July 11th, 2011
Hey we’ve all done it, we’ve taken that great photo and spent time in Photoshop or our favorite editing program to make it look just right. Then we go to print it on our expensive Photo inkjet printer and …., it looks terrible, too light, too dark, color shifts etc., it looks nothing like what we expected it too.
Most of us who’ve went the route to buy all of the “right” equipment know what to do next…, we buy a color calibration tool for our monitor. We go through all of the steps to correct the color on our screen, then we set the printer to the correct ICC profile for the printer and the paper. Now we got it, we’re ready to print, it’s going to look great. But it doesn’t, it still needs to be tweaked and soft proofed on screen. So we run more test prints and tweak our printer profile again, and again and…, well you get the idea. It’s enough to make you not want to print at home.
Sorry for going on and on, but I ran across something that works, really works. First, know that I brought and paid for the item that I’m going to mention and no – I don’t get paid to endorse anything. I brought an x-rite “ColorMunki” and so far I’ve calibrated three Macs and one PC and profiled them to an Epson 4900 and guess what? The first (not the second, not the third) test print that I made after setting it up looked fantastic !!!
Basically with the ColorMunki (yes “color monkey”), you calibrate your monitor and then run color swatches from your printer. The swatches are read with the same tool that calibrates your monitor, you then use that ICC profile that the ColorMunki makes for all of your printing from that computer. I’ve used a lot of different systems in the past and this is by far the easiest and the most accurate right out of the box and you don’t need to buy a separate tool for both the monitor and the printer – it’s all there.
Check it out.
DCF