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Fine-tune your inkjet photo printer
By John Woram
08/12/2006 URL: http://asia.cnet.com/buyingguides/printers/0,39064317,39259734,00.htm
Fine-tune your inkjet photo printer
Using your favorite graphics application, create an image space that's, say, 4.5 inches wide by 5 inches high. To conserve ink, make the image a simple black line around the outer edges of the area. Use the application's Print Preview option to center the image on the paper. Place a sheet of plain 8.5 x 11-inch paper in the feed tray, making sure it's properly seated. Print a test page, verify that the box is the dimensions you specified, and measure the widths of the borders. If the box isn't centered on the page, make a note of how you'll have to shift it to even things out. This way, you don't have to mess with scissors, rulers, and other trimming implements to produce prints with perfectly even, absolutely straight white borders.
Step 6: Know your print resolution
To get crisp, sharp photos, you must have a high enough print resolution. This is a measure of the number of pixels that will print across each inch of paper.
If you have Adobe Photoshop Elements, you can see this information about an image by selecting Image > Resize > Image Size. If your image is 450 pixels wide, and the print resolution is set to 300 pixels per inch, the printed image will be 1.5 inches wide. This brings up an important point: an onscreen image and an image on paper are not the same thing. For an illustration, try this simple test: Display a 450-pixel-wide image onscreen, and measure its width in inches. Perhaps it's 5 inches wide onscreen and looks very nice. Now, open the Image Size box and set the Document Size section's Width box to 5 inches. Getting those 450 pixels into a 5-inch print requires a print resolution of only 90 pixels per inch, and this will produce a fuzzy print. That, in turn, brings us back to the camera you're shooting the images with. Take advantage of all those megapixels by choosing the highest pixel dimensions possible for the images you'll want to print. If the original image is 3,000 pixels wide and you print at 300 pixels per inch, you'll get a nice 10-inch-wide print. If you print from the reduced-size image, you have two choices: a print that's tiny and sharp, or one that's large and blurry.
That, in turn, brings us back to the camera you're shooting the images with. Take advantage of all those megapixels by choosing the highest pixel dimensions possible for the images you'll want to print. If the original image is 3,000 pixels wide and you print at 300 pixels per inch, you'll get a nice 10-inch-wide print. If you print from the reduced-size image, you have two choices: a print that's tiny and sharp, or one that's large and blurry.
Step 7: Print a few color test pages
For your first color tests, print a few solid-color blocks. The values in parentheses are what you can enter into the Color Picker dialog of either Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements to achieve the colors.
Include a good photo on the test page, as well as some explanatory text below the color blocks. Change the text as required for subsequent tests, so that each printed test sheet contains its own description. That makes it a lot easier to sort out the test results later on. Keep in mind that your printer cartridges use cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks, not red, green, and blue. So, a printed red is a mix of magenta and yellow inks, green is a mix of cyan and yellow, and so on. Some printers use more than four inks, but the basic concept is the same. If your printer does its job properly, you should see accurate red, green, and blue blocks, and no color tinge to the gray block.
If the printed results are unsatisfactory, the printer driver may provide the necessary correction tools. Needless to say, such tools vary from one printer to another, so we can't provide a definitive list. Look for controls such as Saturation, Color Tone, and Brightness, and make whatever adjustments seem appropriate. If you find a combination that works, save it with a distinctive name and use it for subsequent printing jobs.
Step 8: Try a little color management
If none of the above configuration changes does the job, you may have to delve into the black art of color management.
Your printer software may include a file known as a color profile. This file modifies the data stream sent from the PC to the printer, optimizing it to suit the printer's own characteristics. To investigate this, open Control Panel, select Printers And Other Hardware, then Printers And Faxes. Right-click the appropriate printer icon and select Properties. Then choose the Color Management tab to view the profiles currently available. If any are listed, and the Manual radio button is enabled, click the Automatic button instead and try another test. If the result is an improvement, then either stay in Automatic mode or click the Add button to search the list of available profiles for one better suited to your printer. Of course, most of the filenames will be incomprehensible, so you may need to go back to your printer manufacturer to see if there's a profile available for your printer.
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Estimated time required: 2 hours
Estimated cost: US$50 and up
Step 1: Getting sharp prints
Tests may reveal a clogged nozzle or a misaligned cartridge.
Poor ink-cartridge alignment produces fringes and blurred images. The photo on the right is improved after alignment.
