Inaccurate Color and Printer Profiling

This short article is aimed to give the user a basic idea of why certain ink / paper combinations look different.

Before we start talking about slight variants in colour, let us first deal with colour cast. Certain images when printed can exhibit a colour cast, the first thing to check is the printer nozzles, run a nozzle check, a failing nozzle will create a colour cast, and no custom profile in the world will be able to rectify this type of print abnormality.

Colour differences often take place when a customer changes either Ink, Paper brands, each ink has it’s own colour space, and each colour is seen differently from the OEM ink, therefore using the built in driver to manage the colour at point of print will result in different results, this is rectified by using a ICC profile for the ink and media combination.

Monitor adjustment. Photographers often change a image based upon their perception of the image on screen, and then seem shocked when the produced print is different, they then proceed to tell you how much they know about color space. Monitors create colour with light, printers use ink, a printer can not reproduce the same range of colours that a monitor can and a slight adjustment on the monitor can often lead to a huge monumental change when printed. In other words, never assume that your monitor is correct, calibrate it using a hardware calibration kit, this should be carried out every two weeks without fail. Another failing of users is lighting, prints look different when viewed under artificial lighting, most photographers know about this, but think that changes in the appearance of prints under artificial lighting are slight, they are not, lighting makes a huge change to the appearance of an image.

When switching to a third party ink set we recommend a custom profile, this will solve most of your colour management problems.