Color: Canon S2/elements4.0/Canon ip6000d/Ilford Galerie paper

[Dwight Stoller]

Looking for guidance in color match. Have had inconsistency...new to color control. Have read different advice on web, but not sure what works with Elements 4.0.

CAMERA - Am very happy with Canon S2 camera...resolution, zoom, size...and flexibility for video.
SOFTWARE - Elements 4.0 appears to have all the capability I currently need.
PRINTER - Have Canon ip6000d. Like resolution, flexibility with multiple ink tanks.
PAPER - Tried a lot of different types...Canon, HP, Red River. Really like (quality and price)... Ilford Galerie smooth pearl and smooth gloss. International Paper Jetprint Photo Portrait Studio for excellent quality satin finish.

There is ICC profile for Galeria papers for ip600d. Can't seem to get it to work right. Need Photoshop 6.0 or higher? Different than Elements? Instructions I've seen f or setup include commands differnt than in Elements.

MONITOR - 17" Dell flat panel. Does calibrating monitor color impact print color control? Or does it just impact "my view" of the image, and therefore if I change lighting, contrast, color etc on Elements I'm not seeing what I'm realing doing to the image?

Any help appreciate! Thanks!

[Carbone]

Woohoo... lots of questions...

First, paper... Canon works best with only Canon and Ilford paper. Anything else will not give you great results.

ICC colour profiles. For Windows, I don'T know where to install them. But you will need to download them from the Ilford website. For Canon, they're already in your computer.

The monitor : Calibrating your monitor will be difficult because an LCD under Windows usually requires a hardware profiler (Monaco, Spyder, etc.) Will impact colour rendition ? No, not exactly, it'll make YOU see colours more closely to what they should be. 100% colour calibration isn't possible, keep this in mind. So there will always be a different, especially in fushia and purple.

Next, comes the fun part... In Elements, under the Print dialog, click on More Option, then choose your paper printer profile in the Printer Profile, and choose Perceptual for the Intent. This will ensure Photoshop knows what paper you have (the paper profile) and that you want something that looks like what is your screen (Perceptual).

I've got from Canon a PDF on how to match profiles and paper with their papers :

http://homepage.mac.com/carbmac/Canon_ICC_profiles.pdf

Hope this helps!

Ray

[Codebreaker]

Dwight......

Calibrating and Profiling your Monitor is the first important step in achieving colour consistency. It does not directly affect your prints but will account for some of the differences in Monitor v Print. If you can afford it invest in a colourimeter as Ray suggests - you wont regret it.

For printing the steps to take are harder and not so clear cut but be advised that a 100% match between Monitor and Print is not achievable. You should be able to get close but it depends on the image colour range.

Firstly, as a baseline use only Canon paper and inks. When you've got good results with that then move on to try other papers.

Secondly, you must make a decision to either let Elements manage the colours when printing or your printer driver - NEVER both.

If you let Elements do the job then you should get it to use the profile for the paper your using. This should be in the drop down list for Print Space (Organiser) or Printer Profile (Editor). The problem I found on my old Canon was that no profiles existed for different paper types.

You must also establish where in your printer driver you turn on/off colour management and sometimes this is not easy to identify.

If you want the printer driver to manage colours then set Elements to use Printer Colour Management in the Printer Profile which is only available in the Editor.

Profiles on a Windows system are located in

C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\SPOOL\DRIVERS\COLOR

although it's conceivable that Canon put theirs somewhere else.


Colin

[Dwight Stoller]

Many thanks Carbone and Codebreaker. Appreciate you taking the time to share your knowledge. Hopefully someday I can pass along assistance to someone else.