Digital Prints

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Mastering Digital Printing
Also realize that profiles require that you use specific printer settings. You cannot change
these settings without invalidating the profile. (You can also adjust or modify profiles.)
As an aside, you may not realize that the built-in Media Type or paper settings on inkjet
printers actually invoke the canned profiles provided by the manufacturer. If you have an
ICC-aware image-editing or profile-managing program, or if you just look in the computer’s
system folder that houses them, you can see all the same profiles as those showing
in the printer settings dialog box.
Custom-Made Remote Profiles
The next step up in printer profile quality is to have someone with professional-grade
equipment (spectrophotometer- or spectrocolorimeter-based) make custom profiles for
you. These will be more accurate because they’re specifically created for your unique set
of variables including inks, paper, environment, driver settings, etc. It typically works like
this: you download a single-page target with numerous color patches that have known
values (see Figure 4.12) and print it out to exact instructions that include printing with
uncorrected settings—you want to capture the good and the bad about your printer. You
send that printed page to the profile maker who then scans it, builds a profile, and either
e-mails or ships it back to you on a CD (or allows you to download it from the Web). You
need to carefully record all the printer settings when you make the test print and then use
those same settings for all your printing with that profile (which can also be edited or
tweaked if needed). Costs average around $100 or less. Again, that’s for each separate
ink/paper/printer combination.
If you don’t want to invest the time or money into a profile-making system of your own,
and you don’t anticipate many printer/ink/paper changes, this can be a good solution.
Many claim that custom profiles yield the best results of all the profile options.
Figure 4.12 Examples of printer
profiling targets: X-Rite’s 378-patch
CMYK target for the DTP41
spectrophotometer (left) and
ColorVision’s 125-patch RGB test
target for the SpectroPRO
spectrocolorimeter.
Courtesy of X-Rite, Inc. and
ColorVision, Inc.