Does anyone make a color test card for CRT/printer setup color adjustment ?

I've seen screen calibration spiders, and similar accessories
to calibrate a printer and it's a bit much at my stage
of expertese and equipment.

As a lower-tech approach, does anyone make a test card that covers the
range of colors I can expect to handle. I can shoot it with my
digicam, look at the results on-screen and print it.

It would also be useful to be able to download the same image
from the manufacturer's web site to compare print and compare
to the test card. The web site could have the same image
in different profiles, in tif, and Photoshop formats.

Is there a better way ?

 

Collect some paint sample cards from your local paint store, take a
couple images and compare what you see on the monitor and in a print
with what you see on the cards. This won't satify a color management
purist but it will get you close. And you can't beat the price.

jpc

 

jpc wrote in

This method will not really work. It assumes that you can ...
.... trust the cameras white balance when photographing colored cards.
.... somehow modify the monitors color output without making a profile.
.... somehow modify the printers color output without making a profile.

I am no color management purist, but I would say that it will
be hard to get close


/Roland

 

If so - please tell me also

Nope - I have found no method for color calibrating a monitor
without measuring it. You can calibrate gamma, but not color.

But if you want to try - this is what I propose.

The Canon printers seem to have rather good color calibration
from the factory (at least my i9100 does). Buy a Canon printer.
Then - print a test picture that contains some step tablets
and some skin tone pictures. Then use the settings on your monitor
to get the color "feel" as close as possible. BTW - my previous
Epson (970) was way off and needed serious color calibration.

Don't forget that your tungsten lamp is probably 2700 Kelvin
and the light leeking in from the window might be up to 12000
Kelvin. So ... any monitor calibration you make might be totally
bogus anyway.


/Roland

 

Go to www.qpcard.se
They make a test card that you can use in your editing program.

Digital Bob

 

Roland, this is probably where I depart from a few of my color management
brethren. For a fellow that simply wants to get fair WYSIWYG output from
his/her system, and could care less about going to an outside printer, your
advice is fine. I know...this is a departure from what I normally
recommend: it is NOT the optimum way to calibrate, but for the guy who
simply wants to make home prints that reasonably match his monitor,
adjusting the monitor to match to match the prints is OK. Heresy, perhaps,
but OK? Yeah.

 

One or the other of us is either under-responding or over-responding
to the OP question.

Ths OP asked "-As a lower-tech approach, does anyone make a test card
that covers the
range of colors I can expect to handle. I can shoot it with my
digicam, look at the results on-screen and print it.

It would also be useful to be able to download the same image
from the manufacturer's web site to compare print and compare
to the test card. The web site could have the same image
in different profiles, in tif, and Photoshop formats. "

I took him to be asking is there a quick and dirty way to find out if
the colors he was seeing on his screen and in his print were close the
true colors he was photographing. And you will have to admit that
laying the original sample down next to the print is perhaps the most
accurate ways of detecting slight differences in colors.

In other words I was suggesting a way to test weither he had problems
with white balance, saturation, color profiles, and so on. If, after
deciding he couldn't live with what he was seeing, he came back to ask
how to fix things, that would be a far more complicated question.

jpc

 

Corel photopaint used to package a test card that you could scan, you
then used its profileing software on the scan and it, supposedly,
worked out the differences between what it was ment to look like and
the scaned result... I didnt think it really worked very well.. and
didnt work after you'd printed the test tiff and re-scanned it to
decide where your printer fitted in the equasion.

all that said... colour is way to subjective, while you may get
absolutly perfect colour matching using a spider etc, it doesnt match
what viewers of your final prints feel... especially if they are used
to photoshops/photobooths that boost the colours to make photos more
punchy, however if you are submitting to a client that understands
that kind of thing, then good matching is very important at least as
far as the camera and final tiff is concerned, after that its up to
them if they want to frig it to make it look punchy for the
publications.

 

As a lower-tech approach, does anyone make a test card that covers the

The classic way to take pictures on film (huh...what's that?!?!) is to use a
Macbeth Color Checker to balance the print exactly to the card for color
accuracy.

--Wilton