The non-custom ICC way.

Color matching:

In yesterday’s column which introduced my newly acquired Epson ET-8550 ink jet dye printer I mentioned the possibility of having a tailored ICC profile created for printing with my large remaining inventory of costly HP Premium Glossy paper.

Here I examine a way of close color matching using off-the-shelf profiles from paper manufacturers.

First I downloaded a selection of profiles from Red River and Moab, placing them in this directory on my Mac Pro:

The Finder path for these appears at the base of the image.

In addition to the Moab and Red River profile collections you can see that I have retained the old HP profiles in the interest of seeing which of this large selection works best with HP Premium Glossy paper in the Espob ET-8550.

The approach is to use the Lightroom Develop module with ‘Soft Proofing’ enabled to compare the hard copy print with what the (profiled) display – a Benq PD3200Q – shows.

Make a selection of print with several different profiles – I used ones with “glossy” in the name – and select the one which looks best to you. Then slice it in half and paste it to the display which is in Develop Soft Proofing mode, thus. The goal is to change profiles used by Lightroom until the displayed image matches the hard copy most closely. Here is the print at right, Scotch-taped to the Benq display:

Click here for a full screen display.

For my HP paper I determined that a Red River Paper profile named RR Polar Gloss Metallic Ep ET-8550′ was the best match, so that’s what I use in printing from Lightroom.

The Red River profile selected in the LR Print module.

Is it perfect? No, but it will more than do until I can procure a tailor made profile.

Quality:

For best quality color prints. Slow and worth it.

There are two discernible differences between choosing ‘Normal’ and ‘Best’. In Normal mode a 13″ x 19″ print is completed in under 3 minutes, using bi-directional printing. In ‘Best’ that takes 12 minutes of single direction printing – spray the ink droplets/return the printhead to the start position/repeat. Given that you can load half a dozen sheets of paper in the rear feeder and as LR/OS X can stack the jobs if more than one is sent to the printer, what’s your hurry?

And you do not want to be in a hurry because in Normal mode blotchy colors are clearly visible in areas of what should be smooth tone. In Best smooth tones are smooth. Easily better enough that the longer print time makes sense.