templatefn=FileSha ring1.html

That’s a very long URL. In case of problems Google seach on

Bill Atkinson test image

The file is called "Lab Test Page.sit"

I hope this doesn’t overload his site.

pj