Printer monitor calibration

[maxb54]

Hi All.

I know how to calibrate my lg monitor but how do I go about printing on my canon pixma ip4300 what I see on screen accuratley.
My best results happen when I use the Canon print prog supplied with camera/printer, but my results are worse using elements 8.

What is the secret of printing what I see?

[chris-p]

You can't print what you see. What you see on the screen is additive backlight, what you see on paper is reflective light. Even the primary colours are different between them.

To get as close as possible, you need to match your printer ICC profiles to your monitor calibration. Which calibration system did you use on your monitor.

[AndyStevens]

You could look at the Spyder Studio set - about £300 but you can calibrate monitor and printer together (the print out is scanned back in for monitor calibration). As Chris rightly says, they will never be identical as one is backlit, the other reflected light but this should get you fairly close.

You also need to consider viewing conditions - there's no point calibrating printer and monitor if you view the results under flourescent tubes...

[MarkD]

Originally Posted by AndyStevens

You also need to consider viewing conditions - there's no point calibrating printer and monitor if you view the results under flourescent tubes...

Where do you get that info from - as all proofing lightboxes with the Heidlebergs in all my customers and the ones we supply with our high end digital printers run flourescents


--
Mark

[AndyStevens]

Hi Mark,

I got that from working in the industry supplying automated workflows and colour management software to printers/publishers/agencies. Perhaps we've met!

I'd need to check but I'm pretty sure flourescents in dedicated viewing booths will have a different colour temperature to the flourescent tube in a client's kitchen and are designed to give standard, neutral light (for example, B&Q flou tube looks different to Wickes flou in my kitchen).

I try not to write too much in these threads about colour management as it can baffle people - the majority of photographers will use their laptops in living rooms and desktops in spare rooms (hence my mention of not calibrating and then viewing under flou's as the colour temp will be significantly different). Generally (but depending on which piece of kit you use) calibrating a monitor in a lounge will give different results than if calibrating near flourescents. Also, if you calibrate in a room with white walls, and view images in a room with red walls, it will look different again. For consitent accurate colour, you need to view the screen/print in the room it was calibrated in.

The Spyder Studio is a good piece of kit and will compare the screen output with the output from the printed test file to create a profile - so what you see on screen is pretty much what you get on the paper.

Hope that helps explain (without losing most of the audience!).

Cheers
Andy