ninj
Print Addict
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2011
- Messages
- 120
- Reaction score
- 151
- Points
- 193
Just a quick note to share my experiences with getting the colour approximately 'right' on my Officejet 6500 all-in-one wireless printer. Unfortunately, as far as I'm aware (please correct me if I'm wrong) there is no way of overriding colour management in the printer driver, so no point in attempting any sort of proper profiling. I generally use Linux (Fedora) and was hoping Gutenprint would help here, but unfortunately it doesn't support the 6500.
Purists stop reading here - this is a bit of a kludge and is definitely not going to give a perfect match between monitor and printer (in any case, no pro would be printing photos on a 4-ink office printer). But it has removed the warm colour caste and the colour match is now close enough for me on my (shock horror) uncalibrated laptop screen. By the way, I'm using OCP ink and Kodak premium photo paper. This method uses GIMP as the photo editor but I'm sure Photoshop or any number of other image editors will do the job too.
1. Print a good test image using the best printer settings applicable to the paper you want to use (I suggest starting with plain paper to avoid wasting expensive stuff until you get the hang of it). I suggest using the Fujifilm image here http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/downloadable_1/DL_page.html
2. Open image in GIMP with printout to hand. (Make sure ambient lighting is good etc).
3. open colours->colour balance, make sure 'preview' is ticked and carefully adjust the sliders until the image on the screen looks close enough to the printed image. This takes some practice and a good eye for colour. Start with just one colour, make small changes, and see what effect it has. Make sure you adjust shadows, mid-tones, and highlights.
4. Here's the 'trick'. When you are satisfied, negate every number next to the sliders (eg -20 blue would become +20 blue, etc). Make sure you do this for shadows, mid-tones, and highlights.
5. Save as a preset for future use.
6. Print (in GIMP you can do this without clicking OK in the colour-balance dialogue box if you don't want to make any changes to the image).
7. The printed image should be closer to the screen original (don't forget to untick preview or undo colour change before you compare), if not, make more tweaks. If image is too dark, try increasing gamma in Levels. I found one iteration was sufficient for my purposes. Not perfect, but more than acceptable to me.
Purists stop reading here - this is a bit of a kludge and is definitely not going to give a perfect match between monitor and printer (in any case, no pro would be printing photos on a 4-ink office printer). But it has removed the warm colour caste and the colour match is now close enough for me on my (shock horror) uncalibrated laptop screen. By the way, I'm using OCP ink and Kodak premium photo paper. This method uses GIMP as the photo editor but I'm sure Photoshop or any number of other image editors will do the job too.
1. Print a good test image using the best printer settings applicable to the paper you want to use (I suggest starting with plain paper to avoid wasting expensive stuff until you get the hang of it). I suggest using the Fujifilm image here http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/downloadable_1/DL_page.html
2. Open image in GIMP with printout to hand. (Make sure ambient lighting is good etc).
3. open colours->colour balance, make sure 'preview' is ticked and carefully adjust the sliders until the image on the screen looks close enough to the printed image. This takes some practice and a good eye for colour. Start with just one colour, make small changes, and see what effect it has. Make sure you adjust shadows, mid-tones, and highlights.
4. Here's the 'trick'. When you are satisfied, negate every number next to the sliders (eg -20 blue would become +20 blue, etc). Make sure you do this for shadows, mid-tones, and highlights.
5. Save as a preset for future use.
6. Print (in GIMP you can do this without clicking OK in the colour-balance dialogue box if you don't want to make any changes to the image).
7. The printed image should be closer to the screen original (don't forget to untick preview or undo colour change before you compare), if not, make more tweaks. If image is too dark, try increasing gamma in Levels. I found one iteration was sufficient for my purposes. Not perfect, but more than acceptable to me.
