Digital Prints

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Mastering Digital Printing
What About Input Profiles?
Input profiles for digital cameras and scanners are part of the ICC color management scheme, and the process involves scanning a pre-measured
target and then constructing a profile based on the RGB value differences. In reality, though, many people don’t profile their inputs. Why not? The
primary reason is that device characterization requires that all variables remain constant. With digital cameras, for example, that means the light
cannot change. Clearly, this will never happen except in a controlled, studio environment. With scanners, it means that the settings must always be
the same, but many prefer to fiddle with the software to get the best scan they can. Also, color-negative scanning is extremely difficult to profile.
However, with that said, more and more scanners are supporting proper profiling, and this can save you a lot of time in profile tweaking. So, if you
have a very controlled, consistent workflow with either a scanner, digital camera, or a scanning back, then, yes, you can definitely benefit from an
input profile that is passed along with the image. Photographer-artists, however, who don’t fall into this category are probably better off learning
how to capture a full range of values with neutral graytones and then bringing that image file into a color-managed system from that point on.
To profile a scanner, scan the profiling target (upper left) and save it as a
TIFF file. A color-profiling application compares the colors in the TIFF
file with the color measurements of the target contained in the
accompanying data reference file (left) to calculate a correction. The
resulting profile will help make all colors more accurate to “match the
original” and will help synchronize the appearance of multiple scanners.
Courtesy of Graphic Intelligence Agency
Printer Calibration and Profiling
As with monitors, getting printers to output what you want consistently is, at its best, a
two-part process: calibration and characterization (or profiling).
Printer Calibration
The reason I qualified the sentence above with “at its best” is because while printer calibration
is always desirable, it is not always possible, nor common. Also, there is some confusion
about the definition of the term “calibration” when talking about printers. It
sometimes refers, with inkjets, to procedures for aligning printheads and for cleaning ink
nozzles, and others think it is the same thing as printer characterization or profiling, but