TECHNOLOGY REVIEWS

Calibration of Monitors, Digital Printers and Scanners

By Barry Haynes

One of the most common questions I get from the readers of my Photoshop Artistry books has to do with how
they can better calibrate their monitors, printers and scanners. Calibration can allow you to get the same color
and contrast from your printer that you see on your monitor, to get very similar color and contrast when print-
ing the same image on a number of different printers and to improve the results you get from your scanner.
Apple ColorSync and Photoshop 5 provide an effective framework for people to accurately calibrate the pro-
duction of digital images using Photoshop on the Macintosh. Doing this calibration accurately, however,
requires color measurement instruments and calibration software. When ColorSync and Photoshop 5 first came
out, the only calibration and measurement products available were both expensive and difficult to use. Recently
this has changed and there are now a variety of software and hardware products to help you calibrate. In this
article, I’ll categorize and discuss some of those products and their effectiveness for different types of users. I’ll
help you understand the type of user you may be and try to match you to the calibration solution that will work
best for you. These solutions include 1. Doing and buying nothing, 2. Buying several of these calibration prod-
ucts, depending on your needs, and using them to calibrate yourself and, 3. Hiring a calibration expert to do the
work for you using the most expensive and accurate calibration products and also the expert’s knowledge.

What are Calibration, ColorSync and ICC Profiles?

Calibration is the process where you measure the color gamut of a particular monitor, printer or scanner and
produce a detailed description of this color gamut in the format of an ICC profile. The color gamut of a device
is the range of colors that device can reproduce. The ICC is an international standards organization that has
developed the ICC Profile format which has become an industry standard for describing and dealing with the
color gamuts of different color devices. ColorSync is a system software component that is built into the
Macintosh that provides a framework for other applications, like Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark, etc., to make
use of ICC profiles to accurately deal with the differences in color input and output on different devices.
ColorSync and its use by other applications allow the user to get matching, or close to matching, color on each
device. For calibration to work correctly one needs to accurately make an ICC profile of each device then cor-
rectly use these ICC profiles within a world of ColorSync-savvy applications. This article is the third in a series
of articles I have written for CA this year. The first article, "Producing Final Art on Desktop Printers" appeared
in the January/February 2000 issue and you should read it for more detailed background information on this
subject. The second article, in the May/June issue, evaluates the Epson 1270 and 875DC, the HP 970Cse and
Photosmart 1100, the Fuji Pictrography 3000 and 4000 and Lightjet 5000 digital printers. This article may also
help your with understanding. These articles can also be found at the CA Web site at www.commarts.com and
at the author's Web site at www.barryhaynes.com.

Do you Need to Calibrate?

If the color on your monitor matches the color on your digital prints and if you and your clients are happy with
the results of your digital image creations, you may not need to calibrate any further. Seriously! I have been
using my Epson Stylus Photo EX, 1200 and now the Stylus Photo 1270 to create low-cost proofs for later final
output to the Lightjet 5000. The Lightjet 5000 is a $200,000 digital printer that prints onto 60-year color perma-
nent Fuji Crystal Archive photographic paper up to 50" wide. This printer has, in the last two years, become the
standard for archival digital photographic output. With the Epson 1200 and now the 1270, using the methods
and settings described in my May/June CA article, I have been able to get images on my monitor and from
these printers that were often quite close to having the same image printed on the Lightjet. You may find that
calibrating your monitor with Adobe Gamma, a visual monitor calibrator that comes with Photoshop, and using
my or similar settings with your printer gets you close enough for your needs. This is more likely to be the case
if your Epson, HP or other printer is the only output you are interested in and if you are lucky enough to have a
monitor that matches the printer's output. If this is the case for you then maybe you don’t need to read this arti-
cle too closely. If images on your monitor don’t match your printer then your should certainly read further. I’m
interested in as exactly as possible matching my Epson 1270 prints to my Lightjet 5000 prints and also in
matching Epson 1270 prints on several different papers and possibly even with different inks. To do this I have
found that creating my own ICC profiles for each printer and ink combination gets me a closer match and also a
more beautiful print. I’m very picky about color so I may require more accuracy than you need. The amount of
color accuracy you require will depend on the type of color user you are and also on the amount of time and
money you can spend.

What Category of User Are You and How Much Time and Money do You Have to Spend?
There are a lot of color calibration products now on the market and they are obviously designed for different
categories of color users. Here are some user categories I came up with to help describe who might want to go
with each type of calibration solution. A "hobbyist" user is someone who uses Photoshop and other desktop
applications to make prints to send to friends, relatives, to make their own holiday cards and just for fun. If you
are this type of user, you may be happy using Adobe Gamma, or some other application, to calibrate your moni-
tor, using the settings described in my above-mentioned second CA article. The hobbyist doesn’t have a lot of
time and money to spend on calibration products and probably won’t spend more than $300 on calibration. A
"serious hobbyist" is someone who creates digital images and really cares about more exact color control of
those images. This type of user will be willing to spend some time and money on calibration products but prob-
ably won’t want to spend much over $1,000 on a calibration system. I’ll call the next category the "professional
color user." This type of user needs to have exact repeatable color on more than one output device for commer-
cial and/or art sales of their images. The professional color user will pay considerably more than $1,000 to get
control over their color and will also invest the time required to get repeatable consistent results. The highest
category of color user is the "color management expert." This is a person who is in business to make color pro-
files and calibrate other customer's color environments. The color management expert will spend up to $10,000
and maybe more for the software and hardware needed to do the job. He or she will also spend weeks and
months learning how to use these calibration products in a variety of situations. So we have the hobbyist, the
serious hobbyist, the professional color user and finally the color management expert.

Should you Calibrate Yourself or Get a Professional to Help you?

If you are a hobbyist then I’d say you should calibrate yourself using some of the less expensive solutions I’ll
describe below. Most color management experts who actually know what they are doing will charge you more
than what you will be willing to pay for their services. The exception to this statement is that you might want to
hire a color management expert to make a custom profile for you. Some color management experts will send
you a calibration file, which you print out on your printer via their instructions, then you mail it back to them
and they measure it and mail you a profile. This can work if done correctly and can be as cheap as $125. I’d be
willing to bet that some profiles made this way at this kind of price are not that good.

If you are a serious hobbyist, you might want to try some of the low- to moderately-priced calibration solutions
and calibrate your own system. If you can find a recommended color management expert who will do what you
need in your price range, you may get more accurate calibration that way. The deciding issue here might be
whether you will need to calibrate more things in the future. You will probably want to make an ICC profile for
each printer and paper combination. If you are using the Epson 1270, for example, and only the Epson
Premium Glossy Photo Paper and maybe the Epson Matte Paper Heavyweight, then that will require a profile
for each of these papers and calibration of your monitor and maybe a scanner. If you will be happy with those
profiles for some time to come then getting a color management expert to do it for you may save you time and
money and get you more accurate profiles. See the list of color management experts at the end of this article. If,
on the other hand, you also want to try Lysonic or MIS inks, a variety of papers and are using several scanners
or printers then you might save money by purchasing your own calibration products.

If you are a professional color user, the same issues come up for you too. I’m assuming you will have more
money to spend on a solution than the serious hobbyist will and that time may also be a factor for you. If you
are, for example, a busy commercial photographer or designer, you may not have the time to learn how to cor-
rectly use the calibration hardware and software products you will need to do a good job. It has taken me sever-
al weeks to decide which products to evaluate for this article and then learn how to use them. To use them
really efficiently in a variety of circumstances would take me longer. Your time might be better spent hiring a
color management expert, who will also bring the best software and hardware to the task. On the other hand, if
your organization is large and you have a lot of different color scanners, monitors, printers, inks and papers to
calibrate, you might save money or make it more convenient for yourself or have more control if you purchase
your own calibration hardware and software and learn how to use it.

The color management expert is going to want to have the highest-quality calibration software and hardware
available and will likely have to spend at least $10,000 to get what they need. You may also want to have sever-
al solutions available so you can charge different amounts depending on the accuracy required by the customer
and also the amount of money they can spend.

Monitor Calibration for Free?

Photoshop comes with a tool called Adobe Gamma, which allows you to visually calibrate your monitor. I cali-
brate my monitor to a color temperature of 5000 Kelvin and a gamma of 1.8, which works well for printed pho-
tographs. I’ve found it hard to correctly calibrate many monitors to these settings using Adobe Gamma. If you
are mostly working on Web images, you may want to calibrate to 6500 and 2.2. More monitors will easily cali-
brate to these settings using Adobe Gamma. Most modern monitors also have buttons on the front of the moni-
tor that allow you to set the color temperature and gamma; these
are sometimes quite accurate but often not that accurate. On Mac
systems, you can also use Apple Menu/Control Panels/Monitors
& Sound to bring up a control panel with a Color button that
allows you to visually calibrate your monitor. With the Apple
ColorSync 17" and 21" displays, this is also how you access the
built-in hardware calibrator—another way to calibrate your moni-
tor without additional expense. If you have a good eye for moni-
tor color and some patience, it is possible to get reasonable
calibration on some monitors using one of these techniques. If
this doesn’t work then you should try one of the monitor calibra- Using the Color button to calibrate an Apple display.
tion techniques discussed in this article.

Inexpensive Calibration Systems

If you are unable to calibrate your monitor correctly using Adobe Gamma, which I often find it hard to do, the
cheapest actually excellent visual monitor calibrator, which does-
n’t require an instrument, is ColorBlind ProveIt for $49.95. With
ProveIt and no sensor it is possible, for an experienced color per-
son anyhow, to do a great job visually calibrating most monitors.
If you purchase an additional monitor calibration sensor—
Colorblind supports many popular models that cost around
$200—this software package works very well and allows you to
calibrate to any color temperature and gamma very quickly and
accurately. For $299 you can purchase ProveIt with the sensor
and get easy and accurate monitor calibration. Another hard-
ware/software product that does a great job with monitor calibra-
tion is Color Vision PhotoCal and Optical. Color Vision Using ColorBlind ProveIt to Visually Calibrate your monitor. This is
specializes in monitor calibration. Their USB Photocal system, the best visual calibration tool I have ever used and it works even
better and much more quickly if you purchase it with the hardware
which includes the monitor calibration sensor and the software monitor calibrator!
for $199, works very well in calibrating a monitor to 5000
(kelvin) and 1.8 (gamma) or 6500 and 2.2. This is any easy-to-
use product that works with the Mac and Windows; the serial ver-
sion is $299. If you want to be able to calibrate your monitor to
any color temperature or gamma, the higher-end $399 Optical is
the product you will want. Both Color Vision monitor calibration
products use the same hardware sensor, so if you already have
PhotoCal and want to upgrade to Optical, that costs an additional
$199.

To calibrate your flatbed scanner, monitor and inkjet printer, there Using PhotoCal to calibrate your monitor. This package is easy to
use and comes with a sensor to automatically calibrate your monitor.
are two low-priced products I have evaluated. Monaco EZ Color,
for $299 without their monitor sensor and $498 with, is the best
known of these. Monaco EZ Color developed a very smart sys-
tem that uses your flatbed scanner to create a profile for both
your scanner and printer. As you can see from the screengrab,
Monaco EZ color walks you through the simple process and
explains it very well. It first prompts you to print a profile from
your printer. Instead of printing directly from Monaco, I recom-
mend that you have Monaco write the profile to a file and then
open that file and print that profile directly from Photoshop. This
way you will be sure to use the same print options that you use
when printing your profiled images. Use the print options I show
here for printing the profile from Photoshop with the Epson 1270
Monaco EZ Color steps you through the process of calibrating
printer, use similar options for other Epson printers and with any Monitors, Scanners and Printers. It is easy to use.

printer you want to print in a way that turns off all the color man-
agement done by the printer software.

An important thing I discovered is that the Epson inks, and many

inkjet inks, change in color if you let them dry overnight. I found
that my profiles were more accurate if I let the test swatches dry
overnight before reading them with the scanner or spectropho-
tometer and making the profile. After printing the swatches with
Monaco EZ color, you then tape an IT8 target to the indicated
place on the printed swatch page. The IT8 target comes with EZ
These are the settings I used in the main Epson Print dialog for my color and is a standard set of color swatches that are produced
1270 when printing both the test swatches for a profile and then later
when making prints that have been converted to this profile. You using exact specifications. You then place this letter-size swatch
need to use these in conjunction with the advanced print dialog set-
tings shown below. You need to set the Media Type to the type of
printout, with the IT8 target attached, on your scanner and scan
paper you are using. the entire thing making sure that all color management on your
scanner is turned off. Being sure all the color management on
your scanner is turned off is sometimes hard to do and is very
important. You then save the scanned RGB file in TIFF format.
Monaco EZ color then reads in the information from this scan
and prompts you to click on the four corners of both the printed
swatches from your printer and also the IT8 target. Once you
locate the corners of each swatch area, EZ color can then com-
pare the results from the scan to the empirical results of the origi-
nal swatch colors. It then uses the results of scanning the IT8
These are the advanced Epson print dialog settings to go with the
target to create a profile for your scanner. With that profile in
above main print dialog hand, it can then analyze the scan of your printer’s swatches to
create the profile for your printer.

I’ve made a number of profiles using Monaco EZ color with dif-

ferent papers and Epson printers. I’ve found that the same image
printed with the correct Monaco EZ color profile on these differ-
ent printers and papers looks very similar. This is a good solution
for the price and well worth a try for the hobbyist and maybe the
serious hobbyist. Remember that when you print using a custom
profile, you first want to use Image/Mode/Profile-to-Profile to
convert your master image from your LAB or RGB color space
When printing an image using a custom profile, I first use
Image/Mode/Profile-to-Profile from Photoshop to convert my stan- into the space for your printer created by this profile. Then in
dard master image from its default color space, LAB in my case, into your print dialog, you want to turn all color management off, as
the space defined by the custom profile. I then print the image using
the same print dialog settings shown above that were used to print shown above, in the same way you did when printing the color
the sample test swatches.
test swatches to make your profile.

Monaco will also sell you IT8 targets on film so you can use EZ color to calibrate a film scanner. These cost
$40 for 35mm and $100 for 4 x 5 film. (I have not tried this option myself.) I was not that impressed with the
EZ color system for visually calibrating a monitor. Without the monitor sensor, it didn’t work much differently
than Adobe Gamma and is not as useful as ColorBlind ProveIt is without a sensor. With the hardware sensor it
may work much better but, unfortunately, Monaco did not send me their sensor so I couldn’t test it.

Another system that uses a flatbed scanner to read color swatches in the same way as Monaco EZ Color is
Praxisoft Wiziwyg, $79, or Wiziwyg Delux, $599. The step-by-step process for making profiles with Wiziwyg
is very similar to that for Monaco EZ Color so I won’t describe it in detail. I used Praxisoft Wiziwyg Delux to
make a profile with my flatbed scanner, the process works the same as it does in Wiziwyg. Wiziwyg Delux,
which includes a hardware monitor calibrator and a profile editor, is a mid-priced calibration system that allows
one to use either a flatbed scanner or a low-end spectrophotometer or colorimeter to read the color swatches
and make profiles. The hardware monitor calibrator that comes with Wiziwyg Delux did a similar job to ProveIt
and PhotoCal in calibrating my monitor.

Mid-Priced Calibration Systems

The mid-priced calibration systems I looked at are Praxisoft Wiziwyg Delux at $599, Wiziwyg Pro at $999 (this
is Wiziwyg Delux plus a ColorSavvy ColorMouse colorimeter), Itec ColorBlind Matchbox at $999 and Monaco
Proof at $1,495. ColorBlind Matchbox includes a colorimeter for making printer profiles, Wiziwyg Delux
includes a hardware monitor calibrator and Wiziwyg Pro includes monitor calibration and print profiling col-
orimeters. All these systems allow you to make profiles using either a spectrophotometer or a colorimeter,
which generally provide more accurate results than a flatbed scanner. Most of the low-priced colorimeters only
read one color swatch at a time. Reading all the swatches required to make a profile can therefore take and hour
our two. I was very appreciative to X-Rite for lending me a DTP-
41 strip reader to use as I worked on this article. It reads an entire
strip of swatches automatically as it pulls them through its sensor.
This allows you to do your readings much more quickly and the
DTP-41 is also very accurate.

The Monaco Proof product appears to be a subset of Monaco’s

higher-end product, Monaco Profiler 3.1. The spectrophotometer
I used to make profiles with Monaco Proof was the X-Rite DTP-
41 that costs $2,500. Monaco Proof allows you to make profiles
for monitors, scanners and printers and also contains
MonacoTweak for editing profiles that you and others have made. The main options available with Monaco PROOF.
Its View Gamut feature also allows you to see 3-D pictures of profiles and compare several of these on your
monitor. Monaco Proof has an optional $249 sensor to calibrate your monitor, although Monaco didn’t send me
this so I was unable to test that feature. This package is much the same as its high-end brother, Monaco Profiler
3.1, in the way it makes printer profiles.

It gives you the option to Linearize the profile first, which is the best thing to do. Linearization prints a small
set of swatches, which you then read with your spectrophotometer allowing Monaco Proof to determine the lin-
ear response of your output device. This information is then used
to create a more accurate set of color swatches for the next set of
measurements. To Linearize you turn on the Linearize option and
have Monaco write the Linearization target out to a file. You then
open that target and print it from Photoshop, using the same no-
color management settings as you will later use when printing
with a profile. (There is a screengrab of these settings above in
the description of Monaco-EZ-Color.) I found that the profiles
come out better if you let the linearization target dry overnight to
be sure the ink colors have completely stabilized. The next day,
using the DTP-41 or another spectrophotometer or colorimeter,
you read the values from this target into Monaco Proof. The You get a more accurate profile with Monaco Proof if you first
Linearization swatches contain three rows and 36 swatches total. Linearize your printer. In this dialog the options for Linearization are
explained and you are given the option of printing the swatches
The software prompts you showing you which strip of the target directly from Monaco Proof or saving the file and printing from your
to read next. To read a strip you put it into the DTP-41 then push Application. I recommend printing from your application.
its only button, which causes all the swatches on that strip to be read. The Monaco software adds those swatch
values, which are sent to your computer over the serial port by the DTP-41, then prompts you to read the next
strip. After reading the linearization values, Monaco Proof uses them to create a large set of color swatches.
This set of color swatches is written to either seven letter-size page files or three tabloid-size files so that you
can print them from Photoshop. You can actually print the swatches directly from Monaco, but to duplicate the
exact process I use when making a photographic print, I printed them from Photoshop using the same settings
(shown above) I use when printing images. You want to let this second set of swatches dry overnight again so
when you read them and make the final profile you’ll actually be working on the third day of this process.

This second set of swatches contains 29 rows of 26 swatches each, and a last row that only contains 5. That is
759 swatches in all! Can you imagine clicking on each of them one at a time then waiting a couple of seconds
while each swatch is read? That is why I like the DTP-41 which still took about 25 minutes to read the 759
swatches. All I had to do was line each of the 30 rows up correctly, then the DTP-41 did the rest. A friend of
mine with the Colorblind Matchbox sensor claims it takes him
about 2 hours to read the 300 swatches in the Matchbox swatch
pattern. After reading all 759 swatches into Monaco Proof, you
are now given quite a few options for making a profile. There is
an option to add contrast to your profile: you need to choose your
rendering intent, choose Perceptual for photographs, and there is
also an option to neutralize any color casts caused by the paper. I
found the profiles made with this Neutralize Paper Color option
on did a better job making neutral stepwedge grays actually print
without a cast and also did better at matching the same image
printed on the Lightjet 5000. Once you have chosen your options
you are asked to name the profile you will make, then Monaco
To the left you see the 29 rows of color swatches displayed. Monaco
Proof creates the profile. At this point, without having to reread Proof flashes the row that you need to feed into the
all the swatch data, you can go back to the step where you choose Spectrophotometer next. You put this row into the DTP-41, click on
the button and the device automatically reads all 26 swatches in that
the profile-making options and make another version of the pro- row. I would not want to read all 759 swatches by hand!
file having different options. I was quite impressed with this
package, and the profiles I made with it and the DTP-41. These
profiles were the most accurate and pleasing ones I was able to
create.

The process for making profiles with Wiziwyg Delux is similar to

that of Monaco Proof. Wiziwyg Delux does not support the DTP-
41, however, but only supports the ColorSavvy ColorMouse and
X-Rite Digital Swatchbook which are measurement devices that
read one color swatch at a time. Since I didn’t have one of these
devices attached, Wiziwyg would not give me the option of print-
ing out the color swatches for a high-end device to read. If you do After reading all the 759 swatches, you get these options for creating
the profile. You should use the Perceptual rendering intent when
have one of these working with Photographs. I didn’t turn on any of the contrast boost
cheaper devices since I want the printer to emulate what is on my screen. The black
generation and maximum ink options refer to CMYK profiles and I did
then Delux prints my Epson profiles as RGB profiles. I did like the profile generated for
the Matte Paper Heavyweight better when the Neutralize Paper
512 swatches for Color options was turn on. It did a better job of creating neutral grays
you to read with it. on my stepwedge that I usually add to the border around my prints.
You can actually generate more than one version of the profile with-
Since I didn’t have out rereading all the swatches. To do this, you click Next here and
create a profile, then use the Back button to come back to this Profile
one of these, I had Options screen, change the options then go on to create a 2nd pro-
file with different options.
to choose the
option for printing the swatches and reading them on my flatbed
scanner, as I could have done with regular Wiziwyg and did with
Monaco EZ Color. It seems that for $599 Wiziwyg Delux should
support the DTP-41 and higher-end swatch readers. The more
Using WiziWyg Delux is similar to using Monaco EZ Color or Monaco expensive Monaco Proof only supported more expensive readers,
Proof in that the directions are very simple. I found that Monaco
Proof had more details in its PDF electronic manual than the very including those shown here, but did support ASCII data files.
short WiziWyg PDF manual.
Why didn’t it support the less expensive devices? Praxisoft also
has a more expensive product, the $1949 Compass Profile, that supports the more expensive devices and has
more features like Monaco Proof. Do you see all the hands going into your pocketbook here!

To compare these profiles, I printed the same six images with

each profile. The six different images each tested particular types
of color situations. The profiles made with the DTP-41 and
Monaco Proof showed the most variety of colors and produced
the most pleasing prints. I rate second the profiles made with
Monaco EZ Color using my flatbed scanner as the measurement
device. I have quite a good flatbed scanner, the Lino Saphir Ultra
2, although I have heard from color experts at Adobe that
Monaco EZ Color works well with most flatbed scanners, even Measurement devices and input formats supported by Monaco Proof
version 3.0
many of the cheaper ones. The profiles I made with my scanner
and Wiziwyg Delux did not appear to do quite as good a job printing my files as the ones made with Monaco
Proof or the ones made with Monaco EZ Color. They were a bit darker and the color not as close to neutral. I
wasn’t able to extensively test Wiziwyg Delux, however; or make high-end profiles with Wiziwyg Delux since
it didn’t support the DTP-41.

I have heard good things about the Itec Colorblind Matchbox product and have several photographer friends
who have been happy with the profiles it makes. I’ve tested Itec ColorBlind ProveIt and am very impressed
with it! I made quite a few attempts to contact Itec and get a copy of Matchbox to review for this article. I’ve
heard from multiple sources that the company has been having financial problems which Itec confirmed on the
phone but also feels these problems will soon be solved. The ColorBlind Matchbox product is a great deal since
it comes with profile making software, a colorimeter (the sensor for making printer profiles) and also a profile
editor all for $999. The included colorimeter only reads one swatch at a time so it takes longer than the DTP-
41. It is also a colorimeter and not a spectrophotometer so may not be quite as accurate as the DTP-41. Still, for
$999 total this is a solution well worth looking at! This product appears to have similar functionality to
Wiziwyg Pro which also costs $999. Itec told me on the phone that they will be announcing 4.0 versions of
their products, including Matchbox and ProveIt. You should follow the news about Itec and Color Solutions and
be sure they will continue to be a viable competitors and continue to support their products. Itec actually
bought, Color Solutions, the original company and creator of these color products.

Editing Profiles
Once you make a profile, or have one made for you, it is possible to edit the profile to change it and fix small
areas you are not happy with. According to my friend Bruce Bayne, a color management expert, it is very com-
mon to have to make small edits to many of the profiles that are created. You will want to have this capability
even if someone else makes a profile for you. Many of the profiles I made were essentially good except for
some minor flaw, like having a magenta cast in the 20% and 10% highlight areas. I was able to improve these
profiles using a profile editor. Monaco Proof contains a profile editor called Monaco Tweak, Praxisoft Wiziwyg
Delux contains a profile editor called TweakIt and ColorBlind Matchbox also contains a profile editor; the
ColorBlind one I did not test. Monaco Tweak and Wiziwyg TweakIt both work in similar ways and have similar
options although I found the options on Monaco Proof’s Tweak to give you better control over specific ranges
of color. All the controls in Monaco Tweak use an interface similar to the curve tool in Photoshop. The controls
in Wiziwyg’s TweakIt all looked like the Color Balance tool in Photoshop, except with fewer options, so they
didn’t allow you, for example, to only add greens to the highlights.

Monaco Tweak allows you to adjust Lightness,

which does not affect color but only brightness
and contrast, Color Saturation, giving you the
option of saturating or desaturating the more satu-
rated colors without affecting the neutrals, and it
also provides a curve for each of Red, Green and
Blue.

Wiziwyg TweakIt’s controls included sliders to

adjust the overall color balance between Red and
Cyan, Green and Magenta, Blue and Yellow; there
is also a control to saturate or desaturate all the
colors or any particular of the six colors separate-
ly; and finally there are controls to increase or
decrease Brightness or Contrast.
Monaco Tweak shows you the before image on the left and the after image on the right.
With a well calibrated monitor, both images give you accurate rgb monitor soft proofs of how
The process for editing a profile in both applica-
your images will look when printed with this profile. The edits you can make with Monaco
Tweak include Lightness, Saturation, Red, Green and Blue with each control being a curve.
tions is very similar. You first tell the application
You can place the cursor anywhere withing either image and see the before and after val-
which profile you want to edit then you open a
ues. Make sure you give Monaco Proof more than the default memory on the Mac to see an
accurate display of your images.
file; it’s best to use several files that are typical of
the type of work you will be doing with these profiles. Monaco Proof was able to open either LAB or RGB for-
mat TIF files whereas Wiziwyg TweakIt would only open RGB format TIF files. I downsampled the 60MB
files I was working with to about 20MB so these applications could deal with them when I assigned each of
them 80MB of application memory space to work in. When you open the file, you can display a before and
after version of the image, with before on the left and after on the right. As you make changes to the profiles
those changes are previewed on the right side of the screen within the image you have open.
These profile editing packages are giving you
RGB soft proofs of how the image you have open
will print on your printer when using the profile
you are editing. I found that the screen display of
the Monaco Proof profile I made, with the
Neutralize Paper Color option on, most closely
matched my Photoshop display of the image and
also my print. Both applications also allow you to
read the before and after digital RGB or LAB val-
ues of any point within the image you have open.
This is helpful especially if you are trying to adjust
neutral gray step wedges to print as exactly neu-
tral. During these tests, I always added the
StepWedge file from the Calibration folder of the
Photoshop 5 Artistry CD to the edge of any image
I was printing. If neutrals don’t print as neutral, Here are the controls for WiziWyg Delux TweakIt. As you can see, all the controls here are
sliders, like in Photoshop ColorBalance, so you can’t change what is happening in a particu-
that is a good sign that your profile is not correct. lar range of values within an image, like you can in Monaco Tweak. WiziWyg Delux TweakIt
did have faster feedback of changes and scrolls than Monaco Tweak but ultimately it is the
amount of detailed control possible that is most important. What we are seeing here is the
before and after images from TweakIt on the left and in the middle. The rightmost image
Monaco Proof’s controls were not very responsive here is this same file opened in Photoshop. Having Photoshop open in a window under-
and sort of clunky. When you moved a slider to neath allows you, with both Tweak and TweakIt, to compare Photoshop’s soft proofing to
that of your profile editing application. This image was in LAB color and I found Photoshop’s
scroll the images or entered a point on a curve, the display of it to be almost identical to that of both profile editors. Monaco Tweak can read a
LAB format TIFF file directly but to open this file into WIziWyg TweakIt, I had to first convert
visual feedback was too slow. To enter curve it to an RGBTIFF format in Photoshop then resave it in that RGB format.
points I found it best to click on the curve, drag it
somewhere so the point actually stayed on the curve then actually type in the Input and Output values I wanted,
separated by tabs. The visual feedback on the screen showing the changes appeared to be quite accurate, how-
ever, and matched my printed output from a particular profile quite well. Wiziwyg’s controls and screen feed-
back were more responsive although the screen display of the images was initially very poor. This problem was
easily solved by assigning more memory to the application. The online PDF manual that came with Monaco
Proof was much more detailed than the very brief manual that came with Wiziwyg Delux.

Expensive, "Professional", Calibration Systems

The professional color user and the color management expert would probably want a X-Rite DTP-41 or the
even more expensive $6,000 Graytag Macbeth Spectrolino Spectrophotometer with the SpectroScan X-Y table.
The Spectrolino is a full-blown Spectrophotometer which can take readings from your monitor, a swatch print-
ed on paper and also through film. The SpectroScan X-Y table allows you to place a page of swatches on the
table, hook up the Spectrolino to its holder on the table then automatically read all the swatches on the page
without any further user intervention. If you are in the business of making profiles and you have to make a lot
of them, this is the professional tool of choice. If you are a professional color user and you need to make a num-
ber of printer profiles only then the DTP-41 may be a more cost effective solution for you that still allows for
some automation. X-Rite also makes more advanced versions of the DTP-41 which allow you to take readings
from both film and paper.

The professional-level software packages include Gretag Macbeth’s Profilemaker 3.0 for around $3,500; Lino’s
$1,595 PrintOpen, $1,595 ScanOpen and $895 View Open (bundled for $3,795); Monaco Profiler for $4,250;
Praxisoft CompassProfile for $1949; and Itec’s ColorBlind Professional for $4,799. I did not evaluate these
products for this article, they are the products that the color calibration expert will want to check out. I do
believe that the professional color user will find they can get very good printer profile results using Monaco
Proof with an X-Rite DTP-41 as I did for my 1270 profiles.
 Using Your Printer to Simulate the Results of Another Printer
Another thing you can do with ColorSync and a good profile for your printer is to use the ColorSync filter in
Photoshop to simulate the results of another printer using your printer. To do this within Photoshop, having
ColorSync installed, go to Filter/ColorMatch/ColorSync Filter and enter the following information. The
ColorSync filter does not work with LAB format files so I had to convert the image I wanted to print to RGB
first. Although I do most of my work in LAB, when I have to
convert a file to RGB to work with an application that doesn’t
understand LAB, I have Photoshop’s RGB setup set to either
ColorMatch RGB or Adobe RGB then I do the conversion with
Image/Mode/RGB. For these tests I used ColorMatch RGB and
got pleasing results when printing on my 1270. Once you get into
the ColorSync Filter, choose the Proof tab and set Quality to
Best. Set the Source Profile to the profile that represents where
your image came from. If this was an image that had been
scanned from a scanner that I had a profile for, I would use that
Using the ColorSync filter to simulate the results of another printer, in
scanner profile as the Source Profile, assuming I hadn’t modified this case the lightjet, using an Epson 1270 printer.
the file after the scan. Since this file had been heavily modified in
LAB color and I then converted it to ColorMatch RGB to use this filter, I set the Source Profile to ColorMatch
RGB. Set Output Profile to the profile of the printer you are trying to simulate. I used the LightJet 5000 profile
from Calypso Imaging, where I have been sending my LightJet files. Set Proofer Profile to the profile you have
made for your printer; in this case I used the Monaco Proof profile I made for my Epson 1270. Set both of the
Matching Style pop-ups to Perceptual then choose OK. The filter will transform your image and you then want
to print it using the same No Color Adjustment settings used to print the swatch tests. If you have a different
printer than the 1270, you will need to figure out how to make prints on that printer without the printer software
doing any color adjustments. The settings for most Epson printers are quite similar to those for the 1270, the
print dialogs may look a bit different and the No Color Adjustment option may show up within a Pop-Up menu
in the advanced dialog instead of as a separate option. I found that printing to simulate the output of the
LightJet gave me prints that were very close to the LightJet's with most images. Printing using my Monaco
Proof profile directly also gave me prints that were very close. The only images that looked significantly differ-
ent were ones that used a part of the color gamut that was very different between the two printers.

Comparing Profiles of Different Printers, Papers and Inks

Once you have made profiles for all the different color devices you work with, you can compare the color
gamuts of these devices. This first diagram compares the profiles of the LightJet 5000 and the Fujix
Pictrography 3000 with the Epson 1270 using both Premium Glossy Photo Paper and also Matte Paper
Heavyweight. You can see that the LightJet and Fujix have a larger gamut in the deep blue and purple areas. I
have one print that is a close-up of the solid blue color from Crater Lake in Oregon. This print is a deep saturat-
ed almost purplish-blue when printed on the LightJet. It looks more Cyan and not as saturated when printed on
the 1270 using the Monaco Profile. Notice, however; that, based on these profiles, the deep blues and purples
are the only color areas where the color gamut of the LightJet and Fujix exceed the 1270. Most nature prints
I’ve tried on the 1270 can appear to match the colors of the LightJet quite well. Notice that the gamuts of the
Fujix and the 1270 using Premium Glossy Photo Paper are larger in the Cyans and Greens than those of the
LightJet and 1270 with the Matte Paper Heavyweight. I compared my Monaco Proof 1270 Premium Glossy
Photo Paper profile to one that Bruce Bayne made using ColorBlind and they both are very similar. This is also
a useful technique to help validate a particular profile.

Comparing Profiles of the Same Monitor or Printer Created with Different Products
It is also useful to compare profiles of the same device made with different products. Here we see a comparison
of the Epson 1270 printing on Matte Paper Heavyweight using profiles made with Monaco Proof, Monaco EZ
color and Praxisoft Wiziwyg Delux. Both the Monaco EZ and Wiziwyg Delux profiles are generally smaller
than the Monaco Proof profile. The images printed
with the Monaco Proof profile showed a wider
range of colors and more openness. Notice the
similarity in shapes of the two profiles made using
my Lino Saphir ultra 2 scanner vs. that made with
the DTP-41. It would be interesting to try the same
software packages using other scanner and spec-
trophotometer input devices and see how those
affect the profiles. All this is possible when you
can view and evaluate the profiles you have creat-
ed. You should also check out the illustration com-
paring the graphs of three different calibration
techniques used to profile the same monitor and
also the ColorMatch RGB color space. They are
all very close to the same!

Conclusions
For this article I’ve tried to take a look at some of
the software and hardware products available to
help us calibrate our color environments. I hope
the process for calibrating is now clearer to you
and you have some ideas about the path that is
right for you. Calibrating can be inexpensive and The above color chart was made with Gretag Macbeth’s Profile Editor 3.0 software, which I
easy using products like Monaco EZ Color, found best for comparing profiles. The black graph is from a Lightjet 5000 on Fuji Crystal
Archive paper with the profile made using ColorBlind software, the Red graph is from a Fujix
Praxisoft Wiziwyg, Color Vision PhotoCal and Pictrography 3000 on its Fuji paper also made with ColorBlind. Thanks to Calypso Imaging
and Bruce Hodge for printing the color targets and to Bruce Bayne for making these profiles.
ColorBlind ProveIt. You can spend more time and The green graph is from the Epson 1270 on Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper with a pro-
money to get more control and better results with file I made using Monaco Proof and the DTP-41. The blue graph is from the Epson 1270 on
Epson Matte Paper Heavyweight with a profile I made using Monaco Proof and the DTP-41.
Monaco Proof and possibly Wiziwyg Delux or
ColorBlind MatchBox. You can also hire a color management
expert to do the work for you using the highest-end solutions.

There now exist, and are about to be many more serious hobbyist
and professional color users, like us, than the current smaller
number of high-end color users willing to spend up to $10,000 on
a calibration solution. I believe the calibration solutions compa-
ny(s) that sells a complete color calibration software suite for
under $1,000 and also provides a more easy-to- use sensor, like
the DTP-41 strip reader, for under $500, will be the winner in this
relatively new color calibration market. The high-end hardware
and software products that sell for $3,000 each and up will not be
purchased by large numbers of users. Photographers and other
more critical color users need products with more functionality at
a lower cost. The market for calibration of color scanners and
printers is about to explode. If I were the president of Monaco,
Praxisoft, X-Rite, Greytag-Macbeth, Lino or Color Solutions, I
would provide more complete products for less money knowing The black graph is a profile made with Monaco Proof and the DTP-
that higher sales volume would justify providing more features at 41, the red graph was made using Monaco EZ Color and my flatbed
scanner and the green graph was made with Praxisoft Wiziwyg
a lower price. Delux and my flatbed scanner.

My tests of these particular software and hardware products have not been exhaustive so I plan to continue to
learn more about them. You should look at my results as giving
you information that will help you make some choices but not as
absolute judgments of these products. You should also read arti-
cles by others and check out the products themselves, check out
each company’s web site and check out the products themselves.
Look at the web site of Robin Myers, the inventor of ColorSync,
at www.rmphoto.com, for his existing and future color manage-
ment product tests. I will continue to test and work with color
products and keep you posted on what I find.

I’m excited about Epson’s announcements in May of the Epson

2000 and the Epson 7500, both having archival pigment-based
inks with over 100-years of color permanence. These new print-
ers, with the 24" carriage width of the 7500, may obsolete the
need to send final prints to a LightJet. I hope to be evaluating
these printers soon and will compare their color gamuts and print
detail to that of the 1270, the Fujix and the LightJet.
In this comparison, the black graph is a profile made of my Apple
ColorSync 17 monitor made with ColorBlind ProveIt using
I’d like to thank Bruce Bayne of Alder Technology for all the ColorBlind’s sensor. The red graph is a profile of the same monitor
help and advice he has given me in writing this article. The pro- ofusing the built in monitor calibrator. The green graph is a calibration
this monitor using Wiziwyg Delux and the sensor that comes with
files he made for me were also very helpful. Robyn Myers, inven- it and the blue graph is a graph of the ColorMatch RGB color space
from Photoshop 5.5. Notice how similar they all are!
tor of ColorSync has also been a big help with our phone
discussions and e-mails and the great info on his Web site. For further information, you can reach these color
calibration experts at the below locations. My longtime photographer friends Bruce Ashley, Bill Atkinson and
Bruce Hodge have also been a big help, thanks you guys!

Color Management Experts who will calibrate your system for you or answer questions about calibration:
Bruce Bayne of Alder Technology
(They will make remote profiles for you for $200 each)
13500 SW 72nd Avenue, Suite 200
Tigard, Oregon 97223
(503) 603-0998 or (888) 318-8230
(503) 443-4609 fax
[email protected]

Robin Myers
3887 Yosemite Court North
Pleasanton, California 94588-4934
(925) 484-1065
[email protected]
www.rmphoto.com

Companies mentioned in this article:

X-Rite
3100 44th Street S.W.
Grandville, Michigan 49418
(888) 826-3059
www.x-rite.com
Monaco Systems
100 Burtt Road, Suite 115
Andover, Massachusetts 01810
(978) 749-9944
www.monacosys.com

Praxisoft
1400 Shepard Drive, Suite 200
Sterling, Virginia 20164
(800) 557-7294
www.praxisoft.com

Itec - Color Solutions

15175 Innovation Drive
San Diego, California 92128
(858) 613-1300
www.color.com

GretagMacbeth
617 Little Britain Road
New Windsor, New York 12553
(914) 565-7660
www.gretagmacbeth.com

Color Vision
1430 Vantage Court, Suite 101
Vista, CA92083
(800) 554-8688
www.colorcal.com

The Author:
Barry Haynes
2222 NW Brownly Hts Drive
Corvallis, Oregon 97330
(541) 754-2219
www.maxart.com
www.barryhaynes.com
[email protected]