Making a printer profile by using your digital camera

[martin0reg]

..without a calibrated monitor many of the benefits of developing profiles are lost.

Fully agreed...my remark wasn't supposed to correct you, only to correct the common error that a printer profile only could work together with a monitor profile, indeed it works theoretically without a monitor at all..

 

[The Hat]

Not really a Photo displayed on a un-calibrated monitor will have exactly the same output print quality as one viewed on a calibrated monitor if that Photo was not edited..

 

[martin0reg]

This is a difficult sentence for my command of english...
..do you mean displaying and / or viewing a photo on a monitor (NOT editing) could affect the printing?
Keep in mind: there is no data or information of the display output used for printing and for profiling...or is there?!

 

[stratman]

This is a difficult sentence for my command of english...
..do you mean displaying and / or viewing a photo on a monitor (NOT editing) could affect the printing?
Keep in mind: there is no data or information of the display output used for printing and for profiling...or is there?!

Punctuation would have improved the clarity of The Hat's post, such as a comma (,) or period (.) after the first two words "Not really".

Translating for The Hat, if you do not manipulate/edit the image in any way before printing then it does not matter if the monitor is calibrated or not. (Caveat - dimensional changes to an image are not affected by the calibration status of the image, of course!)

 

[3dogs]

Not really a Photo displayed on a un-calibrated monitor will have exactly the same output print quality as one viewed on a calibrated monitor if that Photo was not edited..

This is true and correct.

BUT, what happens to newbies (too often) that have access to editing software is that they DO edit and the edit causes a mess, then they do not understand why it happened.
They mess up the output, because they do not understand that the uncalibrated monitor is not showing a true version of their image, it is just showing its own version of what it THINKS the colours are.

I believe many people struggle with the idea of calibrating a monitor because they read of others (who got lucky), seeing exactly what they want on an uncalibrated screen and then posting the assertion that calibration is not required.

My partner print straight off her Point and Shoot via a Canon MP810 multifunction, on Canon paper I buy for her. She ignores, or simply does not look at how bad the image looks on her laptop. The prints turn out fine and then she really hangs it on me for spending SO much on all that STUFF I simply don't NEED to get perfect pictures.................gee Life is TOUGH!!

 

[The Hat]

Women are from Venus where photos tend to look much better than they do on Mars.
Put that to her and see what she’s says..

 

[stratman]

Put that to her and see what she’s says..

To paraphrase an old saying... better to let sleeping 3dogs lie. Don't do it!

 

[Smile]

This way better https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FkRDbGe7N4&list=PL9dkziNnBLcr-7kAs2bRm9C_iAFhleXgQ&index=1

http://www.silverfast.com/show/printer-calibration-information/en.html

But the price is high even for the target alone.

 

[The Hat]

I used a little software package that I gotten with my Epson 7000 scanner years ago to do the same thing and it was Free.

You first print out a test sheet from this software App. and then scan that printed sheet into the scanner and then print the scanned results out, then scan this second print out back into the scanner once again.

The scanner would then use that sheet to calibrate itself to match the printers output and once again prints out the final results, it could do the same with the monitor.

It wasn’t exactly accurate by today’s standards but back then it was a pretty good App. for that time when you consider it was free with the scanner..

 

[martin0reg]

Once I tried this method with "vuescan" scanner software...needed a IT8 target to buy...
But it did not work for me, results were not useable.

I think the problem of getting a neutral image of the test-print is bigger with a scanner (at least with mine which is not bad: canon mp810 ccd-scanner) than with a good digital camera.

For instance when I want show the quality of a certain printer or ink set in this forum, I can scan it or take a photo for posting...the scan will show the ink drops and resolution very detailed - but oftenly with wrong colors (for example a green shift in the print becomes a red shift in the scan).
Could be the result of metamerism, which the scanner can not handle.

If instead I take a photo, the colors are more accurate to compare different prints...so a really good camera seems to be better for accurate display or measurements of color than a scanner, I think.

Have I said, that there is a free trial of colymp available? Would like to hear your verdict...