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Making Your Own Color Tests and Adjustments
By Dan Rose
Getting the correct color from your Inkjet
prints can be difficult, particularly if you use paper or inks
not supplied by the printer manufacturer. At
Suprachrome
our inks are “Exact Match” inks. However, if you are not using an ink/paper
combination that is not supported by ICC profiles, and don’t
have access to ICC creation tools, then using the color
controls in your printer driver software combined with a
simple test print can help you achieve reasonable color
accuracy in your prints. To do this, you will first need to
create the test print. In Photoshop make a new 8.5” x 11”
image.
Click File. Click New. Enter 8.5”x11”,
Resolution:300.
Select White for Background Contents.
Then make 8 small thumbnail size rectangles in
two rows of 4. For each of the rectangles click on
Color, then click on Custom, and finally click
on Picker.
Enter the values below for each of the
different rectangles.
Red
(R, 255; G, 0; B, 0) Green (0, 255, 0) Blue
(0, 0, 255) Gray (200, 200, 200)
Magenta
(255, 0, 255) Cyan (0, 255, 255) Yellow
(255, 255, 0 ) Black (0, 0, 0)
You should get something that looks like this.
Next we will add a couple of your favorite
photos you are very familiar with. These Photos will have
tonal values known to you from the scene. For example: 1. A
portrait of a person (with skin tones you are very familiar
with) wearing a blue shirt. 2. A picture of your home or
office with a car (red would be good!) or two in the picture.
Now you should have something that looks like
this
Leave enough room at the bottom for Notes.
Now make a photo quality print on the paper you
want to use. How does it look? If it looks good, date it and
file it away where it is protected from daylight. If it looks
like it could use a little tweaking you can try the following.
You can create your own personal printer driver settings with
just a little effort.
On an Epson printer:
Click File. Click Print. Click Properties.
Click advanced. Click Color Controls.
Guidelines for A Few Simple Color Corrections
Set 1
Photo too yellow: reduce Yellow or increase
Magenta and Cyan
Photo too cyan: reduce Cyan or increase Magenta
and Yellow
Photo too magenta: reduce Magenta or increase
Cyan and Yellow
Set 2
Photo too blue: increase Yellow or decrease
Cyan and Magenta
Photo too green: reduce Cyan and Yellow or
increase Magenta
Photo too red: reduce Yellow and Magenta or
increase Cyan
Make another print and see if the adjustments
helped.
Keep making adjustments and prints until you
get the most accurate color rendition.
Helpful Tip:
When judging your prints to decide on the
adjustments to make, decide by looking at the reds, blues, and
greens. Make your adjustments by using the guidelines in Set 2
above. If you do this correctly, the settings for yellow, cyan
and magenta will take care of themselves! When you get your
tweaking done to the way you like it, Click Save Setting. Then
Give it a Name and Click Save. Don’t worry about playing
around with this. It could turn out to be very rewarding in
the end. If you don’t like your results, try again. If you end
up wanting to return to the setting before you started just
click Reset Controls and you are back where you started. Good
Luck. Have Fun!
Dan is owner of the
Suprachrome,
a company that provides
"Exact Match"
Fine Art quality ink to the discerning hobbyist and
professional photographer.
Dan
divides his business hours between the companies offices in Kansas City
and Chicago. All of Dan’s fine art photographs are printed on
Suprachrome Media with archival pigment Suprachrome Ink.
Dan
is honored to be the first photographer appointed to the Kansas Arts on Tour Roster underwritten by the State of Kansas and the National Endowment
of the Arts.
'Improving
Your Print Quality'
'Make
Your Printer Run Faster Without Quality Loss'
'Profiling
Your Monitor'
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