ColorVision

[ErnestM]

I picked up one of these yesterday:

www.colorvision.com/profis/profis_view.jsp?id=281

What a great little piece of kit. I am now getting WYSIWYG from my monitor to Epson R1800 printer. The LCD screen and finished photo actually match.

I actually found it for $75 US at my local Computer store so it is well worth the purchase. Calibration and creation of the custom profile only took about 20 minutes.

If anybody is having trouble with printer output not matching what you see on the monitor, try this.


ErnestM

[threeracers]

Is it possible to use this when printing through someone like Photobox rather than a home printer?

Photobox sent out a colour / test card with my first order some time ago but I didn't know what to do with it!

Mark

[Bee_Jay]

Bugger, there goes my afternoon.

I have a Spyder2Pro, and wondered what the difference was to this cheaper unit. When looking at this it said mine can calibrate projectors. One download of updated software later and now I will spend the rest of the day in a dark room playing with my projectors - COOL!!!!

[ehasler]

threeracers said:

Is it possible to use this when printing through someone like Photobox rather than a home printer? Photobox sent out a colour / test card with my first order some time ago but I didn't know what to do with it! Mark

I've found that images on my screen (calibrated with a similar device to the one above) match Photobox prints very well.

I've not used their test card, but would assume that they provide a test file which you would load on your PC and compare to the test print that they sent you. If everything is calibrated and profiled correctly (this applies to their printers as well as your monitor), the two should match.

[beano500]

Here, for a bit more but in english money !

Wish I could be confident enough about colour* management to answer about Photobox and their test card. As soon as you learn a little about it you find that it's a huge subject. But once you've profiled your monitor, in theory, you need to convert your version of all the colour values to the profile that the printer (either your Epson/Canon on the desk next to you or the professional lab) uses so that what is printed matches what you see.

Obviously when we all peer into the murky underworld of the Wide World Wonderland, we all "see" it quite differently because no two monitors are the same!

(Hence it's quite sobering when someone says "but my car's not that colour" when we all peer at it on PH Photo forum!)




*Sorry Ernest, but I translated what you meant after a little while!!!

[ErnestM]

Nice one Beano. Always forgetting my u's...

Bottom line for me is that I don't have to use the "hit and miss" method in photoshop to make my pictures look good. Prior to this device and it's profile, I would have to lighten the pictures to the point that they looked terrible on my monitor before printing them.

Now, when I print the picture, I can hold it up to the monitor and it looks as close to identical that I have seen...


ErnestM

[Bee_Jay]

Rex and I use fully calibrated monitors and printers for our work, but have recently found that Photobox images come back about 1/2 stop darker. We have just ordered today some test prints to see what happens.

The important thing is that you send your images to PBox with the sRGB profile and that is what their smaller format printer uses (it actually uses no profiles, but is set for sRGB as that is what nearly all the point-and-shoot cameras cut their JPGs in). Their larger format printer should be OK as long as you embed the profile for the space you are working in (AdobeRGB, sRGB etc.)

[Bee_Jay]

Photobox said:

Profile support Are ICC profiles available for your photographic printers? We don't publish profiles ourselves however we are working with the manufacturers of our printers in the hope that we can provide ICC profiles in the future. Do you support profiles for Fuji Frontiers? It is important to note that the Fuji Frontier printers currently strip out any embedded profiles in your images, so you should ensure that your images are submitted in sRGB. You can also use our calibration print to adjust your screen to match our output as closely as possible (see above). Do you support profiles for Polielettronica Laserlab prints? Yes, our Polieletronica Laserlab that produces our poster-sized prints will support images with an embedded profile; the profile which we find produces the best results is Adobe 98, so you may want to use this profile for your larger prints.

From here: www.photobox.co.uk/quality.html

[poah]

threeracers said:

Is it possible to use this when printing through someone like Photobox rather than a home printer? Photobox sent out a colour / test card with my first order some time ago but I didn't know what to do with it! Mark

I just got stuff printed at photobox then adjusted the rest. only the big prints form photobox use the profile stored in the image