Re: Printer compensation question

[dfanger@world.std.com (David M Fanger)]

Frank wrote:

>The calibration of my system is fair. My scanner/monitor/printer are vert
>close to one another but I'd like my epson stylus photo to give me what I
>see on the screen.
>
>I've calibrated (or "characterised my monitor) with Adobe Gamma and I'm
>using that profile in Colorsync.
>My question is this: for fine-tuning the output, what do you think about
>using the Epson Printer-driver controls in
>"More Settings" as opposed to fiddling with the monitor or trying to
>compensate in Photoshop? Does anyone have a simple solution?

I suspect I'm about to utter a heresy for the addled and grizzled on this
list, but I work in Picture Publisher 7.0, have calibrated my monitor to
the best of my amateurish abilities, and make my Stylus Color 900 match the
monitor (or at least come close) by generating "Style" color correction
files for each paper I use. (I'm sure Photo Shop has comparable filters that
one can wedge between the data displayed on the screen and the data received
by the printer.) When I print, I simply select the paper correction style
and print. I've recently begun selecting "No Color Correction" on the
advanced printer menu to avoid the somewhat unpredictable response I used to
get by selecting "Photo Realistic."

The only time I use the color correction sliders in the Advanced menu is
when I'm printing black and white images as RGB. If I want neutral grey
tones, I push up the magenta and yellow sliders to counter the tendency
of the greys to go green/cyan. The amount required varies with paper type;
for the new Photo paper and the 900, +11Y +11M seems to work plausibly.

Paper, as we all know, varies tremendously in the way it captures and displays
ink. Epson papers seem to be fairly consistent within any given type, so
a printer correction filter tends to work the same from one batch of, say,
Photo Paper to the next. But not always. I just wasted half a dozen sheets of 
Epson Panoramic paper because I made the naive assumption that it *must*
have the same characteristics as its clones in the smaller formats. Not so,
at least for the batch I was using. Check prints made in smaller size
on Epson's A4 SO41140 and adjusted with my Photo Paper filter matched my
monitor display quite closely, but when printed full size with the same filter
on the panoramic paper they took on an offensive green cast. It wasn't until
I printed my standard calibration image on a piece of the pan paper and
another on the standard SO41140 that I realized that the pan paper was
responding differently. I've just acquired a new package of the pan paper
and will check to see if it responds like the old one. In the meantime, I
have added a "PanPaper" filter to my repertoire.

I apologize for the unorthodox terminology of this post. I don't talk
PhotoShop.

Dave F.___________

Dave Fanger (dfanger@world.std.com)
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