Doctor John wrote:

I use Photoshop 7 with an Epson 980 printer. I refill my own cartridges, and the printer colors are not true to the screen colors. I've read documents on color correction and did have some luck with corrections, but there must be an easier way to do this. Are there any pre-made color swatch files or other shortcuts to do a simple color correction for a given printer. I'm not trying to correct my scanner as mostly I print photos loaded straight from a digital camera. Thanks in advance for any help.

There are indeed color profiling packages that will perform this function. The less expensive ones, such as Monaco Color, Wiziwyg, and Vuescan, operate by printing, then scanning, a standard image.

The problem with these products, and indeed any product that relies on your flatbed to "close the loop" and generate a printer profile, is the rather deep tonal ranges of today's printers. The end result is often a profile that drops out the bottom couple of steps in the test strip as pure black. Using vuescan's (www.hamrick.com) long exposure feature can help with this, as will cleaning the interior of your scanner glass, and using a newer hibit scanner with a good S/N ratio.

BTW - there is a color profile action that may be interesting to look at. It uses Photoshop's displacement filter functionality to generate an RGB "neutral response" curve. Free, and fun!
http://www.curvemeister.com/downloads/

The more expensive packages include measuring instruments, but IMHO this is overkill for a one person system, and not guaranteed to get good results either.

Here's another procedure that you can try for free:

1) print the nozzle check pattern - obvious, but I've made the mistake more than once of trying to adjust color because light magenta or light cyan is clogged. Assuming that's OK, proceed to step 2.

2) Generate a neutral gradient or step wedge, or download one from this location, which includes skin tones:
http://www.curvemeister.com/downloads/

3) Print the test strip, and adjust your printer driver settings to get rid of any overall cast. Generally this will do the job, or get you in very close.

BTW - if a small section only of the test strip has a cast, go back and print the nozzle check :-)

--

Mike Russell
www.curvemeister.com
www.geigy.2y.net

Doctor John

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color correction for Epson printer