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Calibration of a printer : why and how ?
As with the calibration of your monitor, the calibration of your printer is essential. You will get a much better result than with ICC profiles downloaded from the Internet or installed by default by the manufacturer. Indeed, these are supposed to correspond to a model/paper pair : impossible ! And contrarily to the screens, you have two possibilities: to do it yourself or to have it done by a professional for, and that's the good news, really not very expensive... or even free !
Have you ever complained about the colours of your inkjet prints? I am so amazed at the efficiency of the calibration of my printer that I still don't understand how I could have spent so much money and time on adjustment tests before!!!!
Calibrating the printer and graphic chain when color management is understood and demystified is so effective that I only have one piece of advice to give you : calibrate, calibrate, calibrate ! Since a print is the photographer's ultimate goal, move on to calibrating your printer for your color prints such as black and white. And if you don't want to invest in a quality calibration kit, so it's quite expensive today - count between £250 and £2,000 at the end of 2018 - think about getting it done. You will find a small list of companies that create ICC profiles for your printer of very high quality since made with the best tools of the moment on the next page. And note that the Permajet brand offers calibration of your printer for any user of its papers.
1 - Why calibrate your printer ? 
2 - How to calibrate your printer ?  |
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It can be tempting to download the generic ICC profiles provided by printer and/or paper manufacturers : don't expect a miracle as they are only approaching the solution and remain highly perfectible. Sometimes it is enough to use it by making a black and white print to convince yourself...

Indeed, they are made for your printer model but not your serial number and that changes everything. The " right " solution is to do it yourself or have an ICC profile done for YOUR printer/paper pair. Seriously ! |
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Only the part highlighted in blue on the picture above) is different between the printed picture and the picture displayed on the screen. It is therefore not a calibration problem but rather technical limitations. The monitor or printer - whatever - does not know how to display or print some saturated colors.
Second tip : this difference must relate to saturated colours, meaning at the gamut limit.

How to calibrate a photo printer ?
The calibration of a printer - the entire process that is calibration and characterization - therefore consists of printing a calibration chart provided by the manufacturer of the calibration kit you purchased or the chart sent to you by the online provider and measuring its colors to create an ICC profile. The process called calibration is actually done - as we have seen with the monitors - in two very distinct parts :
During the first one we choose the paper, the printer, the printing fineness and we print the test pattern and it is only during the second phase, the characterization, that we record the characteristics of the printer and that we will create its ICC profile for a paper/ink/resolution pair. This characterization is ideally done using a special tool, a spectrophotometer, which is sometimes replaced by a cheaper and therefore a little less accurate version, a spectrophotometer.
As much as a monitor only requires one profile, as many times as you may have to create several profiles with your printer, as many times as one of the parameters mentioned above will be changed, I am thinking in particular of paper. |
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A monitor calibration tool is called a colorimeter or to calibrate a printer you must use another instrument. There are two types of calibration devices for calibrating a printer: a spectrophotometer or a spectrocolorimeter. If a colorimeter cannot be used to calibrate only a printer, a spectrophotometer can be used for both, even if it is less suitable for calibrating monitors because it cannot usually measure very deep blacks. Finally, a spectrocolorimeter is less accurate at calibrating a printer than a spectrophotometer because it does not use the same technology.
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Basically, the calibration of a printer is done once and for all : for color and black and white. The purpose of calibration is to neutralize the dominant colors, all of them. There is therefore no specific calibration to be done for black and white printing.

Three important remarks :
It is true that some manufacturers of custom ICC profiles such as offer you specific ICC profiles for black and white printing. I note that these are in fact optimized variants of a color profile that are more or less neutral, cold or hot. It is obviously very interesting because it is complicated to do when you don't know how to do it yourself. The corrections are therefore integrated into the ICC profile and there is nothing more to do than to choose it at the time of printing.
It is worth noting that Christophe's reputation for quality custom profiles is well established. He's been doing this for over ten years and knows all the papers on the market !
Calibration problems may persist if your printer does not have enough ink cartridges. For beautiful blacks and whites, you need at least 8 cartridges.
The brand new i1 Studio calibration kit (released at the end of 2017), based on the excellent Colormunki Photo spectrophotometer and i1Profiler software, has a black and white optimization function. In short, it's a great Colormunki Photo !
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Even more than for the display, the calibration of the printer is essential.
But I strongly advise you to make or have made YOUR ICC profiles for YOUR printer and YOUR papers. Generic profiles are only a correct second best, no more.
It is not necessary to create Black and White ICC profiles. They can only improve the printer's performance if you only print in Black and White. Christophe Métairie is also well known for his remotely customized black and white profiles.
No, it is not necessary to buy a calibration kit : for the price of the SpyderPRINT (£279 at first price) you will have 10 Expert profiles at Christophe Métairie (cmp-color.com) or www.profilicc.com.
But the huge advantage of having your own calibration kit is that you can immediately create all the profiles you want, when choosing a paper for example.
Calibrating a printer with a spectrophotometer is even easier than calibrating a display. No target values ! Just print the test chart and read it in the spectro !
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Follow my advice to calibrate or get your photo printer calibrated or calibrate it yourself with the great i1 Studio kit  |
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