Getting (Or Creating) a Custom Profile for Your Printer

When you buy a color inkjet printer and install the printer driver that comes with it, you get what's known as a "standard" profile. It basically lets Photoshop know what kind of printer is being used, and that's about it. But to get pro results, you need a profile that includes the printer and the exact paper you'll be printing on (basically, a custom profile). Most inkjet paper manufacturers now create custom profiles for their papers, and you can download them free from their websites. You can also create your own custom printer profiles, but it requires buying printer-profiling hardware (more on this later).

Step One

When you first install your printer, it installs a standard printer profile, which is chosen from within Photoshop CS2's Print with Preview dialog (found under the File menu). But that profile doesn't take into account the type of paper you're using, meaning you won't get the pro results you're looking for. You need a profile that describes both the printer and the exact paper you're printing to. So where do you get those? That's next.

Step Two

I personally use an Epson Stylus Photo 2200 color inkjet (which is one of the most popular 13x19" color inkjets for pros), and I often use Epson papers with it. But, since I don't know which printer you have, we'll have to go with mine for our example. To get the best results, we'll have to go to Epson's website and download a free, custom-made profile for the exact paper we're using. Start by going to Epson.com, select your country, and click on the Drivers & Support link. Note: Websites change their look and navigation fairly often, so if you go to Epson's site and it doesn't look just like this, don't be surprised.

Step Three

When you get to the Drivers & Support area, click on the Printers link and navigate to the color inkjet printer section. Once you find the inkjets, click on the Drivers & Downloads link, then find your particular printer in the list of printer models (in my case, it's an Epson Stylus Photo 2200). Find your printer in the list, click on it, and you'll arrive at the page where the standard drivers are found. But you don't want the standard drivers, so click on the link for the professional, custom ICC profiles page (just below the printer's name, in this case).

Step Four

When you click on that link, a page appears with a list of Mac and PC ICC profiles for Epson's papers and printers. This is the Holy Grailthe pot of gold at the end of the rainbowand best of all, it's free. Now, is it really worth this treasure hunt? Well, here's what Epson says right on their website about these free profiles: "In most cases, these custom ICC profiles will provide more accurate color and black-and-white print quality than with the standard profiles already shipping with every printer." So in short, if you want more accurate color and black-and-white prints, download these profiles. Download one for every paper you're using (I've been using the Velvet Fine Art, Premium Luster, and the Enhanced Matte, so I downloaded all three). Now, once you download them, then what?

Step Five

When you download a profile from Epson's website, it comes with a built-in installer (shown here on the left in the window), so just double-click on it to install it automatically. If you download a profile like the one on the right side of the window, you'll have to install it manually (don't worryit's easy). On a Windows PC, just Right-click on it and choose Install Profile. Easy enough. On a Mac, it takes a few more steps: First go to your hard disk, open your Library folder, and open your ColorSync folder, where you'll see a folder named Profiles. Just drag the file in there (you may need to restart your machine).

Step Six

When you relaunch Photoshop CS2 (after your restart), choose Print with Preview from the File menu. In the resulting dialog, under the Options section, change the Color Handling pop-up menu to Let Photoshop Determine Colors. Then, click on the Printer Profile pop-up menu, and now all the new printer/paper profiles will appearyou just have to choose the one for the paper you're getting ready to print to (in this example, I'm printing to my 2200 using Epson's Velvet Fine Art paper at 2880 dpi, so that's what I'm choosing as my printer profile). More on when to actually make this choice later in this chapter, but for now, we're mostly concerned with just getting these custom profiles installed.

Step Seven

Moab also has some beautiful papers that work wonderfully on the 2200 (I just printed an entire wedding album using Moab's Kayenta Photo Matte), so when it was time to do the actual printing, I went to www.moabpaper.com and clicked on the ICC Profiles link. I downloaded and installed their custom profile (and after restarting), it appeared in the Print with Preview dialog in the Printer Profile pop-up menu. If you decide to try a new color inkjet paper, before you do any printing you'll need to go to the paper manufacturer's website and see if free custom profiles are provided.

Step Eight

Crane's Museo Fine Art Papers website (www.crane.com and click on Printer Settings and Profiles) provides custom profiles for their paper for use with most Epson printers. The inset here shows their Epson 2200 profile installed in Photoshop. Note: You can also pay an outside service to create a custom profile for your printer. You just have to print a test sheet (which they provide), overnight it to them, and they'll use an expensive colorimeter to measure your test print and create a custom profile. The catch: It's only good for that printer, on that paper, with that ink. If anything changes, your custom profile is about worthless. So, if you want to go that route, you should probably do your own personal printer profiling (using something like ColorVision's SpectroPRO) so you can re-profile each time you change paper or inks. Otherwise, just keep updating the profiles from the paper manufacturers.