What printer profile should i use

It works very well on my fussy Epson The colors are accurate and saturated. The paper is easy to handle. I also thought the prices on all the items were very reasonable. Already thinking about what else I might want on my next order. I love trying new things! Join The Inkjetter Newsletter. Archival Grade Summary Numerous papers - made from tree or cotton content Acid and lignin free base stock Inkjet coating layer acid free Can have OBAs in the base or the coating.

Watch it. Read it. Read it How to add profiles in Lightroom. Watch it How to add profiles in Lightroom. Video: How to add profiles in Lightroom. Photoshop CS3. Master monochrome: printing black and white landscapes Photographer Clive Booth and print specialist Suhaib Hussain on how to get the best results when printing landscape shots in black and white.

The Media Configuration Tool may be installed when you initially install your printer driver software. Otherwise, visit Canon's printer support page, select your printer, then click Software. Find Media Configuration Tool in the list, and install following the instructions. Your printer User Guide will contain a section explaining how to use the software.

This can be a problem area, Keith admits. If you think of the shape of each profile as a three-dimensional object, the shape of the screen profile and printer profile will be different. When you try to merge the two shapes together, you'll end up with bits sticking out, which represent a mismatch between colours that can be viewed on screen or printed on paper. Even if you buy a really expensive wide-gamut monitor, there are still colours that it won't be able to display, and there will certainly be colours you can see on screen that you won't be able to print on paper.

According to Keith, colour management isn't about getting perfect colour. If you open an image in Adobe Photoshop or PPL, for example, there's a soft-proofing option that aims to show you what an image will look like when using a certain printer and paper, based on its ICC profile. However, because the monitor and printer are only able to reproduce different ranges of colour, the simulation will only ever be an approximation — although if you're using a colour-managed workflow, it should be a pretty close approximation.

Problem colours can be highlighted in grey or red, for example, as a warning. Even so, it's a rather blunt tool and you won't know if colours are only very slightly out of gamut or way off. In the end, there's no substitute for creating test prints, so that you can see exactly what you're dealing with. Then you simply choose the thumbnail that looks most accurate or most pleasing, take a note of its reference number and input that back into PPL, which will apply the corresponding settings for your final, full-size print.

In PPL, Photoshop and other software, you can choose how to deal with out-of-gamut colours colours in the image that fall outside the printer's range of printable colours using the Rendering Intent setting. Perceptual aims to preserve the overall visual impression of colours in the image. Any out-of-gamut colours will be adjusted to the nearest printable colours, and other colours may then be adjusted to preserve the relationship between all the colours in the image.

The problem is, if all or nearly all the colours in your image are in-gamut, the image might be desaturated unnecessarily, and saturated colours in particular can be significantly dulled. Relative Colorimetric will adjust only colours that can't be printed, leaving other colours untouched. This may result in slightly less saturated colours, but assuming that not too many colours in the original image are out-of-gamut brightness values will on the whole be more stable than if you use Perceptual.

So a good strategy is to check how much of the image is out-of-gamut first, and if there is a lot in important areas of the image, use Perceptual. If few colours or few areas are out-of-gamut, then Relative Colorimetric will alter the image less. If you opt to use Relative Colorimetric, consider enabling Black Point Compensation to adjust the tone of the image so that the darkest point in the image matches the darkest point of the printer's ICC profile.

It should not be needed if you choose Perceptual, because Perceptual is black point and white point relative. It should also not be required if you're using Canon papers and the built-in ICC profiles, Canon says.

The consensus, however, seems to be that Black Point Compensation should do no harm and could help you achieve richer blacks particularly if you're printing on very absorbent papers. Related articles. Find Out More. ARTICLE 6 ways printing can make you a better photographer Delving into the detail of photo printing can improve your composition, colour awareness and more, perhaps without you even realising, says Keith Cooper.

Chrome Space , J. Please scroll down the downloads page to find "workflow tools for sophisticated photographers and retouchers where you can learn more about Joseph Holmes' working spaces. The working colour space sits at the centre of colour management. Each relationship with an external device, be it a scanner, monitor screen or printer, is provided for via an ICC profile which describes each device and thus allows translation between a working space and the various devices.

Input profiles are a type of device colour space. Digital cameras and scanners are profiled in a different way to printers, one similarity, though, is that much of the process depends on suitable software settings and repeatability.

In order to make an input profile, the camera or scanner is set to a repeatable state and a physical profiling target is captured as an image which is then analysed.

For scanners a high quality target would be a HutchColor Target, "HCT" , or, for less critical processes, an IT8 style target, either transparency or reflective.

This means that now any RGB value in a file from the relevant input device can be cross referenced against unambiguous vales related to human vision. This ICC input profile can now be used when opening any capture or scan made using the "profiled" device as long as the device remains consistent. The ICC profile will effectively filter out consistent undesirable device characteristics like a caste or tonal anomaly.

In practice, the ICC profile is assigned to each capture or scan and this action provides an imaging application like Photoshop with the information needed to interpret the file's numbers, including the ability to produce accurate appearance on screen. Accurate screen display is achieved in a transformation or "conversion" using the input profile, the display profile and perhaps also a working colour space profile.

An accurate ICC input profile can certainly save some work by minimising the repetitive editing tasks often necessary to correct consistent digital camera or scanner variations. A good input ICC profile is also used by colour management savvy RAW processing or scanning software to provide an accurately colourmanaged screen display during the process of capture. This provides the advantage of continuity of image appearance from the capture application to, for example, Photoshop.

Without good colour management, appearance is unlikely to be continuous between applications, i. In this case it can be a matter of starting again with adjustment, quite a waste of effort and time. Display profiles are a type of device colour space. Monitor display profiles are part of what is perhaps the most important colour management of all, since the display screen is our only window on digital content.

Display system profiles are made in a process which uses an accurate screen sensor like basICColor's discus device pictured here - and good software like basICColor Display right to assess the display system capabilities and build the ICC profile which describes them. In a standard display system the first step in the process calibrates the system, loading a Look Up Table "LUT" to the systems video card - step two then measures calibrated appearance to produce an ICC profile.

Hardware calibrated displays are similar in practice, but, in the background, the calibration LUT is actually loaded straight to the screen's internal circuits which operate at a higher bit depth to optimise the transformation of image data during display. On completion of the process, the resulting ICC display profile is built, containing both the calibration instructions for the computer's video card where relevant and the device characterisation table used by a colour-management savvy application like Photoshop to correctly display image files.

Good calibration and profiling software will provide a wide range of calibration target settings which are used in order to tune and optimise screen appearance, these options are vital since e. Output profiles are a type of device colour space. Options such as resolution and media type can all affect output, so must be optimal.

Next, test prints of a relevant set of colour patches are made, using the chosen software settings and using the correct paper and ink.

After drying, accurate measurements of the test prints are made using a high quality spectrophotometer device. Next, these measurements are analysed within the profiling software and, in a process of assessing both the measured patch values and the target reference data, the software can produce an accurate device characterisation - an ICC output profile.

Now, Adobe Photoshop, and other colour management capable programs, can use this ICC profile to adjust image data, as it is sent to the printer.

This means that we can expect an accurate reproduction of the original image file, within the limits of gamut of the printer and paper chosen. An ICC printer profile is specific to one certain printer, one type of paper, one inkset and, even, to one print resolution and media setting. If you buy a different make of ink or type of paper, or alter software settings, then the printer will likely behave differently, this inevitably means that the profile we made will no longer describe the printed behaviour.

So, now, the process of printing using the ICC profile fails to give an accurate printout. A new profile would be needed in order to assess the printer's new behaviour. The need for consistency is often called "process control". Because of the importance of consistency, it is not a good idea to use low cost "compatible" ink cartridges when profiling, because the vital continuity of performance using those inks is very unlikely - due to poor quality control, they often differ, one to the next.

View ColorMunki Photo on Amazon. Firstly you will need to use the profile to soft proof the image you intend to print. This soft proofing process simulates how the print will look on the computer screen without needing to print it. The second way you need to use the printer profile is when sending your image to the printer.

You will need to configure your printer software for example Lightroom to print using the correct printer profile. At the same time you will also need to configure your printer driver to recognise that the printer software is performing the colour management and not to make any further adjustment. Providing you do both of these things correctly your final print should match your soft proofed image.

Selecting a custom printer profile in Lightroom.