Calibration for my printer?

[ulaoulao]

Does any one have a write up on Calibration for printers instead of monitors? I'm completely new to this. I have a canon i9900, and the colors are off. So far all I tried was laying out 7 colors of markers. Then with my digital cam I imported it to adobe PS. The monitor colors are perfect. When I print them it seems (I'm no pro), like the red and yellow are to much. If I manually adjust my yellow it doesn’t seem to help. Is there a method for this?

[fishgal]

Have you tried soft proofing the picture in photoshop
Using

View > Custom Proof
Then Select Your printers profile from the drop down list

This should show you what you image would look like on your printout...
provided your monitor is also profiled correctly.

Hope that helps

[ulaoulao]

I tried that, the monitor's color changed but not bad. Then I did a print preview and selected the same default printer selection. This time when printed the image has a lot of cyan in it. Does this tell me something.

UPDATE: i only get the cyan mess when printing with the same profile. If I chose to print from source I'm ok(off colors). I still cant get the printer to match the original or monitor colors. Could it be the ink I use? Would conon ink be that much better? FYI: I'm using an off brand.

[ulaoulao]

I found the problem to be cyan.

If I add 50% cyan to my picture in adobe PS I get a perfect picture. Also if I subtract 50% cyan in adobe my image on the screen looks like my bad prints.

On the other hand using the print pref. If I add cyan it dosent help? Is there a way to adjust this in the driver?

[jordanwd]

have you looked at the printer driver settings?
Usually the dedicated photo printers will have a tab/section where you choose the color management...if you are working and softproofing in ps then you need to be sure you have the driver set to 'managed by application" rather than default or icm... (print w/preview--> choose yer printer--> properties-->color management tab--> manual-->managed by application)...
(cyna or especially a magenta cast is a telltale sign of double profiling)

i hope this helps!

jordan

[jordanwd]

just noticed you mentioned that you were not using the recommended cannon inkset but an off brand.

that can make a significant differnce on yer print output!

The icc pfofiles for different papers included within your cannon printer drivers are developed for use with a specific type of ink. If you use a different ink your results can be totally different. the way to get around that is to get a n icc profile generator (eye1 for instance) that way you can run test patterns on the different papers you'll be printing on ..scann them and develop specific icc profiles for those specific paper/ink combinations...

ahh the joys (and pains) of color management

[road_runner]

It all depends on how serious you are about your prints!

To calibrate both the monitor and printer you are looking at a package that costs aabout $1,295 - Pulse Color Elite System. It includes the Optix Colorimiter and the Pulse spectrophotometer. This system is available through X-Rite.

A less expensive way to go is to calibrate your LCD or CRT monitor using Colorvision's Spyder 2. Print using source. You should get very good results. If you calibrate your monitor, you can always use a third party printing serevice to generate your prints. The Spyder 2 runs about $189 street.

Whatever you decide - best of luck!

road_runner