The Dark Arts of Color Management

Getting one’s inkjet printer to faithfully render a digital camera image up on screen is an arcane art, not to be undertaken without the proper incantations. Color management is complicated enough so that it is actually something of a cottage industry: consultants make their living helping clients get the colors of their glossy mail-order catalogues right at the printer’s, and there is a whole armamentarium of software and hardware instruments to help with the problem.

All of which seems overkill for the amateur digital photographer. Entry-level color calibration software packages, such as MonacoEZColor, are still relatively expensive; that is, it seems a bit profligate to spend $300 on software to calibrate a $120 Epson C80 inkjet printer. What then is the poor digital photographer to do?

Searching hither and yon on the web I came across a guide to printer profiling on the cheap. In this technique, you start out with a color target. (Not happening to have a GretagMacbeth ColorChecker chart handy, I made my own, shown above, using watercolor and gouache. Anyway, I know well the color and tints of ultramarine and burnt sienna.) You then print the target out and compare it with the image on screen. Then in Photoshop, you create a curves adjustment layer, and tweak the color curves so that the screen image matches the print. You then invert the curves and apply them, so that the next trial print should be pretty close to the image. Repeat the process to fine-tune. Basically, this technique creates a printer-and-paper-specific adjustment layer that you swap in at the end of your Photoshop work in lieu of an accurately-calibrated ICC printer profile.

I found trying to get the hues to come out right by manipulating the curves pretty difficult so my main emendation to the technique is to use the hue/saturation controls rather than the curves control. My prints are coming out pretty well now, but there is a lot of fine-tuning left to do.

It’s still a dark art, after all.