How do you people do colour matching?
It seems to me there are three different bits to worry about, when
trying to print a file.
-- the colours in the file
-- the colours as displayed on the screen (e.g., by ImageMagick or
the Gimp)
-- the colours as printed.
What do I have to do to my system to be sure that
-- the colours I see on the screen are what's really in the file?
Different monitors look different, even if they're supposed to have
the same Colour Temperature. Without this, one can't easily
adjust colour balance, etc., and have the result what one wants.
-- the colours I get on the printout match what's in the file?
If it makes any difference, I'm using one of a Xerox 8200DP printer,
an HP Laserjet 4650, and an Epson Stylus Photo 720. The first two
talk PostScript directly; the latter goes via Ghostscript (which has
buttons and knobs for tuning the colour; but I'm thinking of retiring
the inkjet printer --- it's too expensive to run, takes forever to
print anything, only produces good results on coated paper, and the
prints it produces are fragile --- touch them with a wet finger and
they run). The same file looks different printed on the three
printers -- the inkjet looks bluer than the others; the Xerox looks
more orange.
So, suggestions for tuning all this stuff, please! I'm using Debian
unstable on AMD64, X86, SPARC and IA64, and my wife's using a powermac
running MacOSX.
Ideally, I'd like to be able to scan a picture off a slide, adjust the
result and send it to the printer with LPR and get something that's almost
identical to the original; and send the resulting tiff or jpeg to a
friend and have his printer likewise produce something almost
identical to the original.
--
Dr Peter Chubb http://www.gelato.unsw.edu.au peterc AT gelato.unsw.edu.au
http://www.ertos.nicta.com.au ERTOS within National ICT Australia
--
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