I'm just empirically matching the Epson print to the (Matthews Paint) swatchbook, in order to achieve a plausibly realistic result. What I mean is, if the building is supposed to be painted Moss Green 1B-4C, that the color of the printout of my illustration of the building matches the paint chip 1B-4C. What I am manipulating to achieve this is the custom color formula in Illustrator (using CMYK), since there is no preexisting formula for these paints. I have found that once I get a grasp on a few colors in my palette, I can derive the others with not too much tinkering, and then select the color mode that gives me the best onscreen preview. Possibly due to my many years of experience predicting CMYK output from screen images (long predating color inkjet printers), I don't have a great deal of difficulty doing this. In one sense, it doesn't really matter how the monitor displays the color for this purpose, although I have found that my calibration is reasonably close (Trinitron, gamma 1.8, 5000K). I compare the print under daylight conditions since architecture (obviously) is not viewed under controlled lighting. I was not recommending this as a procedure for general use, since it is based upon subjective "eyeball" color comparison, not to mention it is not "portable" from system to system. I was just suggesting that the Epson (1520 in my case) was capable of consistent output, and a reasonable correspondence between screen and printout, in Illustrator. If you were trying to achieve an "objective" color match, say to Pantone colors, for which the formulas are already determined, I think a more rigorous approach might be helpful. That said, I find that I get reasonable results with many Pantone colors, as it stands. A Spectrophotometer sounds pretty nice, though... CDTobie@aol.com had this to say: > >In a message dated 1/10/00 5:58:03 PM, mvheim@studiolimage.com writes: > >>Illustrator 8 for Mac supports Colorsync, and has an on-screen print >>preview mode that actually is very useful. You're kind of on your own to >> >>guess which mode (absolute colorimetric, relative colorimetric) to use, >> >>but a few test prints and consistent color is really no problem. I've >>been matching paint colors to a commercial swatchbook in architectural >> >>renderings. > >What on earth are you matching? Screen color to the swatchbook (under what >lighting?) and then to the printer? What type of monitor profile? What type >of printer profile? Lots of variables here... > >I do it as scientifically as I can manage... spectrophotometer reading of >the >swatch, then import that to a pallet, then print to an appropriate CMYK RIP >profile, and I still can't get the results I want without ICC AutoFlow... > > >C. David Tobie >Design Cooperative >CDTobie@designcoop.com > -- =============================== Max Heim mvheim@studiolimage.com _______________________________ Studio L'Image/San Francisco 415 643 9309 : 415 643 9307 fax _______________________________ Studio L'Image/New York 212 242 3366 : 212 242 3399 fax - Turn off HTML mail features. Keep quoted material short. Use accurate subject lines. http://www.leben.com/lists for list instructions.