| Joined: | Thu Apr 19th, 2012 |
| Location: | United Kingdom |
| Posts: | 4424 |
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The bets way to go about this is not cheap or simple.
I am sure that Graham Whistler could probably point us to a RPS way of doing things.
Here goes anyway. If you want to get you printer to print what you see on screen first of all you need to make sure your monitor is correctly calibrated.
To do this you need a Pantone Spyder or ColorMunki.
This sets up your monitor so that it is outputing the correct colour from your computer video card. If you change computers you need to recalibrate. In fact in theory you should calibrate every month if you have a LED/TFT screen and weekly if you have an older CRT.
OK so your screen is calibrated so now you need to make the printer output match as closely as possible what you see on screen. In reality this will never be absolutely the same as one is transmitted light (from the screen) and the other reflected light (from the print) but once again this requires you to calibrate or profile the printer.
The printer profile is specific to the printer, the batch of paper and the batch of ink you are using!!
See this is not easy or trivial.
More info on this can be found on the Luminous Landscape site.
Also Cambridge in Colour http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/
Be careful this is potentially a very expensive and time consuming road to travel to print perfection. I have done it back in 2007 before I moved to Mac full time but kept my printing environment so that all printing was done via a Windows machine. I havent done much printing of photos since 2011 when that Windows machine became less useful to me. It is easier to take the 'colour correct image' to a printer and get them to print it for you.
If it is a good print shop they will be able to get it as you want it. If it is a high street/mall printer then good luck explaining what is required, I hope you are a patient person.
In the old days when I scanned images I also had to create a scanning profile.
So once the monitor and printer are done, you print a test chart (adobe do a digital file you can download) then scan it back into the computer. Then it's a case of comparing the onscreen scanned image...and adjusting it back to the original onscreen file colour etc.
You save this correction profile and use it every time you scan.
____________________
Eric