Producing consistent color from inkjet printers

Want predictable, accurate color from your inkjet printer? Use Adobe® Photoshop® CS color management to precisely control the color information that Photoshop sends to your printer. The key is to create and use a custom printer profile that contains information about how your specific inkjet printer produces color. In this tutorial we’ll show you how to use your custom printer profile to make your inkjet consistently print colors just the way you want. For the complete story about color management, see Photoshop Help.

1. Create a profile for your monitor.

Your monitor profile describes the behavior of your monitor so that Photoshop can display color accurately. You can use Adobe Gamma in Windows or the Display Calibrator Assistant in Mac OS to create a profile.

For assistance creating the profile in Windows, see Photoshop Help. In Mac OS, see Mac Help.

2. Set Photoshop color defaults.

Choose how Photoshop reacts to the profiles embedded in the images you open: Choose Edit > Color Settings (Windows) or Photoshop > Color Settings (Mac OS). Choose Adobe RGB (1998) from the RGB pop-up menu in the Working Spaces section. Choose Preserve Embedded Profiles from the RGB pop-up menu in the Color Management Policies section, and then select Ask When Opening for both Profile Mismatches and Missing Profiles.

The options that Photoshop displays when you open an image depend on what you choose in the Policies section of the Color Settings dialog box. When you choose Preserve Embedded Profiles, Photoshop keeps the embedded profile if it differs from your working space profile (Adobe RGB (1998)). Ask When Opening allows you to change which profile is assigned to each image that doesn’t contain your previously selected working space profile. This is handy, for example, if you primarily open images from a camera or scanner that embeds a profile, you may want to use the embedded profile instead of the working profile you’ve selected for Photoshop.

3. Save your profile into your image.

When you save an image, choose File > Save As, and select ICC Profile: [custom profile] (Windows) or Embed Color Profile: [custom profile] (Mac OS) in the Color section.

Saving a profile embeds it in your image, allowing other applications that use color management to read and use that profile in their color management workflow.

4. Soft proof your image.

Choose View > Proof Setup > Custom. Choose your custom printer profile from the Profile pop-up menu. Select Preview to view the conversion changes on-screen, and click OK. You can toggle soft proofing on and off as you work by choosing View > Proof Colors.

Soft proofing shows you on-screen how your image will look printed. Your printer, not your monitor, produces the finished product, so your monitor needs to reflect the printout. The soft proof feature depends on some printer driver settings: Using your custom profile, soft proofing displays the image using the ink and media conditions in place when you printed the test page for the custom profile. If you’ve changed a setting in the printer driver, the color may not be as you expect.

Take advantage of Photoshop’s powerful editing features to help you attain accurate color while you soft proof. Color casts are easily removed by targeting the individual channels in a Levels or Curves adjustment layer. These adjustment layers are the best way to lighten and improve the contrast in your images, as well. Or you can use the Hue/Saturation or Color Balance adjustment layers, or the Variations feature to modify your image’s color.

5. Print your image.

Choose File > Print with Preview. Make sure that Show More Options is selected. Choose Color Management from the pop-up menu directly under Show More Options. Click Document under Source Space to set the profile associated with your image as the source profile for the color conversion to your printer colorspace. Under Print Space, choose your custom printer profile. Choose Perceptual for the Intent, and click Print. If the color is not as expected, try Relative Colorimetric for the Intent.

Be sure to turn off the color management option in the printer driver; in the printer driver’s settings look for an Advanced button or tab that contains an option for color management or color adjustment. See your printer’s documentation for assistance. If you don't turn off the printer driver's color management option, you use two color management systems; this doubles the changes made to the image and can destroy the printed color.

6. Adjust settings if necessary.

If the colors don’t print as you expect, you might need to make additional changes to the image, as suggested in Step 4.