Digital Photography Hacks

Great Color Prints from Your Inkjet Printer

The battle cry for his hack is “go forth and calibrate!” That’s about the only way you’re going to get consistently accurate prints from your inkjet printer.

One of the promises of digital printing is that you can produce images in your own digital darkroom without the mess of mixing chemicals. However, while there is no water involved in digital printing, your prints might still get wet from the sweat of frustration.

If you’ve ever tried to print color photos by just plugging your camera into the computer, opening your image, and printing, you know where this frustration comes from. Consistent color out of the box is almost impossible without a little upfront work. But, if you follow the techniques outlined in this hack, what you see on your monitor will look very much like what you print out.

The solution starts with your monitor. Monitors are made by a wide variety of manufacturers. This results in a surprising array of color variance between your monitor and another brand. Even the age of a monitor affects its color. This means that the perfectly color-correct image on your monitor might not really be color-correct. The only real way to ensure that the color on your monitor is consistent with the color on your printer is for them to work off the same protocol. The industry-standard software for this protocol is documented by the International Color Consortium (ICC), a group founded by Apple and seven other vendors in 1993. The most ...